I cannot agree to this. Your entire premise rests upon the idea that these people are creating content for you for free. That you are entitled to someone else's work for free.
NO, the entire premise rests on the FACT that the site owner IS sending the content to me for free. No entitlement there. Just reality. Now if they put up a pay wall and I start whining to you that is entitlement. Very different things if you think about it.
Now the obvious thing to say is - "well people won't pay to see the content" And to that I will respond by thinking: "hmmm, does the content really have any value then?"
If it doesn't have value, then why do you insist on viewing it? Once again, you're stating you're entitled to their content instead of simply going to another site.
Is my attention worth nothing? Are my contributions in the form of comments without value? Regardless I never agreed to view ads in trade for access to content and to be completely fair it was not offered to me in this way.
The usual offer is along the lines of "hey click this link you will like what you find there." This is a far cry from, "view these ads and we will provided you with content."
"Is my attention worth nothing? Are my contributions in the form of comments without value?"
Pretty much. You can't pay rent with "attention". It's just like the people that try to get designers to do work for free because of "exposure".
"Regardless I never agreed to view ads in trade for access to content and to be completely fair it was not offered to me in this way."
Yeah, you kinda did. This is the implicit agreement of the internet. If you don't like it, that's fine; there's nothing wrong with that. The point at which it does become wrong is, instead of going to some other website that doesn't do this, you continue to view the content, draining their bandwidth and resources, as though you are entitled to the content. If you don't want to view ads, go to sites that either offer content on a subscription basis and pay that, or on a donation basis.
