Slashdot Mirror
The Times Erects a Paywall, Plays Double Or Quits
DCFC writes "News International, owners of The Times and The Sunday Times announced today that from June readers will be required to pay £1 per day or £2 per week to access content. Rupert Murdoch is delivering on his threat to make readers pay, and is trying out this experiment with the most important titles in his portfolio. No one knows if this will work — there is no consensus on whether it is a good or bad thing for the industry, but be very clear that if it succeeds every one of his competitors will follow. Murdoch has the luxury of a deep and wide business, so he can push this harder than any company that has to rely upon one or two titles for revenue."
"Sir, there's something wrong with our servers, or else the reporting service. Look here, at the pageviews count. It's stuck at zero."
This is good. Two of Murdoch's outlets have deliberately isolated themselves from the wider discussion. I only wish he'd adopt this strategy more widely.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
because if this eventual-epic-fail causes Rupert Murdoch to lose just some of his monopoly power over the media, the world will be better off for it.
You mean like Wikinews, which already exists or something different like Indymedia or the whole blogosphere?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
8 pounds a month, a lot less isn't it? But I think it is the 1 pound per day that people will indeed choke on.
I don't really read news sites myself, I read stories that I found links to. But I don't really go to a newspaper site and just read all the stories. So it would be NOT 1 pound per day, but 1 pound per article. So I just wouldn't.
And because I follow links to several sites, it is also not 1 buck per day, but maybe 20 bucks for all the different sites. And that does hurt, even if you take a monthly subscription.
That is the biggest reason I think this will fail.
People use the net different then a newspaper. When you take a newspaper subscription, you read it like a book. But when you browse the net, you go here you go there. Take in a page here, an article there. The problem isn't paying 1 subscription fee, it is paying dozens.
Lets see, 1 euro for slashdot, 1 for tweakers, 1 for comics.com, 1 for penny-arcade, 1 for the bbc, 1 for the times, 1 for the new york times, etc etc. That is going to hurt pretty fast.
True micro-payments would help, but the amounts would have to be truly tiny. As in a tenth of a cent for an article and that is never going to work.
And anyway, I don't have a credit card and the only Americans who have ever heard of Global Collect are Sony (SOE is the only MMO company in the world to support iDeal (dutch banks) and other countries payment systems (this might have changed in recent years)). So how am I going to pay even if I wanted to. (Oh and for irony, supporting iDeal is cheaper per transaction then credit card payments).
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I suspect you are missing the point - this is an attack on the BBC. Firstly introduce payment for the Times etc. online. Get that established, then the next step will be to complain to Parliament and the press that the BBC is unfairly competing with his online offering, as it is giving away news that he has to charge for, and therefore the BBC News websites should be shut down. This has been his tactic to date (google for Murdoch, BBC and unfair if you want citations on this). Murdoch cannot stand genuine competition.
If I had mod points....
This is completely true in my view. Murdoch hates the BBC. OK, fine. But he will use political presure to complain about unfair competition in, I reckon, 5 years.
It won't be Rupert Murdoch himself of course. It will be his rottweiller of a son who will get whichever government of the day to reduce the budget and scope of the BBC News website. It's not the beginning of the end but it is the beginning of the beginning of the end if you get my drift.
"But he will use political presure to complain about unfair competition in, I reckon, 5 years."
He's already complained loudly about the BBC and Australia's ABC/SBS "unfair advantage" but nobody is paying any attention to him since fucking with those institutions has always ended badly for politicians that have tried it in the past. It simply won't wash with the public in AU/UK, state sponsered media generally enjoys a much better reputation than the commercial offerings and has been around for well over 50yrs. Given that history it doesn't take a genius to work out that "unfair competition" from the BBC/ABC hasn't stopped him from becoming mega rich in the past.
Sure he's got friends in high places and is a strong influence on government policy in the western world but there are some things even Rupert can't change.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No
You see, here's the big problem that Murdoch and friends have with "free-news". The newspapers and magazines, can't get any kind of useful stats on it's users if they just give it away. They use this data in a bunch of ways, one is to supply it to their advertisers.
These guys just don't sell the news, they sell this data as well. It's probably more important to them than selling the news. If you use a credit card to purchase something, this has your full name, address, purchase history through lookup on other shared db's and so much more.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
Have you tried to live without a TV in the UK? I did for 6 years. The TV Licensing people refused to believe that I didn't have one and kept pestering me to get a license. One year I had to sign two copies of the "I promise I don't have a TV set" form within a fortnight, speak to them on the phone and to deal with a TV License Inspector who turned up on my doorstep at 6pm one day.
The funny thing is, I became a great BBC Radio 4 fan during that time. It's paid for by the TV License fee, but you don't need such a license to listen to the radio...
It's a funny old world.
Stick Men