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I'd be totally OK with all that subsidy going away if it meant we didn't have to deal with ads anymore. We'll figure it out. People would put more effort into peer-to-peer sharing networks if it weren't for the fact that ad-subsidized "free" services based on giant datacenters are so good at undercutting them.

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You're missing the point, perhaps missing the scale. You don't understand just how vital ads are to the internet.

Content itself wouldn't exist for you to view. There would be very little (nothing at all) for you to P2P. The internet would essentially be the IRC. People don't write in-depth articles for the hell of it. They expect to get paid.

Most of what I'm interested in using the internet for worked just fine before ads came along: better, in some cases, because volunteer efforts didn't have to compete with advertising budgets.

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