If it takes 120 seconds to read a newspaper article, the archive.is workflow is a significant overhead over that, a significant friction. Those links are a courtesy to other HN readers. This is very different from the economics of buying and reading a book.
"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem."
edit: It didn't even occur to me to compare the time-cost of "just pay for the article", but: last I read, it's half an hour of work to cancel a New York Times subscription [0]. So, that option's not even on the table.
> edit: It didn't even occur to me to compare the time-cost of "just pay for the article", but: last I read, it's half an hour of work to cancel a New York Times subscription [0]. So, that option's not even on the table.
I canceled mine two weeks ago. It was four clicks. One annoyed me because they tried to get me to stay with an offer, but I didn't drop them because of the price.
"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem."
edit: It didn't even occur to me to compare the time-cost of "just pay for the article", but: last I read, it's half an hour of work to cancel a New York Times subscription [0]. So, that option's not even on the table.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26174269 ("Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it", 812 comments)