[flatline]

They want you to pay to see their content but they don't want to force you to pay for reasonably small or occasional usage. They have not implemented an onerous system that some simple hacks can't get around and I'm assuming that they know this. It seems like they've carefully weighed the trade-offs between pissing off users and getting people to pay - I'm looking forward to seeing how this works out for them. My guess is that it is, as you imply, doomed to failure, but perhaps will be made up for by selling content via more closed channels (ipad, etc.)