The another blog post originally[1] had the phrase:

"We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software."

And like, they have this on their home page:

"100% Free elementary OS is completely free, both in terms of pricing and licensing."

So it's weird to mention cheating or talk about making it harder to download for $0 while talking up the free pricing in their ad copy.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150211113458/http://blog.eleme...