Leave it to John Gruber to express everything I wanted to say in a post I didn't get around to finishing about the NYT's "pay fence" plan, only smarter and in more depth.

I'd add only my worry that because this pricing scheme is so convoluted, and so optimized around taxing the top whatever-percent of heavy users while letting casual readers continue using the website for free, when this strategy eventually fails it won't be immediately obvious, and the NYT will waste valuable time waiting to see if this works when they really need to try something new.