Is the NY Times new paywall a platypus?

Will the new New York Times paywall survive longer than its last one? The Times sent me an e-mail explaining the plan, but Felix Salmon explains it more succinctly and clearly:

[T]he website is free, so long as you read fewer than 20 items per month, and so are the apps, so long as you confine yourself to the “Top News” section. You can also read articles for free by going in through a side door. Following links from Twitter or Facebook or Reuters.com should never be a problem, unless and until you try to navigate away from the item that was linked to.

Beyond that, $15 per four-week period gives you access to the website and also its smartphone app, while $20 gives you access to the website also its iPad app. But if you want to read the NYT on both your smartphone and your iPad, you’ll need to buy both digital subscriptions separately, and pay an eye-popping $35 every four weeks. That’s $455 a year.

I can’t say I disagree with Salmon’s take: “The message being sent here is weird: that access to the website is worth nothing. Mathematically, if A+B=$15, A+C=$20, and A+B+C=$35, then A=$0.” And I suspect Mike Masnick’s is correct in his belief this plan was spawned by a committee that either lacked or utterly ignored any member who suggested the idea was stupid:

It feels like something that was completely developed by committee group-think. It’s one of those things where they’re sitting around and someone timidly suggests a dumb idea (“I know, for $5 more we take away their smartphone access”) and, because they have to come up with something, someone else says “sure” and then they think there’s validation of a good idea. But there’s no one brave enough in the room to say: “Guys, the newspaper is digital. Charging different amounts based on the hardware is like charging people different prices for listening to the same music on headphones vs. speakers.” But no one did that. And because they had a committee, who kept making bad suggestions like this, and 14-months to keep upping the stupid, they spent over $40 million on it.

The result for me will be that I’ll read the New York Times less than I do now. Whether the newspaper will in fact be hurt by losing page views by readers like me or will make more money than it does now with its content online for free remains to be seen, but something tells me this isn’t the best solution to the world we live in now, one in which newspapers no longer control the means of producing and distributing journalism.

Stay tuned. We’ll see what the New York Times is doing online in a year or two.

Law and education must change since the realities they control and shape have changed.

Changes in reality requires changes in the law, in the ways we practice law, and in the ways we teach. What has been Best hasn’t been Best because it is the Best for all time but, rather, because it has been the Best way we’ve figured out how to do what we want under the circumstances that have faced us. Change the circumstances, and what’s Best changes.

Nothing the RIAA does to enforce the interpretations of copyright laws formed when record companies had a virtual monopoly on producing and distributing recorded music is going to change the inevitable consequences of the fact that the technology to produce and distribute recorded music is now available to any individual with a laptop and an internet connection.

Nothing lawyers scream at their clients is going to change the fact that personal expression is more public and more permanent than ever before. All the insistence in the world on traditional rules regarding the formation of contracts isn’t going to change the fact that applying those rules strictly to the online marketplace is going to create a mess.

And nothing is going to change the fact that my students and my kids spend their time differently than I did and want to use different tools to express themselves than I did.

Realizing my son’s obsessions with things that don’t seem to matter (video games) are not necessarily worse than the ones I grew up with (professional sports) might even help me communicate with him about what creativity is.

Profits in online radio?

I’m always arguing with my father over the fall of the old media — he doesn’t understand how its necessary functions (like reporting on governmental and corporate corruption) will be replaced, especially how they will be paid for. Honestly, I don’t have the answer. I’m left with my old “new technology requires new business models” mantra. So I’m happy to see that Wired News is reporting that Pandora, one of my very favorite things produced by the new media, is expecting to turn a profit next year. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Pandora started including audio ads in addition to banners recently. It is also encouraging to note that is optimistic it will work out a deal to resolve those royalty payments that once threatened to drive Pandora out of business.