That said, I was surprised at the contents of the article. When the author described the "Internet Dissent Tax," I don't think he's describing anything new. Controversial materials have always been more costly and challenging to publish--witness Lolita, which didn't find an American publisher for years.
Rather, the dissent tax I find more interesting is the one brought about by 4chan and company--where loosely organized groups of internet users show their general disagreement with the actions of a company by attacking their servers.
It seems like companies doing business on the internet who take some action that could be unpopular with some of the internet's "defenders" must now take into account the "tax" they will pay for that decision, by having to deal with the attacks that could arise. One has to think that Paypal and MasterCard will be taking this risk into consideration in the future.
That itself is an interesting new social dynamic that I don't think we've really seen before, since it goes well beyond boycotts or sit-ins by affecting thousands of "regular" users, not just the companies.