The Chess Cafe: Behind the Paywall
Wednesday, October 8, 2014 at 11:14PM Several people have written in to ask what I think about the Chess Cafe website's now using a paywall and charging $50 for membership (though with a perq). Here is one such email (name withheld):
I noticed that the new ChessCafe website requires people to pay 50 USD for a membership just to read content that was free earlier. 50 USD seems too high to me.
ChessCafe promises to issue a 50 USD coupon for products in its shop six months after a person joins. I don't know if there's a way to enforce this promise. Would someone pay 50 USD to become a member because one hopes a desire [sic - desired? desirable?] product will be available in the shop more than six months later?
Would you become a member of ChessCafe under these conditions?
There are at least four topics that can be addressed here. First, is a year's membership for the ChessCafe worth it to a "typical" club player? Second, is it worth paying for a website that used to be available for free? Third, what should we think about the $50 coupon offer and its reliability? And fourth, what would - or will - I do? These questions merit a long post or even a series of reasonably long posts, but I will try to be brief.
To the first question, assuming the quality of the upcoming year's posts is on a par with what we've seen the last 18 years or so, then yes. (I don't see any indication that there are only offering access to old material; it certainly looks like they will continue with new material each week, as usual.) A subscription isn't a must - almost nothing in chess publishing is - but they put out a lot of good material, and for readers who didn't look at all the archived material in the days before the paywall it's an even better deal.
To the second question, I don't see why the fact that it used to be available for free should have any relevance. It is psychologically relevant, yes. That I get; in fact, that phenomenon is why I'm no longer doing videos for ChessBase. For four or five years pretty much anyone could watch my shows for free, and then ChessBase decided to change the model to require Premium Membership (which cost money) or for viewers to pay a la carte every show. Some kept on watching under the new conditions, but too many people didn't want to pay for what they had for free for several years, and eventually I had to move on.
In the case of the Chess Cafe, they have expenses. It's not just paying for the domain and the website, but also paying columnists like Mark Dvoretsky and Karsten Mueller for their monthly contributions. I have no idea what the Chess Cafe's costs are, but I'm inclined to think we should feel fortunate to have had free access for 18 years rather than having a negative feeling about the request for pay.
The third question may be slightly troubling. Why only after six months? If we've paid for the whole year, which is the only option offered, then we've paid; the money is out of our pockets or bank accounts and into the Chess Cafe's. It at least suggests that they need cash now, and that in turn makes me wonder what will happen if they don't quickly receive it. Will the site go belly up in less than a year, and if so, will there be pro-rated refunds? That said, my expectation is that even if that worst-case scenario occurs, the site will honor the $50 coupon. Still, the delay strikes me as strange.
And now to the last question: will I dive in and purchase a membership? At this point, the answer is no - but that's because I'm already unable to keep up with the deluge of material, free and purchased, that comes across the transom on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. It's not because I'm worried about the site's solvency or think poorly of its quality; in fact, up through the last month I saved all the Dvoretsky and Mueller columns in PDF format to my computer. If I had made it through all of them by now, then I probably would sign up! There's just too much information out there, so unless one is a full-time chess player or money isn't an object then it's necessary to pick and choose, and for the moment I'm going to stick to the tons of material I already subscribe to. But I wouldn't discourage anyone from signing up on the Chess Cafe website.
Reader Comments (5)
The ChessCafe website has always had some excellent content. So, in gratitude, I had ordered my chess books and software from them for many years. But about two years ago, things changed. The service was slower, the quality of the packaging declined and sometimes books were damaged, and in one case, they failed to notify me that a product was backordered, and then there were multiple delays, and then they never notified me that it had finally shipped. When I wrote to complain about this, I got no response. So, I haven't ordered from them since, and have absolutely no intention of sending them any of my money. Personally, I think the place is going belly-up; as you point out, it's the only logical explanation for their behavior.
With regard to the ChessCafe.com redesign: we find it a reasonable proposition that those who enjoy reading the content at ChessCafe support the site with a purchase from our shop. The reason for the reimbursement of the membership fee after six months is to reward long term members, and discourage those who would only sign up to get a coupon and then cancel.
[DM: Mark, I appreciate your writing in to clarify that. But why not give out the coupon and disallow the cancellation? (Alternatively, you can make receipt or first use of the coupon grounds for making the subscription permanent for the year.)]
Maybe another question to ask is will free sites such as yourself and others like the Chess Drum start to charge membership?
You have a great site along with the Kenworthian Blog (which recently shut down) and TWIC (which was free at one time).
[DM: TWIC is still free, but hasn't offered access to all the archives in a long, long time. But you can get all the current material and the last two years' worth of TWIC for free, as always.]
I am grateful for access to chess sites that provide up to date information, book reviews, etc. Dr. Shabazz (Chess Drum) spends alot of his time doing work on the site in addition to his academic work. I am concerned that the "average player" will be shut out and only the well to do can afford membership to Chess.com, TWIC, Chess24, ChessBase, ICC, etc. Websites are not free, I understand this. Your thoughts on this?
[DM: I'm rather confused by your list. Except for ICC, which isn't a news site by a playing zone with some lecture content, the rest are free or have a significant component of free material. TWIC is completely free, while plenty of news is available for free on Chess.com, Chess24 and ChessBase. I believe one can also play for free on the Chess24 site. These sites have premium content as well, but it's only part of their offerings.
What do I think about it? Well, we're putting in a lot of time and effort and often our own money into all of this, and we the content providers are not well-to-do. (Certainly this one isn't.) If some readers would chip in a little every once in a while it would be appreciated, but while they sometimes do it's rather rare overall. So we have a choice: either ads or some sort of for-pay deal. I myself loathe ads, both aesthetically and as one more violation of my privacy and that of my readers, and for the bigger sites that revenue would hardly be worth their while. So I don't really see what other choice there is for someone who wants at least some recompense for his time and effort. If the readers don't want to pay, or can't, that's fine - they don't have to. But realize too that the content providers may have to roll up show and move on.]
In my opinion the most important question has not been mentioned in your post:
Is it legally correct to use the maybe copyrighted content of authors who contributed their work for noncommercial usage from now on to earn money with it?
Is this the reason why the great checkpoint is no longer from Mr. carsten hansen?
I see possibly a couple of problems that might arise here.
best regards from germany and btw i do not pay for what used to be available for fee in the past.
[DM: A funny juxtaposition. Perhaps it is precisely so that he can afford to pay the authors, or to pay them what they are worth, that he is instituted the paywall in the first place? I hear you though about the old material. In fact, it's an issue for me, as there are places I used to do videos for but don't any longer, and the status of that old material is in question.]
"I myself loathe ads, both aesthetically and as one more violation of my privacy and that of my readers, and for the bigger sites that revenue would hardly be worth their while."
Goodhumor, solutions now exist to combat websites that use ads. It's called AdBlock. (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom?hl=en) Just viewing this particular page, AdBlock removed 2 ads. My latest install of the program has been on my PC for 3 months and thus far it has prevented me from being annoyed by 73,383 pop ups (video or plain), banner ads with or without music/animation, etc, etc. You can even download a specific version for YouTube to get rid of those extremely annoying "Subscribe to me!" banners. Thanks to AdBlock I can finally fight back against all the intrusive advertising campaigns individuals and companies put on their websites - AND THE PROGRAM IS FREE!
As for the topic at hand, $50 just to access the site is ridiculous. If they offered a reasonable amount of free content and charged a reasonable price to access other parts of the site (and were worth paying for and not available for free elsewhere), that would make much more sense. But apparently chesscafe decided to shoot themselves in the foot, and won't be a relevant place for people to go to anymore - Not when other, more thrifty and better-minded websites offer everything for free, either in one website or in the use of multiple sites.
[DM: I'm more sympathetic, as they offered everything for free for something like 10-15 years, and there was a lot of really great material there. I don't think $50 is ridiculous in its own right, but because it had been free most readers probably felt entitled in a way they wouldn't had the site made the same offer as a start-up.]