I don't understand how you make the jump from "I want to support this company" to "everyone should be forced to support this company".  If you want to support them, there are ways you can do it currently, so if you really want to support them than you would have done it already.  Are you saying that you want them to be supported, but you want other people to shoulder the cost?<p>I think charging or not for their services is definitely the NYTimes's prerogative.  That doesn't mean that it's a good choice.  Personally, I think it's a bad choice, because they're going to alienate some of their most loyal readers.  I, too, wish that the neswpapers could find a sustainable way to remain profitable, but I don't think this is it.  But if there is no sustainable way, I guess that means that newspapers actually aren't as valuable to us as we like to think, because otherwise we'd be willing to pay for it.