Digital PayWall

As mentioned in an earlier blog, News Corp's Rupert Murdoch is quite serious about making the Internet pay its own way (as opposed to continue its drain on brick and mortar resources).

A recent Guardian article reports that Mr. Murdoch's campaign is stepping up a notch or two, and that he is now not only firming up his pay-for-content approach, but is also--according to a TechCrunch article--considering blocking Google from indexing the Wall Street Journal (and only making it searchable via Microsoft's Bing search engine).

Now, while I would not want Rupert Murdoch as a father-in-law, I have to side with him in this battle (and believe me, it is a battle; he is drawing fire from bloggers and other commentators: by violating the sacred motto of the Internet: Thou Shall Be Free). Bottom line here, though, whether you pay for it, or not, the Internet content is not free. Someone pays for it, and at this moment, that someone may very well be losing his shirt doing precisely that. This is not fair exchange, and simply cannot last, no matter how many bloggers change the Internet Mantra: Thou Shall Be Free.

There are reports that Mr. Murdoch is also meeting with Microsoft to make his content available only on Bing, which may or may not be a brilliant move.

This, according to another TechCrunch article, which reports that "Microsoft plans to launch an assault on Google's flank, by cosying up to major content providers, especially newspapers that feel hard done by Google News.

"It plans to use Bing as a way to entice them out of the Google eco-system, into one where, increasingly, the content of major newspapers could well be found more often on Bing than on Google."

Once found on Bing, the content will then no longer subscribe to the "Thou Shall Be Free" motto, and you either pay or do not view.

Looks to me like Microsoft is buying traffic from Google, and that may indeed be the only way the might succeed in luring more traffic Bing way.

And it looks to me like the News Corp PayWall might be in place sooner rather than later.

On a similar note, today, the bbc--in another Guardian article--denied any chance of bbc.co.uk ever charging for their content (well, the bbc is mainly funded through mandatory viewer subscriptions, so they can't well charge for the contents twice), so if all else fails, we'll still have access to the bbc.