Pay-per View

[muninnhuginn]

I was actually about to make some sarky comments about an article in The Indy that seems to contradict itself (about the responsiveness, or otherwise, of big business to changes in markets), but the effort seemed futile. The link to the article will become useless as its content disappears behind a subscription barrier that I don't have the financial arm and leg to surmount. I felt particularly miffed as we've even got an Indy from the weekend in the house: it's not as if we're not occasional purchasers and readers.*

The predicament, however, set me thinking. I'm not in a position to pay for access to premium content of much of the media I read.** Fine. I shouldn't complain. I get my freebies, read the best of what's available*** and pay not a penny to the originators of the content. Not directly. Indirectly, The Grauniad does get some support: we loyally buy a copy on a Saturday--for The Guide, mainly, although I do sometimes prefer reading the review section on paper rather than online. So, how about this: a mechanism that allows you to have time-limited access to an entire publication online (including archives) because of the purchase of a paper copy of said publication.

Shouldn't be hard to implement: type in the bar code of today's paper, get access to all the content online until, say, next Monday. Monthly publications just the same, but with longer access. Buy three in a row, or whatever number seems fit, get a limited extension to access for your loyalty. But do you do it one bar code per PC? No use if you've more than one machine you use for reading the papers. What about the tedium of typing a bar code in? (Yes, they're long and tricky: I've done quite a few to help donate cows.) I find logging in with a sensible length of user name and password quite enough of a nuisance--even with Opera trained to do many of them. Unique bar codes with any regularity? Too many mistypes.

Bar codes are somehow so unappealing too (maybe it's because I can't read any part of them, unlike, say, ISBN numbers which I can partially decode (especially after starting to catalogue the books in LibraryThing) or VAT numbers whose validity I used to be able to check (and have now relearned!)). So could it be made easier and, somehow, cooler? I really just want to have the paper in my possession and then turn to the PC and access the extra content. Wave the paper in front of a webcam? Nah. Undignified. Even if I chose to have one at home, I can't see every work PC, or internet café PC, having a little camera perched on top of the monitor. But something wireless, maybe. If folk with positively antediluvian PCs (looks down shamefacedly, shuffles feet and tries to mutter 98SE (we do have SE, see) as inaudibly as possible) can be running a wireless network and if all new laptops seem to be suitably equipped, then wireless is beginning to be ubiquitous. I suppose RFID tags on each copy of a national paper would be too expensive? It'd be neat tho'. Completely foolproof. Buy the paper. Take it home. Open the paper's web pages. Voilà. All the glossy extras magically appear. I could dump the paper in the recycling box and still have access until the binmen came. Or I could buy the paper while out, access something interesting in a convenient cybercafé, or on my PDA, and then continue to access the same extra content when I take the paper home. (OK, this might not work for the loyalty bonus time).

Go on. Someone tell me it won't work. Or that it's been done already.

---

*OK, I admit it. We have a S-indy because my brother forgot to take it home with him. It was there, tho', so I read it.
**Were I financially in the position where I could pay for it, I wouldn't have the time to take advantage of it.
***I do seem to choose the best, or most commercially attractive. As various papers have gone from all-free online content and services to the current part free part premium situation we have now, I've always been hit hard: the Grauniad started charging for its emailed headlines and emailed round up of the press which were precisely the bits I read most often; the Indy, whose emailed headlines I regarded as a poor second to the Grauniad (worse than that: I actually prefer the Torygraph's to the Indy's), started charging for its comment sections, which were exactly the parts of its site I most often visited. So I've had my favourite bits taken from me unless I can, and am willing to, pay.

Comments

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

What you want is BugMeNot (http://www.bugmenot.com/) - if they're going to be stupid enough to make their content unavailable to interested readers, they should expect to lose revenue as people find alternative ways of getting information. This one just makes it nice and clear how they're losing it :)

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I'm using Firefox 1.0.6 under Win98SE, and I can't get to a login screen to use the details BMN gives. Instead, it's a 'how would you like to pay' screen. Can you make it work with a different browser/operating system?

[muninnhuginn]

Actually I don't mind paying (just not too much, for instance the prices for the Indy comments struck me as exorbitant): folk have to make a living and I wouldn't want to see writers, not even journos, starve. It's the once you had it, now you can't uncertainty that annoys. That and the unerring ability that folk have to take from me the the bits I want most.

[timill]

Well, which bits are you most likely to pay for? The bits you want or the bits you don't?

And a quid a week (£50 annual) for the comment section doesn't seem at all bad. Nor, really, £1.60 pw - £80 pa for full access.