Today, LABallTalk.com reports Kobe Bryant’s official Web site is now charging users $49.95 for premium content on the site. (Though, this appears to be somewhat old news.) Daniel Sagal, who penned the entry for the  LABallTalk, is none too enthused, titling the post “Kobe’s People Have Lost Their Minds” and saying “his people have taken it too far.” Matt Moore of FanHouse isn’t too much of a fan (house) about it either, but wrote a well-thought-out, balanced post on the subject, bringing in a range of opinions from his fellow bloggers. Anyway, here are the particulars for the subscription:

* An exclusive KB24 T-Shirt
* Access to exclusive content including videos, audio and photos
* Members-only access to exclusive contests.
* Access to exclusive KB24 events
* Access to member only messageboards, blogs, social network
* Exclusive access to KB24 events (chat/blogs/live video/listening party, meet & greets etc).
* Much More.

Though Sagal is certainly warranted to get a bit incensed about the site’s new price, (especially because he was a registered member before and was able to get most of this stuff for free before) there are plenty of places to get Kobe Bryant videos, and to talk Kobe Bryant online. If you have a connection to the Internet and a keyboard, you should be OK.

And heck: I suppose an argument can be made that if one was already all up on Kobe’s site and that much of a fanboy, one might be quite inclined to pay $50 for a t-shirt and exclusive access to events, on top of everything I was already getting. At a bit more than $4 a month, I wouldn’t quite call that pricey. It’s a dollar a week, pretty much.

Further here, and something the FanHousers brought up: Kobe Bryant is a business. This may piss off his hardcore fans, but some, perhaps many of them, will pay for it. And Kobe and his peeps will benefit in the wallet.

However, I’m left wondering if this type of subscription model can work going forward online. Though there are still a good amount of places — ESPN, for instance — that have premium parts of its site set up, people don’t expect to have to pay for any sort of news/information online nowadays. The New York Times dropped Times Select back in 2007. Paid sites, such as the Rivals and Scout Networks don’t have quite the handle on college athletic news dissemination like they used to. People can go other places for free.

Newspapers that have a subscription model set up on their own site are only hurting itself; why lose out on all the page views and in turn, advertising revenue you could be garnering from people searching thing out all across the Web?

If you want to get all hot and bothered about Kobe Bryant charging for message boards on his site, go right ahead. But, there’s plenty of other places to talk about Kobe Bryant on the Internet. For free. Go there instead, Web consumers.

You’ll be lighter of pocket for it.