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PRONUNCIATION:
(PAY-wal)
MEANING:
noun: A system of restricting access to online content or services, making them accessible only upon payment.
ETYMOLOGY:
A combination of pay + wall. From Latin pacare (appease), from pax (peace) and vallum (rampart), from vallus (stake). Earliest documented use: 2004.
NOTES:
Here at Wordsmith.org, everything we publish and all of our services are openly accessible, made possible by the support of our readers. In the weekly AWADmail we include a section “Interesting Stories from the Net”. While some of the stories are behind paywalls, with each story we include a permalink that has an archived copy. We encourage you to support newspapers, such as The Guardian, that keep their material openly available.
USAGE:
“The squalid predation of many for-profit colleges. Georgia’s preposterous decision to put its legal code behind a private paywall. The examples demonstrate that private engagement, poorly managed, can indeed undermine public goods and services.”
John D. Donahue; Is It Unwise to Privatize?; The Washington Monthly; Nov/Dec 2021.
“Publishing behind paywalls is immoral.”
Mike Taylor; Hiding Your Research Behind a Paywall Is Immoral; The Guardian (London, UK); Jan 17, 2013.
A federal judge has ordered all internet service providers in the united states to block three pirate streaming services operated via Doe defendants who never appeared in court and hid…