Be Excellent To Each Other

Times to start charging £2 a week to access their site.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8588432.stm



Can we expect a massive surge in readership on this site for people seeking an alternative? Will The Times glue up the works of rival printing presses if this fails?

Pah, why should I pay £2 when that Lebedev guy bought the entire Independent Newspaper empire for half that value?

I was always of the opinion that Murdoch's plans to start charging for the online versions of his "news"papers was pointless when other newspapers provide their online content for free. It does seem to me that most people go to online news sites to splurge their ignorant, prejudiced opinions, rather than to actually read the news. CiF has shown that people who would be better off reading the Daily Mail are quite happy to go to the Guardian website to wind up lefites in the lunchbreak, for example, so it's clearly quite a transferable usage. The online "readership" of the Times will therefore be quite happy to migrate to free platforms.

And, like cancer and that horrible stuff that builds up in kitchen vents, there will always, always, be HYS on bbc.co.uk.

Well now, maybe that's what little Jimmy Murdoch was so upset about?

Ten years ago, people were saying that Napster meant the end of music as something people would pay for. Today, iTunes has sold more than ten billion songs. The trick the newspaper industry is trying to pull off here (and I think the Times is merely the first, and not the last, to try this out) does have some precedent.

Only they should've done it Charlie Brooker's way, an easy sign up invisible pennies for article thing, or something.

Of course, Napster was operating illegally. The guardian and the BBC aren't.

The average man in the street didn't care very much it was illegal, I claim.

I am not sure that is a valid arguement. Napster was (at best) dubiously legal and was dead for years, to all intents and purposes, before iTunes came along. ITunes is an easy to use massively distributed program with a huge catalogue of data that has been bought into by the majority of media distributors.

The alternative newspapers/news outlets are free, and just as valid as the Times. Okay their political opinion may not be the same and your favourite columnist may not work for them, but at £2 (per week?) you will see a lot of people not bother. Furthermore, the action of having to sign up will put a lot of casual viewers off. I would say only hardcore Times fans are going to be willing to spend that money, at least until there is no free alternative. And there will always be at least one "free" alternative on the BBC, as we already pay for it.

Yes, but that was before there was a valid legal alternative available. Now there is, people are willing to use it.

I wonder what proportion of online news consumers go to a particular news website, and what proportion just happen to use whichever site is being linked to?

Other papers are probably watching the Times with interest to see how many subscribe.
I currently can't justify subscribing but I'll miss the columns by Matthew Parris.

I think they've got it wrong. One of the US newspapers went down this road and I don't think it's been very successful.

The right way is to have a free website, and then a value added subscription version that is very close to a newspaper - this is particularly relevant now the iPad has come along, but the Guardian had something called "The wrap" nearly 10 years ago, which was payable.

Oh, no doubt - but that is in itself rather artificial. The answer to "How many will subscribe" is going to be "a lot less than if everyone was charging for access".

The New York Times were doing it for years. I've just had a look and it appears they've ditched it.

I'd love to know how profitable charging for archival access is.
Whilst it's brilliant that I can currently access, for example, the whole of the 'NY Times' since 1851 for nothing, it's the kind of premium service that people would pay for (and currently a paid-for service in the case of 'The Times')

I would've expected them to make a mint from educational type places for archival access.

True, but the fact it was illegal was the reason that illegal service wasn't going to be the end of paid-for music, as it was only a matter of time before the illegal service got shut down due to it being illegal. Illegally.

I wonder how this will affect the library, as we have Infotrac, an online searchable resource which has past newspaper articles for all the UK broadsheets and most tabloids stretching back from yesterday to mid 2001. (Also Times stretches also from 1785 - 1985, which is awesome. Never tire of browsing that.)

Doubt it'll work from outside links but here we go:

http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do? ... me=car_lib

http://web1.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/ ... ep=car_lib

We need a membership number.

Aye. I wasted so much time at university doing random searches on that archive.

Not now, no, but give old Rupert time. If he goes through with this I can't see the BBC being allowed to continue their news service in it's current format/funding.

Also, maybe some Times readers should start up a free site called 'be right wing to each other' or something.

The shitty solution is two-tier news: paid content with informative information and current current-affairs, the second tier is headlines with maybe half a paragraph.

Newspapers are businesses and they want to make money like anyone else. You don't see BT giving away their phones lines for free because we all deserve the right to communicate. Having said that, news is important and can even affect our lives immediately. News isn't a right or a gift. What The Times is doing is wrong because a) news is too important to restrict and b) the internet has bred a attitude of free-for-all where competitive outfits can spring up out of nowhere. I hope The Times fails at this but, then, I don't like the press at large - a bunch of self-congratulatory cunts who shit-stir like champions, cocking up public attitudes and government policies for the sake of extra sales. In fact, for THAT reason alone news shouldn't be paid for.

And what'll they do about piracy (or word of mouth, as it should be known in this case?)

That doesn't happen if you shoot him on the 747 when Anna tells you to.

It'll be sad if I'm not able to read articles by Roger Boyes, anymore.

I wonder what controls they'll put in to stop account abuse. You could just pay your quid, share your log-in credentials with everyone you know, and hey presto! The news is free again.

There's still the faff of having to deal with log-in pages and such. I hate faff, me.

It'll all be micro-payments, I'm sure. Would you give your account details out if those you gave it out to could run up your bill - or worse yet, further disseminate your details so other random people can run up your bill? Not likely.

I'm glad you posted that, as it's the exact link I was going to share as well

Interesting, related fing.

I am very tempted to pay the £2 and set up a site to be a free mirror of all of the time's stuff.

Sounds oddly familiar...

Like you already do with HUKD?