The danger of the wall

The European, a German online news service, asked me to write a commentary for a debate on paid content. Here it is in German. And here's the English text:

I have nothing against charging for content, if you can. After all, I'm selling a book. But I believe building pay walls around online news is a bad business decision.

The discussion about charging for content rises from a sense of entitlement—"we deserve to be paid," which is an emotional argument—rather than from rational economics.

Charg...