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MURDOCH: 'WE PLAN TO CHARGE FOR ALL OF OUR NEWS SITES'... 'WE WILL START CHARGING FOR FOXNEWS.COM'... Q. WILL YOU SHUT DOWN ANY OF YOUR NEWSPAPERS?' A. 'ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE... BUT NO PLANS FOR IT' FOXNEWS PROFIT 50% HIGHER THAN LAST YEAR... VERY HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR NEW JAMES CAMERON FILM...

States across the U.S. have been taking a harder line against an old problem -- cigarette smuggling -- as part of the widening search for solutions to their budget problems. States including Florida, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island and Virginia this year have stepped up law-enforcement efforts with the aim of recouping taxes lost to bootleg cigarette sales. Studies indicate states are losing about $5 billion annually in tax revenue because of illegal tobacco sales, said Phil Awe, who heads the tobacco-diversion division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "We do not want to have our...

"We all know that The New York Times and other papers have been thinking hard about finding ways to charge readers for the news on their web sites, and there’s evidence that the decision-making process is moving along. Bloomberg has reported that a survey of print subscribers included this sentence: The New York Times website, nytimes.com, is considering charging a monthly fee of $5.00 to access its content, including all its articles, blogs and multimedia. It also asked about a $2.50-a-month “discounted fee” for print subscribers....."

The New York Times has sent a survey to its print subscribers asking them how much they would pay for access to its website. From Bloomberg New York Times Co. said in a survey of print subscribers that it’s considering a $5 monthly fee for access to its namesake newspaper’s Web site. Times Co. also asked whether subscribers would be willing to pay a discounted fee of $2.50 a month for access to the site, in the poll confirmed today by Catherine Mathis, a company spokeswoman. Nytimes.com, the most visited among newspapers’ sites, is currently free. Times Co. is contemplating...

The New York Times is testing a price point of $5 a month for access to nytimes.com, with a 50 percent discount for print subscribers. The Times e-mailed a survey to print subscribers Thursday afternoon inviting their reaction to that pricing plan and asking a range of questions about online pricing. NYT survey A portion of the Times' survey on charging for access to its Web site. (Click image for larger version.) New York Times Co. spokeswoman Catherine Mathis confirmed in a telephone interview that the Times had sent the survey, but said no timetable has been set for a...

The visit last month was particularly significant as it was his first trip since the New York Times and IHT websites were merged to a single global product. The tie-up in March served as a precursor to a key decision in August on how best to charge for access to the group's websites, reversing an earlier decision not to, and becoming the first major non-financial newspaper group to take the step. The move comes as the advertising downturn proves particularly challenging for the listed group, which has seen its market value fall 65pc to $707m (£438m) in the past year....

It has been a bad week for gun owners in Tennessee, but the taxpayers lucked out when a proposal to tax online purchases when the retailer advertised through an instate company, website or blogger, stalled. Check to see if your state is considering an eTax.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-read-the-wsj-for-free-online-2009-6Check out the link______________________Other than the Denver Post, which got all the Rocky Mountain News subscribers when that paper shuttered, The Wall Street Journal is the only newspaper in the top 25 to add to its circulation this year.And though this turn of events probably has as much to do with subscription discounting as anything, everyone likes to say the Journal is adding subscribers at least in part because it's erected a paywall online. We've even come out and said the troubled New York Times should follow the Journal's lead.But all solutions have their problems, and it'd be unfair...

Here's a story the newspaper industry's upper echelon apparently kept from its anxious newsrooms: A discreet Thursday meeting in Chicago about their future. "Models to Monetize Content" is the subject of a gathering at a hotel which is actually located in drab and sterile suburban Rosemont, Illinois; slabs of concrete, exhibition halls and mostly chain restaurants, whose prime reason for being is O'Hare International Airport. It's perfect for quickie, in-and-out conclaves. There's no mention on its website but the Newspaper Association of America, the industry trade group, has assembled top executives of the New York Times, Gannett, E. W. Scripps,...

Home furnishing giant Ikea has launched legal proceedings over the rights to the domain name iloveikea.se, a site which currently specializes in selling used Ikea furniture. The site, which is modeled after the popular Swedish buy-and-sell site blocket.se, has been operating for about a month. Ikea has now asked the Internet Infrastructure Foundation (Stiftelsen för internetinfrastruktur), the body responsible for registering domain names ending in ‘.se’, to help resolve the dispute over iloveikea.se, claiming the site infringes on the Ikea brand. “It’s obvious that a visitor to a homepage with the description iloveikea as the impression that it is the...

News Corp plans to introduce micro-payments for individual articles and premium subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal's website this year in a milestone in the news industry's race to find better online business models. "A sophisticated micropayments service" will launch this autumn, Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of the Journal, told the Financial Times. The move will position the Journal as the first big newspaper title to adopt a model many are studying cautiously as they seek to reduce dependence on plunging advertising revenues. It comes as John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator leading congressional hearings on...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – As US newspapers shrivel up and die, an unlikely figure is emerging as their potential savior: News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch. The much-villified Australian-born media tycoon is preparing to battle against the practice many hold largely responsible for newspapers' current plight -- the "original sin" of giving away their content for free online. The 78-year-old Murdoch announced this week that the days of free are over. He said he planned to begin charging readers of the websites of News Corp. newspapers "within the next 12 months," testing the scheme "first on some of our stronger ones. "We...

Many states are looking for ways to increase their tax revenue by taxing purchases made online. This extends to third party solicitors located in another state. Our Constitution infers that states are restricted from enacting laws that burden or restrict interstate commerce. Let’s stop this tax now.

If you're planning a major purchase via the Internet, you might want to do it quickly. Congress is expected to introduce a bill this week that would require Amazon.com, L.L. Bean, Cabela's and other online merchants to collect sales tax on all online purchases and return that money to the state in which the purchaser resides. Online Sales Tax?Tony Avelar, AP12 photos Congress will soon introduce a bill requiring sales tax on all online purchases. To read the latest on credit card changes, click through our gallery.(Note: Please disable your pop-up blocker) I was recently shopping for a TV for...

Leave it to a Massachusetts politician to get taxes completely wrong. U.S. Rep. Bill Delahunt is soon expected to reintroduce the Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) bill, a federal mandate for collecting local sales taxes on interstate purchases. You buy organic Oreos from Oregon or moose meat from Montana, and Massachusetts sales taxes would track you across the Internet. Supporters argue it’s unfair to make traditional “brick-and-mortar” businesses collect our state’s 5 percent (for the moment) sales tax while a shop next door can sell the same item online tax-free. They’re right. Every business should be treated the same. What’s wrong...

congress and Obama have their eyes on the Internet to help fund more government spending. Congress is expected to introduce a bill this week that would require Amazon.com, L.L. Bean, eBay, Cabela’s and other online merchants to collect sales tax on all online purchases and return that money to the state in which the purchaser resides. The new bill rewrites the ground rules for mail order and Internet sales by eliminating what its supporters view as a “loophole” that, in many cases, allows Americans to shop over the Internet without paying sales taxes. Currently, Americans who shop over the Internet...

Friday, April 17, 2009 Print ShareThisThe free ride may soon be over. For the past decade and a half, most Internet shoppers haven't been forced to pay sales tax while buying goods online. But now, according to CNet News, an alliance of "brick-and-mortar" retailers and state governments has teamed up to end that — and they've crafted federal legislation that may be introduced in Congress as early as next week. Previous attempts in past years to do so have flopped.

If a little-known but influential alliance of state politicians, large retailers, and tax collectors have their way, the days of tax-free Internet shopping may be nearly over. A bill expected to be introduced in the U.S. Congress as early as Monday would rewrite the ground rules for mail order and Internet sales by eliminating what its supporters view as a "loophole" that, in many cases, allows Americans to shop over the Internet without paying sales taxes. Currently, Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state vendors aren't always required to pay sales taxes at the time of purchase. Californians buying...

The feds are taxing tobacco yet again. They say this is about getting people to quit, but we all know better. If smokers quit smoking where would the money for all those liberal social experiments come from? Tell DC to puff off, and put out your stinky cigarette, cigar, or pipe. E-cigs, the future of nicotine addicts :) All the nicotine and none of the cancer causing tars and chemicals. Pick your flavor: apple, coffee, Red Bull, etc. "Smoke" anywhere! No ashtrays, no lighters, no stink! I ordered mine two days ago, and I can't WAIT to get it. I'll...

BERLIN--A key piece of Internet technology that banks, e-commerce sites, and financial institutions rely on to keep transactions safe suffers from a serious security vulnerability, an international team of researchers announced on Tuesday. They demonstrated how to forge security certificates used by secure Web sites, a process that would allow a sufficiently sophisticated criminal to fool the built-in verification methods used by all modern Web browsers--without the user being alerted that anything was amiss. The problem is unlikely to affect most Internet users in the near future because taking advantage of the vulnerability requires discovering some techniques that are not...