Would you pay £1 for something you can read for free? An advert in the Times newspaper last week encouraged readers to sign up for thetimes.co.uk, now locked away behind a paywall.
According to the advert, for just £1 you get 30 days access to the site. And to demonstrate what you get, they have a picture of the thetimes.co.uk/needtoknow page - which shows the burning issues of the day in a colour coded form (the pinker the box, the hotter the issue).
Only ... you can actually access thetimes.co.uk/needtoknow whether you've paid £1 or not, as it's outside the paywall.
So probably not a great reason to pay for content online. Here's the advert.
And here are 11 more ways to get free content from the Times, despite the paywall ...
I was a regular daily reader of the Times on line. No longer. Since I refuse to give Murdoch a cent, his ownership of the Times ensures that I will not pay to play.Even if he sold the thing tomorrow, however, I still wouldn't pay. It is not unique content. The same news is available free a mouseclick away. The whole idea is just stupid and doomed to fail in the present form.
Posted by: Danielaa | Mar 05, 2012 at 22:03