國外不少大牌報紙都已經在網站上設置了不同等級的“收費墻”，有些允許讀者每月免費閱讀10篇文章，有些則只許讀者閱讀幾段，想要讀全文就得付費訂閱。付費閱讀會成為網絡閱讀的大趨勢嗎？

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

　　Paywall（收費墻）指阻止非付費訂閱用戶看到網頁內容的一個屏蔽系統。

　　There are both "hard" and "soft" paywalls in use. "Hard" paywalls allow minimal to no access to content without subscription, while "soft" paywalls allow more flexibility in what users can view without subscribing, 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 implementing paywalls on their websites to increase their revenue, which has been diminishing due to a decline in print subscriptions and advertising revenue. (Source: Wikipedia)

　　在具體使用中有“硬”收費墻和“軟”收費墻兩種。“硬”收費墻模式下，非訂閱用戶只能看到最少量的網頁內容，或甚至無法看到網頁內容；而“軟”收費墻模式對用戶可見內容的限制則更加靈活，比如，每月允許用戶查看精選的一些免費內容或免費查看一定數量的文章，或者允許讀者查看某本書的幾頁內容或某篇文章的幾段內容。報紙現在紛紛開始在自家網站設置收費墻，以增加收入。因為訂閱量和廣告收入下降，報紙的收入一直在下滑。