It is both. Surely the business are responsible for coming up with a model. Similarly the community is responsible for setting rules so that community members have their needs met.

You can ban sandwich shops in your city, and there wont be a viable model for sandwich shops.

> You can ban sandwich shops in your city, and there wont be a viable model for sandwich shops.

No one banned sandwich shops (or paywalled newspapers) in this context, though.

The problem is that some "sandwich shops" wants to give out free samples (i.e. keeping paywall open for bots and other clients that don't run js), because they know it's good for business, and then complain that people are taking free samples.

Well... if this "handing out free samples" approach is not working out for them, it is up to them (and not everyone else) to figure out something that works for them.

If not enough people are willing to pay full-price for their (I assume) high-quality sandwhiches, and much rather source their sandwhiches from somewhere else (if there are no free samples to be had), that's not anyone's problem but their own.

You're making it seem like there is some regulamentory issue that prevents them from having/deploying a successful business model, when that's not the case: the problem is something else.

I agree that regulation was a bad example. I think a more accurate example is that consumers want high quality content, but dont want to pay and don't want advertising either.

Consumers saying come up with a business plan that gives me want for free in return for nothing are in for disappointment

I don't necessarily disagree with what you are saying. But, when the price of ignoring the problem for the consumer is "disappointment", rather than "bankrupcy", it still seems to me that it is not consumers that should be particularly worried.

As a consumer, I am more interested in avoiding my disappointment, than their bankruptcy. I also understand that there are some problems that can not be solved by business alone, some will require changing consumer attitudes.

In this case the business is proving the general public with information. Which is of great concern for all of us living in society, it has an influence on what people know and think.

TIL that the only way to provide information to the general public was via paywalled news sites.

Another user asked but failed to get a reply. What should they do instead?

The old business model failed when people stopped buying physical newspaper copies and this is what they came up with. It was unpopular from the start and lead to many papers struggling, so I'm sure they've thought about alternatives harder than the average social media user. I'm all ears in case you have a good idea though. Remember the goal is getting money to pay the journalists and other expenses.