paywall

Amazon.com may be gearing up to start charging for the unlimited video streaming service it now includes free with Amazon Prime. Sound familiar? Of course it does -- just rewind a few months to a summer that Netflix would certainly prefer to forget.

YouTube owner Google is giving the video site a high-class makeover, launching up to 20 premium video channels in a bid to boost revenue. But can a site people think of as the home of laughing babies and funny pets become a destination for web surfers seeking video worth paying for?

We'll look back some day at the first dozen years or so of the Internet as a golden age, when information flowed freely, even information developed at great expense from seminal sources such as The New York Times. Those times are coming to an end if the Gray Lady succeeds with a pay wall plan to...

Chairman Rupert Murdoch was optimistic about the advertising outlook for News Corp., which reported earnings of $875 million. He also called the iPad "a real game-changer in the presentation of news" at the earnings call.

The venerable newsweekly is joining the ever-growing list of outlets saying no to dispensing their content online for free -- or even for money, in some cases. Let's count the ironies here.

The New York Times will soon charge, AT&T is ceasing unlimited data usage for iPhones and not all video will be free on Hulu. It's slowly sinking in that even online, free can't compete with paid and unlimited can't compete with tiered. It's the end of an era.