Aug
6Will Online News Providers Charge for Access?

     The decline in the profitability of newspaper companies with the increasing use of the free web has made headlines in recent years.  Now, many news content providers are investigating ways to improve their bottom dollars by charging for access to their information online. The Financial Times has predicted that within one year, all major news providers will charge for online access.Media mogul Richard Murdoch has vowed to charge for all online news sources his conglomerate, News Corp., owns.

   Other suggestions made to protect newspaper's profitability include a recent blog post by Judge Richard Posner arguing that links to newspaper content should be protected by copyright law.  At least one major content provider, Reuters, has rejected that approach, stating that "linking adds value to all producers of content".  The debate rages on, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the era of "free news" on the web may be coming to an end.

   What impact do you see the potential of fee-based online news services having on the ability of students and others to do research using online search engines, like Google?