I should tell you that I loved reading the New York Times (NYT) online and read it for quite a while from the comfort of my home or work. However, when I visited that site last night, I received a warning that I only had five more copies left to read for May. “What in the world!” I said to myself. I knew that plans were underway to restrict free online readership but had no knowledge that such restriction has already taken effect.
As it stands, I can only access 20 free copies a month and anything beyond that means that I have to pay for it. Well, it makes a lot of sense that those journalists who make such reservoir of information available deserve an equitable return on their time and effort. But the public also have a right to know what happens at home and around the world in order to make informed choices as pertains to politics, business and anything else in between.
Where the right of one ends and the obligation of another begins has been a murky intersection in the press business especially since the internet has made to our living rooms, and we learned to live with it. Of course, everyone understands that you cannot walk into a neighborhood grocery store, pick up stuff and walk scot free without checking out properly. Nonetheless, online media in general and NYT in this case, has, in the past, made that a real possibility. As of now that possibility seems like a revolving door finally shutting in our face slowly but tightly. Restricted news readership limits access to and free flow of information.
But another contrarian perspective exists. NYT needs my presence on its website as much as I do. After all, I must confess that the internet has changed my reading habits from reading books page by page to what I can describe as skimming. Skimming, in the sense that, I read only portions of an online article and move on to the next newsy, juicy piece on some other website say Washington Post, Aljazeera English or, most of all, Hiiraan Online. The point is that the more traffic a website receives and the more hits readers make on online ads on the site, the more bucks NYT makes. So a website that receives 4 million visitors a month is likely to generate more revenue stream than my startup blog that receives only 1000 or less hits a month. So, a mutual symbiosis exists and of course that’s the reason I receive 20 free articles a month to read on NYT online. Call it a bait, if you may!
However, how many of the rival news sites will follow NYT’s example and whether this new restriction will be sustainable is another question. Today technology changes so fast and so constant. Just like newspapers have become almost redundant, so may online controlled websites be in a matter of months or few years to come. But what cannot be controlled is human ingenuity. If 50 facebook friends can each read 20 articles for free and they share it on facebook, they can still beat NYT restrictions. Whether what do they do is ethical or legal remains open for discussion. However, NYT realized that restrictions on sharing articles on facebook cannot, probably, be enforced-of course they will need to hire thousands of costly cyberpolice-, so it allowed it to happen!
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