Don't forget that the cost of running the site is not just the one-off cost of creating the images and indexes but also the maintenance of the hardware and software. That lot needs to be upgraded periodically and if it's not done then the company has to do a big revamp such as New Ancestry or New FMP even more often than they do. It's a bit dodgy for me to try to remember but weren't both the 1901 and 1911 censuses on their own site to start with? Once they had recouped a fair amount of cash, then they were quietly bundled into the ordinary subs. "The profits from earlier databases should pay for the costs of delivering the new ones." Generally, they do. FMP did the WW1 Soldiers' Record (encouraging Ancestry to extend its own indexing); they're in the middle of Staffordshire PRs and Shropshire PRs, and the Electoral Registers have just gone up with hardly a murmur from the community (which is absurd, especially given that the WW1 Absent Voters' Lists are in there). All with no extra payment other than new customers. I suspect that somewhere in that lot, the camel's back got broken. The problem for me is not the principle of paying, it's the incredibly stupid way FMP didn't prepare the way for this. All we saw was pictures of people scanning. Big deal. I have a feeling there is a lot more behind the scenes than just the household schedules - for instance, how do they stop people born less than 100y ago being redacted? There must be other files brought into play that we don't know about. FMP could and should have told us about this.