Rumor has it that The New York Times is disbanding it’s punitive and anti-conversation subrestriction to some content. For content to be valuable, it has to be available. And moreover, it’s value increases the more it is part of a conversation stream.

As Scott Karp writes at Publishing 2.0: “The new economics of media make charging for content nearly impossible because there is always someone else producing similar content for free — even if the free content isn’t ‘as good as’ the paid content by some meaningful metric, it doesn’t matter because there’s so much content of at least proximate quality that the paid content provider has virtually no pricing power. As smart, talented, and insightful as the New York Times columnists behind the paid wall are, the are too many other smart, talented, insightful commentators publishing their thoughts on the Web for free.”

Thanks to GMSV for the story…