The New York Times is finally dropping the steel curtain – tonight at midnight everything on their subscription site, Times Select, will be free to all – including the last 20 years worth of articles! Thus ends one of the long-standing dilemma’s of the Internet, does it make more sense to offer everything for free and pull in money from other sources, or charge users for “premium content” with the occasional sample to whet their appetite? Obviously The New York Times has now chosen the former.

Obviously I and many of my ilk will agree with such a choice, but is it really such a choice, or more of a pre-emptive strike against the downward trend of traditional newspapers? Now I don’t think The New York Times is going to be in danger of going out of business anytime soon, but the fact that they are now openly embracing social sites like Digg and Facebook while now giving away all of their content for free should at least show you that they know going forward it’s going to be a tougher and tougher sell to push paid content on the Internet when so much is available for free.

Now if only ESPN will drop their ridiculous ESPN Insider charge on a site that has more ads than Times Square.