Tim Kevan, a barrister and author of blog BabyBarista, is no fan of plans by U.K. newspapers The Times and The Sunday Times to place their content behind a pay wall, according to paidContent:UK.

Kevan pulled BabyBarista off The Times, saying, as reported by paidContent:UK:

Now don’t get me wrong. I have absolutely no problem with the decision to start charging. They can do what they like. But I didn’t start this blog for it to be the exclusive preserve of a limited few subscribers.

I wrote it to entertain whosoever wishes to read it, hence my decision to resign, which I made with regret. I remain extremely grateful to The Times for hosting the blog for the last three years and wish them luck with their experiment.

However, in a later post on BabyBarista, Kevan went on to shred the decision to implement a pay wall, writing:

My resignation from The Times set out in the post below has understandably caused further debate in the blogsphere as to the rights and wrongs of its decision to erect a paywall around its content and charge admission to its members-only club. When I resigned, I deliberately didn’t want to mix up my own view on The Times‘ action with a genuine sense of gratitude for their having hosted the blog for three years. However, that point now having been made, I’d add that I think the decision will prove to be a disaster. There are so many innovative ways of making cash online, and the decision to plump for an across-the-board blanket subscription over the whole of their content makes them look like a big lumbering giant, unable to cope with the diversification of the media brought about by online content, blogging, Facebook, Twitter — the list is endless. Canute-like in their determination to stop the tide of free content and using a top-down strategy makes even the Post Office look dynamic.

A more sophisticated approach might have been to keep the existing platform and content free but to start charging for different types of premium versions such as iPhone or iPad apps or more in-depth and specialist content. This would have maintained the all-important traffic whilst at the same time allowing them to charge those who had no problem with paying. This looks like the direction in which The Guardian is headed and seems eminently sensible, particularly as it also keeps flexibility at each stage of the new experiment.

Speaking of which, perhaps an even bigger casualty of The Times‘ decision than the newspaper as a whole may well be the Law Section, which, until recently, has been in my view the No. 1 place for legal news in the country. However, The Guardian has recently launched a Law Section that very clearly lays siege to that position. With The Times disappearing from public view, the inevitable reduction in traffic that will follow it leaves an obvious gap in the market and makes The Guardian‘s timing seem particularly opportune.