LONDON, England (CNN) -- Are Web users ready to start paying for content?
Not according to an entirely unscientific straw poll of hundreds of CNN.com readers who sounded off about News Corp. tycoon Rupert Murdoch's plans, announced this week, to start charging for access to his newspaper's Web sites.
Murdoch said the success of the Wall Street Journal, which charges for premium material and services, had proved that paid-for content could be made to work and said the current free access business model favored by most content providers was "malfunctioning."
But CNN.com users, on the whole, disagreed.
I agree with the CNN story. I said the same thing in my post “Made to pay ‘handsomely’ for accessing WSJ content.”
They will get some people that will pay for business and stock information. They can get a LOT of people to pay for sex and porn and that is about it. The Internet is a free form. People expect to get most all of their information for free. Of course it is not free. They pay for a computer and Internet access and hardware and software. We pay out a lot of money but we do not want to have to pay to access “news.”
Newspapers just need to change.
Comments