Slovenian Digital Media Paywalled

January 16, 2012 by Free Concord
Filed under: Court, Free Concord, Free Press, International, News

In the eastern European nation of Slovenia earlier today, a paywall was erected engrossing many of the most prolific digital media distributors. Piano Media, a Slovakian paywall service corporation, has convinced nine publishers and twelve websites to adopt a shared paywall, which will cost subscribers €2 for a weekly pass.

The model for Piano’s cartelization of media is similar to that of television subscriptions. At present, more people are abandoning cable and satellite live programming for the boundless information frontier provided by the internet. Few subscription services have fared well in the purge caused by the internet, with a notable exception being the growth seen by Netflix. Piano’s model divides subscription profits with the companies participating in the paywall, giving 70% of the revenue to media distributors and keeping thirty cents on the dollar for itself. It measures traffic among clients and based on where more traffic is channeled, Piano compensates the company.

Delo, Slovenia’s largest publication, plans to put about 10% of its content behind the wall, keeping the remaining content free so as to keep constant its web traffic. In Slovakia, media giant SME has approximately 5% of its content paywalled at the moment.

It was last April that the Slovakian paywall was launched by Piano, about the same time that our hometown newspaper’s website was paywalled off. In the first nation to see its media restricted restricted en mass this way, marketplace isolation aided the endeavor in being sustainable. With limited resources in the formerly communist republic, and the Slovak language spoken only in that region, incorporating so many of the nation’s publications into the project cornered the market, and gave consumers no alternative. Similarly, paywalling the major Slovene language publications corners that nation’s market.

Such a mass paywall project has potential in the United States, but with such diverse market variety in English language media, the more comprehensive paywall project emerging in eastern Europe would be less likely to catch on here. Paywalls in the United States have most often been limited to individual publications, not networks of media distributors. Though many major cities’ newsprints are owned by a handful of companies, it is possible that a coordinated paywalling effort would result in the potentially illegal sharing of copyrighted newsprint. There’s even market potential, if such a restriction was to be imposed on this very computer literate market, for the business of interpreting paywalled information. Based off of the sheer traffic a free site will get with similar content to a paywalled site, a business could copy all of the major stories from behind paywalls and change just enough detail so as not to tread the murky waters of copyright infringement. Only with state-imposed copyright restrictions may we see such a concept as a bootleg newspaper.

Extradition over copying

Richard O’Dwyer, a resident of the UK who has never before been on US soil, is being extradited by the ‘royal’ government to the US to face charges that he linked through his website to copyrighted material hosted on other websites. In three years, he allegedly made $230,000 in advertising revenue through his site and used the funds for his college tuition.

This post originally appeared at freeconcord.org.

enslave keene

Richard O’Dwyer, a resident of the UK who has never before been on US soil, is being extradited by the ‘royal’ government to the US to face charges that he linked through his website to copyrighted material hosted on other websites. In three years, he allegedly made $230,000 in advertising revenue through his site and used the funds for his college tuition

GOOD! Why doea he get to steal?
pablokoh

@ enslave

How much will I be forced to pay to punish this guy to defend the profits of government connected companies?
http://propagandalalaland.blogspot.com/ Julia

Just a correction: Slovenia and Slovakia are used interchangeably here when they're two different states. Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia; Slovakia was the other half of Czechoslovakia. So: Slovenia = Slovenian; Slovakia = Slovakian. A lot of people get confused though.
name

Julia, a lot of people get confused with the ramblings here, thinking they might be true or have some basis in reality.

Correction, a few people. There aren't really too many people on this site. Mainly just Keene locals who want those in freekeene to go back to from where they came. Or at least out of here.
david

Freekeene folk should stay right where they are….
http://capitalismsmash.blogspot.com/ SMASH CAPITALISM

I hate the words CAPITAL and INVESTMENT. The repubtards were using them in the debate, i only watched then for a few minutes and then shut it off, i wanted to punch the TV. I wish you could kill words
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Chris Wiggett

Personally I do not support the whole paywall concept, the benefit of individual services even if you pay for it is that you decide on the content you want. Paywalling sounds a bit like PAYTV where you have to take the package containing a couple of services you want and many you don't.
theKINGofKEENE

Just wait until Ian-that-Ian figures out what a "paywall" is…

How much $$$ would *YOU*PAY* to see this shit?

But, extradicting the guy is way, way, way wrong…

Funny how FK is doing *NOTHING* about

"SOPA". and "ProtectIP"…

And NH's own Kelly "KILLER" Ayotte supports them BOTH…

Repub-tard bitches are scary…