Time magazine is restricting online access to its latest edition to users who subcribe either in print or via the iPad.
Visitors to Time.com can access relatively little content from the latest edition of the magazine, dated 12 July, with sections including letters to the editor behind the paywall.
Clicking on almost any story that comes from the magazine leads to a message: "The following is an abridged version of an article that appears in the July 12, 2010 print and iPad editions of TIME."
Most of Time.com's extensive web-only content remains free, but this message appears on all content from the print edition of the magazine. Time's digital iPad edition costs $4.99 (£3.30).
The jury is out on whether the new strategy, spotted by Joshua Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab, is an experiment or part of a long term plan. Benton refers to it as a "paywall without a door" strategy, as there appears to be no way for users online to pay for access.
Peter Kafka, at All Things Digital, said that he "wouldn't be surprised" if the Time Warner-owned title "is going to stick with the strategy for a while".
Last summer Ann Moore, the chief executive of Time Inc, sent a message to employees explaining that the company needed to work out "How to Put the [digital] Genie Back Into the Bottle".
"It's increasingly clear that finding the right digital business model is crucial for the future of our business," she Moore at the time. "We need to develop a strategy for the portable digital world and to refine our views on paid content."
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