Paywalls 'are an attempt to detonate the entire internet' – Telegraph Blogs

Tuesday 10 December 2013 | Blog Feed | All feeds

Shane Richmond

Shane Richmond is Head of Technology (Editorial) for Telegraph Media Group. He first joined the Telegraph in 1998 and has been Online News Editor and Communities Editor. He writes about all kinds of technology but especially Apple, iOS, ebooks and ereaders, and digital media.

Paywalls 'are an attempt to detonate the entire internet'

In an interesting post Miljenko Williams argues that paywalls, such as the one Rupert Murdoch is proposing for his Times papers, are pernicious because they are against the very fabric of the internet. Furthermore, Williams argues, paywalls have nothing to do with guaranteeing quality journalism:

"They are not interested in funding quality journalism. If they were, they would contribute some of the millions of dollars they currently earn in yearly profits to self-sustaining foundations for quality journalists. That they are more interested in defining political agendas on the backs of their readers' purchases than producing truthsayers to inform a society of the sincere is no secret. Yet this would appear to be one truth that very few in the business are interested in focussing on.

"They are not even interested in something as economically comprehensible as gaining a piece of an existing pie for themselves.

"No. What they really want to do, with this pernicious concept of paywalls, is begin, little by little, to break down everything the Internet has meant up to now. What they really want to do is detonate not how a product works but an entire space. They're not trying to redefine a result. They're aiming to reshape an environment. Hyperlinks depend on an unbound access to freely tell their tales. And what the Murdochs of this world are really trying to do is take away our right to tell our own stories: not only to others but even to ourselves. They want not only to make more money for their cash-hungry and top-heavy organisations, they also want to fundamentally change how the Internet works."

Such is the incompatibility of this business model with the internet that Williams argues that traditional publishers might not be able to survive at all:

"As a parting shot, we can even accuse Murdoch and his ilk of business incompetence. Facebook now has 400 million registered users, is apparently worth billions of dollars and has recreated an immersive experience – perhaps osmotic would be a better way of describing it – without breaking down the freedom to hyperlink and the right to be a producer-consumer. Facebook understands the essence of the Internet and was built for its time.

"If traditional publishing has a future, it most certainly won't be on the Internet as we know it. And that may be precisely where the biggest danger lies."

It's an interesting read and one that I think is mostly right. However, Telegraph readers will probably balk at Williams' assertion that the internet "is the best guarantor of a true socialism of the people that we've had in years". But perhaps that's why Gordon Brown has come out against paywalls.

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