21st: Piracy on the Web seas

Will Slate be able to fend off the Web's password pirates?

By Andrew Leonard

Mar 9, 1998 | The portcullis slams down today at Slate. Henceforth, readers of the Web magazine who haven't paid their $19.95-a-year subscription fee will smack their eyeballs against the bane of Web surfing -- a dialog box demanding a password.

Media observers, on- and offline, are scrutinizing the fallout from this bold move with great curiosity. Is this the future of Web publishing or the beginning of the end? While pundits speculate on the grander meaning of Slate's decision, the Microsoft-owned magazine -- like every other Web site that's tried to close its doors and charge for access -- now faces some eminently practical questions: How long will it be before Slate passwords fall into the greedy hands of password "sneakers," "leechers" and "traders"? How long before they become just another listing publicly posted on the Web's renegade "free password" sites? In short, how will Slate defend itself against the scourge of the Net -- the dreaded password pirates?

As a service to our colleagues at Slate, Salon decided to find out. Password theft is no laughing matter. As Juliet Lowrie, director of operations for Adult Check, a "verification services" specialist, warns, a site that posts free passwords "can annihilate somebody."

To be frank, it's not all that likely that password pirates are lusting after Slate's punditry -- all they really want is free porn. Slate can look to the example of the Wall Street Journal's Interactive Edition and breath easy -- WSJ executives say they haven't had any significant problems with password piracy.

But Slate would be wise not to relax overmuch. The evolution of Web publishing business models has hardly begun, and controlling access is bound to become increasingly problematic. Developments in the online sex biz often foreshadow what's coming to the mainstream -- and over the past year, the trading and sale of passwords has entirely reshaped the sex-site economic food chain. Like a malign virus, rampant password piracy may soon spread out of the sex-site underworld and into the "legitimate" economy. Even if it doesn't, there are still plenty of lessons to be learned from an excursion into those shady byways.

Next Page: Surfer aphrodisiacs and subsidized piracy

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