http://www.niemanlab.org/...
Well that didn’t take long, and I can’t say I’m shocked.
What the New York Times doesn’t seem to get is that all attempts to secure digital information eventually fail. Their 50 million dollar “paywall” is now in the same scrap heap of attempts to secure content as DVD encryption, blue-ray encryption, other “pay to play” sites, software activation codes, I could go on, but you get the point.
Content providers need to understand that in the digital age all information is essentially free. It doesn’t matter how much you spend trying to secure it, there are millions of people with untold man hours who can go about trying to free it. This is a fight no content provider has ever won. In the digital age you have two choices, either admit that your content is essentially free of charge to anybody who puts forth a little bit of effort, or spend millions of dollars trying to secure it only to have someone create a work around shortly after. Attempts to secure information can be summed up in two words “expensive” and “pointless” once it is available online.
The Times needs to decide if it wants to offer content online or not. If it decides it wants to, than it must accept the realities of the internet and work within them, trying to change the internet to suit your needs is insane. A simple option for donations would probably generate a good bit of income and wouldn’t cost 50 million dollars to implement.