Szilárd VAJDA's blog

The real democracy available on the Internet it seems to collapse and the money rules over the information. Some newspaper giants like LeMonde, Times, Sunday Times (starting mainly from Rupert Murdoch and his media empire) will charge the readers to get access to the their news. I would say, it is quite a risky move in this news business as nowadays you can get news from everywhere. I am certainly sure more than 90% of the current readers will focus on some other publications.

Probably Google will seize the opportunity to open some new markets in this field because people get used to have the information for free. Nobody will be that stupid to pay for it! Yes, of course somebody should pay those columnists writing those articles but I think the market model considered here will not have any success. It is my personal guess but time will give the final verdict.

Personally, I will never pay for such information. My blog is also for free, I think everybody should contribute to build new content and share that with others. This is the real democracy!

Ps. My research papers are also available online. Of course just a limited community is interested but I will never charge somebody to download my papers available on my institutional website or my private website.