But here’s the problem for publishers: “The pricepoint has been set in another age: the key thing that will determine people’s concept of value is how much they paid for that same product last time.

“Unfortunately in the magazine B2B environment, we are starting from low pricepoints… In a digital environment, nodody would ever start by saying “I might charge £200 a year, but B2B magazines (prices) have been set in a different time.”

One illustration that intentions can change with the prevailing wind - in November 2008, Emap Inform decided to phase out paid-content online, only to reverse strategy in June 2009.

So can we expect paywalls to be risen across all the company’s content? Answering a question from paidContent:UK, he said: “If you have real sustainable uniqueness of content, then you have the basis of a chargeable environment.”

But he added that while “some B2B content does into fall in to that category”, when it comes to re-written press releases and commodity news, “clearly it’s going to be difficult to introduce charging for that type of content if it’s available elsewhere.”