(The New York Times is beginning a system of charging for full access)

The news that the NYT is imposing charges for access has been up at a variety of web news sites in the past few days, but while this may be a different charging policy, it apparently isn't really new.

A couple of years ago, I made note of a NYT article or two (o.k. maybe two dozen?), for free of course; but when I went back to verify a citation a couple of weeks later I was informed that I had "exceeded my free quota" and would have to purchase a subscription to see another article. The "free access" may have had different limits since then, but I suspect (for absolutely no good reason) that there's always been some limit - and price - on "unlimited" access at NYT.

The new "charges" have been only vaguely reported, but some say you'll still be allowed a limited number of free accesses per month(?) but will need an account if you visit too many times. I may investigate when/if I actually need to get into their stuff, but for now "vague" is clear enough for my needs.

At most web news sites, stories stay up for a limited time, and once they go to archive most publishers have generally required fee payment to recover one. Even with a subscription, there may be additional fees for archived stuff. If the place where you saw it quoted someone else, the site where you saw it may not even have an archive of it. Making notes when the news is new is still a good idea if anything might be of interest later.

John