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It’s a decade-old debate: should professional media charge users for quality journalism, or has the explosion of information available on the Web so obliterated information “scarcity” that only ad models are sustainable? At DPAC4 in New York yesterday, Steven Brill, a principal in Journalism Online, LLC, squared off with Mike Linksvayer, VP of Creative Commons, in what turned out to be a much more nuanced conversation than a “debate.” Brill made clear that his platform, allegedly the choice of more than 1,200 magazine and newspaper publishers, will launch within “a few weeks to a couple of months,” but said that the transition from free to paid won’t be as immediate as anyone suspects.

Publishers have given content away for years, Brill said; beginning to ask some 10 percent or more of loyal users to carry the cost of a more focused kind of journalism will be gradual. Publishers will continue to offer some promotional copy for free, but will begin to erect barriers for users after reading a certain number of articles, or perhaps a certain amount of time per day.

Creative Commons provides a means for publishers to establish rules for commercial use of content that’s published in the clear. Because it’s more than a means of “licensing” content but also of finding content that wants to be free, there will always be more content than hours in the day, setting publishers who want to charge for their content up for a very tough sell, Linksvayer said.