The founder of Wikipedia, Mr Wales, is calling the Times paywall “a foolish experiment"

As the founder Mr Wales has multiple business interests. He's not a journalist who has to rely on his news organisation surviving - newspapers have been in decline for some time.

The free paper model, funded by advertising, has been steadily devaluing news for some time.  Online, the mindset is that news content is free.

The Times is trying to restore its premium positioning.  The catalyst for this is the launch of the iPad. The Times are putting tablets such as the iPad at the centre of their publishing strategy and they've set expectation, right from the start that content on this platform is paid for.

Under these circumstances, a free website would be an anomaly and would undermine the strategy.   

There is value in high quality, accurate journalism and tablets will allow publishers to regain control of their product and generate revenue from the journalism at their core. 

Publishers will need to adapt though, because consumers will expect to see richer, more dynamic content than is on offer currently.

The Times will also need to provide in-depth features and analysisto set them apart from basic news products and justify their premium positioning.

Yes, it's disappointing that the Times pay wall cuts off the social web.

However, the by-product of the pay wall for FT.com is thatit’s allowing the publisher to develop a deeper understanding of their users’behaviour, without contravening their privacy.  The benefit of this is improved targeting ofcontent, news gathering resources and better product development.

The risk is that The Times could lose its reach andtherefore much of its voice in the international, online news market.  However, if consumers see the value in premiumnews content, just as with valuable business information, then the pay wall will succeed.