Murdoch: 'The current days of the internet will soon be over.'

As students on tight budgets, it's important to save every penny possible in our three to four years of studying. Most of us use the internet to curve these expenses - some methods more legal than others. The average student has around 800 illegally downloaded tracks on their iPod. However, it seems other businesses are finding ways to force us to cough up the cash on the internet.

Many of you may have found alternatives to save money, such as reading the newspaper online for free as apposed to buying it. But this could radically change next year as the owner of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch says having free newspaper websites online is a 'flawed' business model. News Corp is responsible for 'The Sun', 'News of The World', 'The Times' and 'The Times on Sunday', all of which could be transformed into an online subscription service next year. Many have criticised the plans, saying they'll simply go elsewhere but Billionaire Murdoch is convinced it can fix a 'malfunctioning' business model based on the growing success of the 'Wall Street Journal's' online subscription in the US.

And this isn't our own worry. Thousands of students avoid the TV licence by watching TV online through the BBC iPlayer but Erik Huggers, the corporation's director of future media and technology believes that 'if you are using the iPlayer you have to be a television licence fee payer. I don't believe in a free ride. If you are consuming BBC services then you have to be a licence holder.' At the moment, you only need a TV licence if you're watching channels from a standard living TV set or watching live streams of any of the BBC channels online - pre-recorded content is not included in the licence, which currently costs £139.50.

If these costly plans go ahead, it could spell the end of the free internet we know so well.