🧠 Cloudflare’s AI Monetization Move:

Where Does the Money Go—And Who Really Owns the Internet?

Link to Cloudflare’s Announcement:
👉 Official Press Release (July 2025)

Cloudflare just made waves with a big announcement: AI crawlers will be blocked by default on new sites, and publishers can now charge microfees to AI companies via a new “Pay Per Crawl” marketplace.

At first glance, it sounds like a win for creators.

But the question remains:

Where does the money actually go?

And maybe more importantly:

Who really owns the content that powers the web?

🧩 Not All Creators Are Equal

Cloudflare frames this as a win for “publishers.” But let’s break that down:

• What about the original researchers whose work is summarized in a trending blog post?

• What about the indigenous voices, whose culture is quoted by someone with a slicker platform?

• What about the poets, the scholars, the forums, and the anonymous Reddit threads turned into bestselling Substack essays?

Who gets paid when a blog post about a podcast about a book becomes AI training data?

Right now, it’s usually the person closest to the money—not the source of the wisdom.

⚖️ What Even Is IP Anymore?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

The current intellectual property system is broken—and the only people it really serves are lawyers.

• You can slap a copyright footer on a summary of someone else’s idea, but that doesn’t make it yours.

• You can publish a book on Amazon, only for someone to download, repackage, and resell it with impunity.

• The tools exist to stop this—Amazon already uses AI to detect plagiarism in college essays.
  But when it comes to protecting authors? Crickets.

Why? Because enforcement costs money, and Amazon doesn’t profit from fairness—only from frictionless sales.

🤖 AI Didn’t Break the System—It Just Exposed It

AI companies should absolutely share the wealth. But let’s be honest—they’re still figuring out how. The laws weren’t written for this era, and the platforms are pretending it’s not their job to fix it.

We need a new framework for attribution, licensing, and economic justice. One that:

• Tracks information lineage (who originated the idea)

• Offers voluntary revenue-sharing and revocable licenses

• Recognizes co-authorship across layers of remixing

• Prioritizes transparency over control

And yes, this can be done with current tech. What’s missing isn’t the tools—it’s the will.

🔁 From IP to IC: Let’s Rename the Game

We’re proposing a shift—from “intellectual property” to intellectual capital.

Why?

• Property implies ownership, restriction, exclusion. It echoes colonial logic: mine, not yours.

• Capital implies growth, investment, collaboration. It’s something that can raise all boats.

The internet was built on the radical idea of shared knowledge.
AI is the next evolution—but if we let the same power players own the pipes, set the tolls, and hoard the profits, we will repeat the same mistakes.

We don’t need more lawsuits.
We need protocols.
We need ethical revenue-sharing.
We need a system that works for everyone, not just the ones who can afford lawyers.

💡 A New Internet Economy Is Possible

Cloudflare’s announcement is a start. But without transparency, it risks becoming just another paywall in disguise.

The real test isn’t technical—it’s moral:

Will the infrastructure giants become stewards of a fairer system?
Or will they, like the platforms before them, gatekeep wealth while preaching openness?

We’re watching. And more importantly, we’re designing alternatives.