I understand the author's point, but a lot of stuff online really is free! I give away my musical arrangements, my code, and my thoughts all the time, and so do lots of other people. There's all sorts of public domain stuff where people have used their resources to make it freely available to others. You can get lots of really valuable material online for free, really and truly. I'm old enough to remember having to pay, individually, for a book containing each one of Bach's works, and now they're available for free online, along with all of Schubert, Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Palestrina — I could not have imagined such a wealth of music when I was a young musician.
It's important to remember that search engines, walled-garden media hosts, and the like are going to worsen your experience to make money, but it's also important to remember that sometimes people do good, generous things because they want to make the world better.