Purchased and downloaded a book from Wrox this weekend, looks like they're taking the same route. Loved the experience.

If you like the NYT enough to read it, just pay for it.

I don't but if I did I certainly wouldn't pay that much.

A penny an article is fair enough and ensures they actually have to make each and every article worth paying for.

This just screams "old media", we can't innovate.

If they want to establish the fact that their content is worth money, they should actually require a payment to view their content.

They have made it quite clear that they want readers to pay for the content they access. I know, you said "require," which implies that you think they should make it nigh-impossible for you to read without paying. But this is not a legal distinction. They want you to pay. You know this.

they want both SEO juice and to impose a limit on how many free articles you can read. They're going to be forced to come up with a more sophisticated solution to enforce their paywall instead of the half-baked one they have right now.