Times moves toward opening archives

This is only a modification of what they already have. It's not opening the Kimono to get search and linkage. Without that, they won't be the newspaper of record.

I already pay to use HighBeam.com, and the NY Times has advertised there so hopefully they'll one day make a deal so we can subscribe to just one place.

Oh, and allowing PayPal as an option would also be nice as some of us are outside the USA and only want to use our bank card, and not credit ones.

Which of course sounds great - until you realise that the authors of at least some newspaper articles have not been paid for anything but a single printing of their work, and may wish to publish it in some other form at a future date....

It's a smart decision, and they'll all be jumping on the bandwagon soon enough.

I was speaking to a magazine publisher today who said to me that he heard Andrew Neil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Neil) talking at PPA Magazines 2005 (http://www.ppa.co.uk/cgi-bin/wms.pl/424) about how the age of free content was over.

I think it is just really beginning.

The only time premium locked content has value is if it is so specialised and unavailable anywhere else as to inspire people to pay for it.

That rules out a massive proportion of web content available, certainly on a general news level.

Niche content will always have inherent value due to its lack of ubiquity...which is why magazine publishers aka niche publishers will and are continuing to thrive in the net age even when newspapers are seeing circulation trends slowly drop.

Content seems to be evolving for most publishers into primarily a marketing tool to draw people towards various product offerings: ad/sponsorship, premium locked content (see above definition), affiliate sales, product sales, data capture etc.

Whilst content becomes more ubiquitous than ever thanks to the disintermediation of the publishing industry due to blogging et al, the value of tagging and feeds climbs higher and higher...community is becoming king...and the ultimate winners...brand owners...aka publishers...with a trust worthy source for people to draw from. Those most capable of offering the space for communities to flourish

In a post-information age, where information has lost most of its value due to its ubiquity, the value of an established brand becomes increasingly more important.

Just my view.