The Web is a great place to freeload. But that could be changing.
In the latest example of fees being introduced for a service that once came with no strings attached, Eastman Kodak Co. says it'll begin charging $4.99 to $19.99 annually for its previously free online photo-storage service, Kodak Gallery.
If you don't pay by May 16, the company warns, all your photos could be deleted.
"This puts people in a very difficult position," said Joe Ridout, a spokesman for the advocacy group Consumer Action. "This isn't just any commodity. These photos represent very important, emotional memories for a lot of people."
In other words, you'll pay to protect those memories, at least if you want to stay with Kodak. Or you'll start storing photos yourself on CDs or hard drives (which you probably should have done all along).
I can't fault Kodak for charging a fee for a service that has obvious costs involved. It may be cheaper than ever to store images in digital form, but the company still has to maintain plenty of computer hardware to allow users to access their snapshots worldwide.
If anything, Kodak's move makes me think about all the ostensibly free services I take for granted online -- and how vulnerable I and millions of others would be if those service providers decided to charge for what they offer.
For example, I've switched all my personal e-mail to the leading webmail providers -- Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. I got tired of sending out updated addresses each time I switched Internet service providers, and it's just a whole lot more convenient being able to access my e-mail anywhere.
I used to carry around an appointment book and an address book. Now my calendar and contacts are also online, for free, thanks again to the likes of Google and Yahoo.
Online banking, online bill paying, online access to brokerage and mortgage accounts -- these too have become routine parts of my life.
And I'd like to think that everyone from Yahoo to my bank would want to keep offering these free services to keep me as a loyal user-customer. But recent history isn't on consumers' side.
When ATMs were introduced, there were no fees associated with using them. The banking industry wanted people to be comfortable with the idea of dealing with a machine rather than a costlier human being.
