I completely disagree. We all pay for access to the Internet, so what is so evil about paying for access to Internet content? That makes as much sense as saying that everyone on the planet is entitled to all the recorded music they want, just because they own a playback device. Had that always been true, the only music you'd hear today would be by musicians who performed for free, or were singing about products that advertisers paid them to sing about.
And that is how Internet content works. Some people spend their own time and effort creating content. Or stealing it from others. But much of the most popular Internet content is created by people who are paid to do so, by organizations running Web sites that get paid by sponsors to run advertising on the site. The problem with that approach is that Internet advertising can dry up, as it did for several years after the Dot COM bubble burst at the turn of the century.
If you care about Top 40 Radio, Reelradio.com deserves your support. The technical quality of digital remastering of nearly 2000 historically valuable airchecks is without precedent, as you can hear in their (free) hour-long tenth anniversary special at
http://www.reelradio.com/tenth/
They are currently in the middle of a massive effort to convert from RealAudio to AAC+ audio encoding for those of you who, like me, don't like Real as a company, or their software.
Every effort was made to keep ReelRadio free, but a subscriber model with a very nominal $12 U.S. per year was chosen over advertising, when the Curator faced bankruptcy. Otherwise, creditors would have seized all assets, and the level of effort required to resurrect the site would have been monumental. As you will hear on the sample, some of Top 40's finest acknowledge the value of keeping the site alive and vibrant: Bobby Ocean and Charlie Van Dyke narrate the 10th anniversary Special.
There has also been some criticism of ReelRadio's lack of Western Canadian content. There is a good reason: to the best of my knowledge, I'm the only Western Canadian who has ever offered the site any material.
I'm not saying RadioWest, RockRadioScrapbook and bcradiohistory.com should have no airchecks. But, I think ReelRadio deserves, among other things, cooperation, not competition. For example, I hope we never see the day when ReelRadio airchecks are recorded off the site by a subscriber and placed on one of our sites just so people will be able to get them for free.