Rupert Murdoch, "The current days of the internet will soon be over."

[ronpaulhawaii]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites)


Rupert *Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/news-corporation)'s newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a *"malfunctioning" business model.

Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an "epochal" debate over whether to charge. "That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal's experience," he said.

Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, he replied: "We're absolutely looking at that." Taking questions on a conference call with reporters and analysts, he said that moves could begin "within the next 12 months‚" adding: "The current days of the internet (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet) will soon be over."

[idiom]

Lol, or all his internet services will be forgotten in as the market goes shifts to the lower priced news.

[samiam5211]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites)

Not sure what choice the newspapers have other than to charge online readers. There is no reason to expect the current trend of people choosing reading stories online over print media to do anything but accelerate.

Without profit they can't keep producing news articles. I am sure that just like with the print media the price isn't going to be anything outrageous.

The last thing we need is the government claiming it's got to bail out the media or we risk losing it.

Seems like the quote: "The current days of the internet will soon be over" is only referring to the ability to read news online for free that would not be free in print.

Even if one day every site on the web were charging people for access, our only recourse would be to refrain from using sites we don't feel are worth paying for ... The only other possibility would be to pass legislation regulating the sites ability to charge, but that isn't even close to the right answer.