AOL to Announce New Focus on Taxing Confused Internet Users

Perhaps I am missing something, but to me AOL is a company that sends me lots of plastic and paper in an attempt to get me to spend $20 a month for slow internet access guarded by a minefield of advertising. (I don’t know if they’re still doing it, but you used to have to click “no thanks” just to get started.)

Why then, does AOL think that they can charge high-speed users $15 a month simply for access to their “content”? I don’t know what they have to offer, but I can’t imagine that it’s worth anywhere close to $15 a month. AOL would have to pay me to get me on their website. People have been discussing paid content for a long time, and I’ve noticed a few magazines that require payment for access to older articles. Still, outside of porn, the only content for which most people are willing to pay comes through a cathode tube, a newsstand, a book store, or a movie theatre - not the internet.

Conceivably, pure stupidity alone will enable AOL to survive: “Perhaps as many as half of the roughly four million people who get access to AOL through a high-speed connection do it by continuing to pay $23.95 for their subscription to AOL over a phone line even after they pay someone else $40 a month for high-speed access, effectively overpaying.” Someone should tell these people!