Well, this is it. It’s finally here. The New York Times just announced their paywall system. Here are the details:

• You can view 20 articles per month free of charge. Once that is passed, you will be asked to subscribe to a package.
• The packages: $15 per month for access to NYTimes.com and a smartphone app, $20 for website access and the paper’s iPad app, or $35 for complete access. Subscribers to The New York Times have complete full access.
• Readers accessing articles through Google – the most common work-around to paywalls – will be cut off after five articles are viewed in one day. However! There appears to be no cap on how many times you can access articles through Twitter or Facebook.

That’s the basics, folks. $180 per year for the Times doesn’t sound too bad, but whether people will pay it or simply tweet the hell out of articles for all to see remains to be seen.

The next year or so is going to be very interesting for the paper.