A paywall is a system that prevents Internet users from accessing webpage content without a paid subscription¹.

 

Paywall（收费墙）指阻止非付费订阅用户看到网页内容的一个屏蔽系统。

 

There are both "hard" and "soft" paywalls in use. "Hard" paywalls allow minimal² to no access to content without subscription, while "soft" paywalls allow more flexibility³ in what users can view without subscribing⁴, such as selective free content and/or a limited number of articles per month, or the sampling of several pages of a book or paragraphs of an article. Newspapers have been implementing⁵ paywalls on their websites to increase their revenue, which has been diminishing due to a decline in print subscriptions⁶ and advertising⁷ revenue. (Source: Wikipedia)

 

在具体使用中有“硬”收费墙和“软”收费墙两种。“硬”收费墙模式下，非订阅用户只能看到最少量的网页内容，或甚至无法看到网页内容；而“软”收费墙模式对用户可见内容的限制则更加灵活，比如，每月允许用户查看精选的一些免费内容或免费查看一定数量的文章，或者允许读者查看某本书的几页内容或某篇文章的几段内容。报纸现在纷纷开始在自家网站设置收费墙，以增加收入。因为订阅量和广告收入下降，报纸的收入一直在下滑。

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