I believe strongly that there's a big future for website charges - to think anything else implies information will be worthless forever. So, I think a wholesale dropping of charges is a childish idea.
This kind of decision (Wall St Journal are also doing it) is a kneejerk to not being able to sell much advertising on exisiting paid-for websites. I think there are three main reasons for this - poorly trained and prepared sales teams, poor websites, and low individual page traffic.
The first two, well, I own't bother talking about them here, but the latter ... The two solutions to it would be to stop selling individual page estate, or to enlarge and enliven the free areas of the site - but without cutting out paying altogether. That is, increase the content in the free offering - a half-way house to freeing all content - but retain the must-have material behind a subscription wall.
Giving away your information devalues the relationship between brand and consumer, makes them more likely to switch, and ultimately kills the magazine (usually) that spawned the website in the first place.
This will also leave the media owner dependent on ad revenue. And with us going into a recession, that seems particularly silly. Advertising has been in decline since the 91 recession, and this recession will accelerate that decline.
Media owners should be seeking instead to add value to information so that it's worth people paying more online.