They're a newspaper that charges customers to read it, which means they need to limit access to their services for people who haven't paid. Which means they need a way to distinguish paying users from non-paying ones. Which means that they have to have some idea who you are when you access their services, so they can tell which services you should have access to and which you shouldn't.
It's funny, you never see anyone arguing that Netflix is under some kind of obligation to let everyone watch their programming anonymously for free.
When they claimed it was necessary to support the service. It’s absolutely not. Newspaper ads are not targeted.
Anyway ads in any form still produce perverse incentives for a supposedly journalistic entity—I don’t know how anyone can read a newspaper that takes ad money and consider it unbiased.
>It's funny, you never see anyone arguing that Netflix is under some kind of obligation to let everyone watch their programming anonymously for free.
That's because we don't bother talking about it, it just gets done. Why waste time on a trivial situation? Instead, talk about the NYT which is an important cultural institution. Plus I can read a free copy at my local library, or at NYPL, anonymously.
> Plus I can read a free copy at my local library, or at NYPL, anonymously.
Now that would be an innovation: libraries providing access to commercial streaming-media services, through your library membership. Much like they provide access to scientific-journal subscriptions, or e-book services.
With the proliferation of different streaming services, it almost seems like an inevitability.
It's funny, you never see anyone arguing that Netflix is under some kind of obligation to let everyone watch their programming anonymously for free.