paywall

SF Chronicle erects paywall for 'premium' content

Less than a week after The Washington Post announced its paywall plans, the San Francisco Chronicle followed suit by debuting SFChronicle.com, a site that aims to offer readers "premium" content beyond what they'll find on the Chronicle's SFGate.com site.

As more newspapers are scrambling for profits in the face of sagging print advertising revenue, many are looking to make up for the decline -- and the Chronicle is no exception. The newspaper is looking to drum up more cash by offering in-depth articles and columns for a monthly fee on a site that's … Read more

Washington Post to start charging frequent site users

The Washington Post won't be completely free online much longer.

The publication this summer plans to start charging users who access more than 20 articles or multimedia features a month. The Washington Post hasn't yet decided how much it will charge, according to an article on the newspaper's Web site.

Large portions of The Washington Post's audience will be exempt from fees, though, including home-delivery subscribers. Students, teachers, school administrators, government employees, and military personnel will have unlimited access to the Web site while in their schools and workplaces, the article said. And access to The … Read more

Washington Post said to add paywall for online news

It's looking like one of the last vestiges to provide free online national news may be coming to a close. Joining its other paywall comrades, the Washington Post is said to start charging for its online content in 2013, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Inside sources told the Journal that the details are still being ironed out, but most likely the D.C. paper will start charging a subscription fee by next summer.

It's no secret that the newspaper industry is in dire straights. Several papers, like the Rocky Mountain News, have gone belly up and many … Read more

Hurricane Sandy blows down paywalls at NY Times, WSJ

Two major publications have stripped away their paywalls to give consumers unfettered access to up-to-date information on the arrival of Hurricane Sandy.

The New York Times removed its usual paywall on Sunday evening for both its Web site and its apps. Spokesperson Eileen Murphy told Poynter:

The gateway has been removed from the entire site and all apps. The plan is to keep it that way until the weather emergency is over.

The paywall -- which typically prevents users from viewing more than 10 articles for free each month -- has occasionally been removed in the past, when the situation … Read more

Anonymous turns its back on Wikileaks after paywall dispute

And the saga continues...Anonymous and Wikileaks got into a public tit-for-tat over Twitter yesterday about a donation overlay page that Wikileaks posted on its Global Intelligence Files. Anonymous called the donation page a paywall -- since it cannot be closed unless a donation is made or the Javascript is disabled -- and demanded it be taken down.

The page was taken down for a couple of hours in the evening and it looked like Anonymous had won the battle. But then, Wikileaks put it back up. And this time it's not only on the site's Global Intelligence … Read more

Wikileaks and Anonymous go head-to-head in 'paywall' battle

Anonymous is typically a big fan of Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, but earlier today, several of its members sent out tweets calling for people to stop donating to the site until further notice.

A Twitter tit-for-tat ensued and finally ended in what looks like a success for Anonymous.

What got the online hacker group all riled up was an overlay donation page that was first seen when accessing Wikileaks' Global Intelligence Files, according to The Next Web. These files contain more than five million emails from the international intelligence company Stratfor.

Anonymous publicly labeled the donation page a &… Read more

North Korea's army of online game hackers

From the "I guess this makes sense" files, the New York Times reports that North Korea has unleashed a squad of hackers to infiltrate South Korean gaming sites. The two countries have technically been at war for almost 60 years, and cyber-attacks are the modern-day equivalent to a slap in the face.

The police in Seoul said Thursday that four South Koreans and a Korean-Chinese had been arrested on charges of drawing on that army to organize a hacking squad of 30 young video gaming experts.

Working from Northern China, the police said, the squad created software that … Read more

NY Post blocks Web site for iPad users

The New York Post is now blocking iPad owners from accessing its Web site through mobile Safari, trying to instead force them to download and use the paper's own iPad app.

iPad-owning New Yorkers looking for their daily Post fix online will see nothing but a message directing them to download the paper's $1.99 iPad app where after 30 days of free access they must pay for a monthly or annual subscription to read the content--$6.99 for one month, $39.99 for six months, or $74.99 for a year.

But the block seems limited … Read more

Chrome extension allows users to hop WSJ's paywall

If two bucks a week just sounds like too much to pay for access to a slew of content, and you don't mind crossing Rupert Murdoch, then Read WSJ is the Chrome extension for you. A free download in the Chrome Web Store, this rather simple bit of code provides easy access to much of the articles and other content that more upstanding Journal readers actually pay for.

The app is basically a script that automatically searches for cached versions of WSJ stories on Google and then places a special icon next to a headline if one is available … Read more