A paywall is a system that prevents Internet users from accessing webpage content without a paid subscription.

Paywall（收费墙）指阻止非付费订阅用户看到网页内容的一个屏蔽系统。

There are both "hard" and "soft" paywalls in use. "Hard" paywalls allow minimal to no access to content without subscription, while "soft" paywalls allow more flexibility in what users can view without subscribing, such as selective free content and/or a limited number of articles per month, or the sampling of several pages of a book or paragraphs of an article. Newspapers have been implementing paywalls on their websites to increase their revenue, which has been diminishing due to a decline in print subscriptions and advertising revenue. (Source: Wikipedia)

在具体使用中有“硬”收费墙和“软”收费墙两种。“硬”收费墙模式下，非订阅用户只能看到最少量的网页内容，或甚至无法看到网页内容；而“软”收费墙模式对用户可见内容的限制则更加灵活，比如，每月允许用户查看精选的一些免费内容或免费查看一定数量的文章，或者允许读者查看某本书的几页内容或某篇文章的几段内容。报纸现在纷纷开始在自家网站设置收费墙，以增加收入。因为订阅量和广告收入下降，报纸的收入一直在下滑。