Since they want to "be in bed" with both sides, maybe I should stop looking at them as being potential allies.
To be fair, I don't think that the FFSS has
ever tried to please paysites. Rather, they choose to alienate legitimate freesites, and call it collateral damage in their war against [paysites].
What I meant by "in bed" with paysites was that they have a history of punishing sites which link to PMBD or share payfiles with their free content. They may not be making a verbal statement in favor of paysites, but their actions/policies speak loudly enough as they support the "rights" paysite owners claim to have. At the same time, they try to give the impression that they think paysites are wrong by stressing freesites and rating sites which use no paymeshes higher than the ones that do.
It is just a bunch of wishy-washy nonsense really.