Wow! What a can of worms.
I'll just clarify my point with this: By "free," I meant "does not cost you any money."
Unless, of course, you think you are giving money to WotC by providing them with commercially valuable content. In which case, I caveat with "so long as you do not post commercially valuable content, which, of course, you are under no obligation to do."
(As for those whose gripe is that the new forums aren't as easy to use or feature-rich as the old ones, well, I won't argue. It's a work in progress, and they are making progress. The other community features, though--personal pages and blogs, groups and wikis, etc.--are pretty sweet.)