With the coming of Sun+ next month, where readers will be charged to read the paper online, four national newspaper websites will now be behind a paywall. As of August the Times, FT, Telegraph and Sun will be asking readers to pay for content. Even if the “Digital First” Telegraph’s attempt at keeping out cheapskates is amusingly easy to dodge by going incognito, this means that four of the papers Guido is most likely to link to are now paywall protected. So it is time for a change of linking policy. Guido has previously tended not to link to paywall sites on Seen Elsewhere, using a ‘£’ sign on the rare occasions that links are given. Since so many papers have now succumbed to a paywall this no longer makes sense. So links will now be given to paywall sites as they would non-paywall sites, without a ‘£’ sign. If you are unable to remember if a website is behind a paywall, that is your problem.

Incidentally, it is still Guido’s view that websites without unique content won’t make a success of charging for that content online. The audience is still out on that one…