Xanadu has always been about royalties
I knew Ted back when he was writing Computer Lib/Dream Machines (I’m in it several times). He’s a wonderful visionary. His visions are about literature, primarily. He also has visions about the literary uses of computers, because he’s a good visionary. But he is, first and foremost, a writer, and royalties are of prime importance to him. Ted, and I kid you not, loves to scribble his ideas on 3×5 cards or 4×6 cards while he’s explaining his latest ideas. Diagrams, arrows, labels, cute pictures, man, he’s great at it. And absolutely every single last one of these cards gets ‘C’-in-a-circle Copyright 19xx written on it, and it goes back into his pocket. His vision of Xanadu is of a system where absolutely everybody retains eternal rights to whatever they create, and gets paid royalties every time it’s used. Period. Don’t think otherwise. Is this a good thing? Yes. Is it a feature which will lead to its adoption by the masses? Hell no. The Web exploded because the Web is free. Don’t fool yourself on that one.