In an age where socializing and entertainment can take place at any time, and online, you could even argue that time has become less important than it once was.

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Shut-downs are now far less frequent, so that a typical station in America is now online 90% of the time, up from less than 50% in the 1970s.

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Arguably, the enterprise value is less than what the non-online segment, Time Warner, is worth on its own.

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"On a regular basis I'm hearing people saying, 'I'm buying less games because I'm spending more time on individual games online, " says Mr. Vorhaus.

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Other small-business owners less keen on offering freebies are dedicating more time to strengthening their online presence, says Marc Karasu, a marketing consultant in New York who specializes in digital-marketing tools.

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It works like this: Each week, a new editions of a contemporary piece from the likes of David LaChappelle or Olivier Zahm become available for online purchase for a limited time, typically a month or less.

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At the same time, however, plenty of others demand that those same information and communications intermediaries do less to police speech online especially the speech that they strongly favor.

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Everyone agrees that if a law (any law) is put in place to stop piracy online, creative and crafty pirates will find a workaround (or a thousand workarounds) in less time than it takes to upload an HD version of Transformers II.

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