So, Rupert Murdoch wants to charge for all online content from News Corp, which includes The Times and The Sun.
On the one hand, eyeballs are increasingly moving online, so this form of news has to be monetised if publications are to pay journalists’ wages. On the other, news is everywhere, from an abundance of sources, so should the chosen few really have the right to charge? More significantly, would you pay to retain the right to read, or simply go elsewhere?
I posed these questions over on Facebook, and I think the answers are worth reproducing here as they pretty neatly tackle the key issues.
Protecting copyright
David Bennett picked up on the associated copyright implications of charging for access to online content:
My take is that If news costs to produce, why shouldn’t the producer be entitled to charge for it if there is a demand?
I notice that the final para of the article in the Guardian states ‘He accepted that there could be a need for furious litigation to prevent stories and photographs being copied elsewhere: “We’ll be asserting our copyright at every point.”
And that I think is the nub – easy and unauthorized redistribution on the web.
So, how will News Corp police the passing of information it uncovers into the public domain? We can’t own news, just the way it’s presented.
A little rewording and the pulling together of a few additional sources and bloggers could easily push the content into the free domain with little danger of being prosecuted, successfully at least, for copyright theft.
The micro-payment holy grail
But people seem to like their news primarily from the big, established sources with professional journalists. And, as David points out, we already pay for printed media, so how will this pay-per-view system be implemented? And can it be implemented successfully?
Gaz Bailey doesn’t think so:
This is good news as far as I’m concerned, certainly regards the Sun and The [News of the World].
Adopting this model will cut the number of people accessing the content down to the much smaller number who are prepared to pay for it removing more casual readers from the pool, and if NewsCorp et al plan to litigate against anybody they perceive to be recycling ‘their’ content, God forbid that might actually clean the internet up of cretinous celebrity news a bit.
Wayne Smallman has fewer doubts about the micro-payment model in theory, but questions whether it can work it practice:
Now that micro-payments are both practical and acceptable, the idea is doable, but I just can’t see this working somehow.
As a businessman, I totally agree with Murdock’s intention of making money from the web. They are producing the news, so why not?
In practice, and when competing with blogging, micro-blogging and social media, it’s hard to make a business case for what is mostly free.
The genie is out of the bottle…
Subscription model?
So, if we accept that news is worth paying for, says Darren Gallagher, the question is, how much is it worth?
Everything will eventually end up, in majority, online. So paying for online news is a natural progression. Free newspapers are becoming a thing of the past, especially high quality ones.
So the real question is, how much are you willing to pay for news? I personally, would be willing to pay a subscription to access the paper I buy daily, but instead of picking it up from the newsagents, accessing it online.
This is because I trust the quality of the articles, editorial opinion and the overall content. I also believe that journalists should be paid for their content. So I wouldn’t begrudge paying a subscription one little bit, as long as the standard remained high.
And Rob Bennett points out that the subscription model is already working out rather well for one media giant:
There is, of course one organisation out there now who have the resources to produce totally ‘free’ regional, national and international content (TV and web) to the same level and volume as News Corp by forcing every television owner in a very large country to pay for the content it produces whether they watch it or not. I currently subscribe to the BBC for £139.50 a year.
Personally, I wouldn’t really mind a pay-per-click model since the cost would be reasonably weighted in favour of the sources I like best and use most. Yet, subscription seems the more likely model since News Corp needs to ensure a minimum bottom line.
In the end, the proof will be in the pudding. No doubt ‘old media’ will be watching with bated breath to see if News Corp can pull this off. And if it does, there can be little doubt that the rest will follow suit.
