Comments on: It’s not the pay, it’s the wall

By: How One Website’s Readers Will Benefit if Newspaper Websites Charge for Articles

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:11:06 +0000

[...] the conversation that examines, analyzes, questions, and ultimately enriches those articles. Scott Rosenberg (co-founder of Salon): When you put up a pay wall around a website you are asking people to pay [...]

By: it.gen.nz » Are reports of the death of newspapers greatly exaggerated?

it.gen.nz » Are reports of the death of newspapers greatly exaggerated? — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:13:58 +0000

[...] Why newspapers shouldn’t lock down Internet stories. [...]

By: The problem with pay walls « Magazines Online

The problem with pay walls « Magazines Online — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:09:20 +0000

[...] problem with pay walls June 8, 2009 Just came across this piece on pay walls by Scott Rosenberg. His thesis? “It’s not the pay, it’s the wall”: The [...]

By: Scott Rosenberg’s Wordyard » Blog Archive » Once more into the pay-wall breach: No gravedancing edition

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:43:52 +0000

[...] During my time at Salon we tried every online revenue strategy you can imagine: Gate off some of the content. Gate off all of the content. Don’t gate any content but ask users for cash to join a premium program. Slate tried a subscription program well before us. Many others followed. Yes, there are differences between such sites and local newspapers. Yes, 2009 is different from 2000-2002. But the fundamental lesson remains: you can get some revenue from readers, and there’s nothing wrong with trying; but if in doing so you cut yourself off from the rest of the Web in any way, you are dooming yourself to irrelevance and financial decline. Don’t make your content less valuable at the instant you’re telling people it’s going to cost …. [...]

By: Preston Austin

Preston Austin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:00:46 +0000

I’ve been trying to articulate a general arguement that the only viable means of securingvpayments will be those that make content easier and more valuable to buy than to steal. Devaluing content through restrictions that only serve to require payment creates various reasons why stolen content is easier, and better, to work with. “Easier to steal” is the litmus test, if it is easier to steal a product, that virtually always means the seller has not really figured out how to sell it without reducing it’s value.

I’ve always looked at iTunes App Store as an interesting example where (in an artificial bubble of Appleness) it is easier to buy. This is the exception though, virtually every for of media I consume is easier to steal (and better in most cases as well). Music without DRM, software I can reinstall with less work, movies I can watch in my favorite player, books for my reader.

I’m motivated to steal because the result of theft is both less work to acquire, and a better product. Currently I only steal stuff until I have time to deal with the hassle of buying it properly, and I resent the vendor for penalizing every customer all the time in their efforts to ensure payment from those whobuy now but would steal if they could (those who would not buy what they will steal simply don’t matter)

By: Benjamin Lukoff

Benjamin Lukoff — Sun, 31 May 2009 20:50:15 +0000

Sounds like an FT-style metering solution is the way to go, then. http://eatsleeppublish.com/metered-content/

By: Ian Aleksander Adams

Ian Aleksander Adams — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:49:45 +0000

Only specialty databases accessed by specific professionals work like that, yeah. Like technical briefs or academic journals. People like to directly support those things too, since they are often their peers in said industry. But it’s a super small audience.

Honestly, anything else interesting behind a wall is just going to get copy-pasted almost instantly instead of being linked. If it has any mass interest at all, it’s going to get out to the masses. It’s always to your benefit that it gets out as a working link instead of as a giant block of copypasta. I remember seeing stories on livejournal all the time back in 2002-2003 that were from major company sites. Everything pasted in full.

By: Solitude

Solitude — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:59:29 +0000

You can not copyright news. You don’t own information about things that happen in the world.

Only your wording.

Put up any pay wall you want and I (or anyone else) who reads your content can dissect it, add our own additional information if we want, and regurgitate it out into the web.

If I don’t use your wording you can’t do jack about it. Simple information isn’t copyrightable.

Pay walls aren’t going anywhere.

By: It’s not the price — it’s the wall that hurts » Nieman Journalism Lab

Sat, 30 May 2009 15:23:54 +0000

[...] Rosenberg clarifies an earlier post and, in the process, makes an important point about why so many are wary of The [...]

By: Brian Slesinsky

Brian Slesinsky — Sat, 30 May 2009 05:01:40 +0000

How about the model of keeping the wall up for a short while and taking it down for the archives? (For example, lwn.net makes full access available after a week.)

If it’s just for a few hours, you can link to an article with a note that non-subscribers can read it later.