As a self-interested blogger (but I repeat myself; I do that often, because I am so quotable) I think this is a marvelous innovation. It guarantees that in future blogs will only link to other blogs instead of those useless, snobbish, unreciprocation-giving, link-retentive bastards at the mainstream media.
It's like those stories you read of some dude who gets pissed off at his wife and cuts his penis off. Yeah, that'll show HER!
Of course trying to make hyperlinking illegal is silly. But I disagree, Hamilton, that the bigger problem here isn't a serious one.
What we need to save is not so much newspapers, per se, but professional news organizations that hire reporters (which traditionally have mostly been newspapers, and to a lesser extent, broadcast news orgs). Whether these news companies distribute their news on paper, or via broadcast media or the Web isn't the point. The point is, we DO need news companies to pay reporters. And giving away news free on the internet is a very bad thing, because the companies the produce this news will not have the money to pay reporters.
If we don't have enough professional reporters out there, we're all gonna be a lot worse off for it, believe me. Somebody needs to pay reporters to come up with good, investigative news - to go after government/police abuse or corruption, for example, or corporate manipulation of our government. Without good, paid journalists, this stuff is not gonna be exposed enough. "Free-blogging" won't substitute.
You young-uns who have been living in this "Web news" world your whole young-adult lives thing the "news fairy" will just keep reporting the news we need reported. But as you get older, you learn that not only is there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny; there's no news fairy either.
@MisterHippity: The main point of my long-winded diatribe being: News companies need to CHARGE for their product on the Web. They need to find a way to make that work, and they need to stop undermining each other with free content.
@MisterHippity: Yes. Whether or not it is printed on a piece of paper, news gathering is not free. The demise of local papers in my state has definitely impacted how closely they are keeping track of what goes on at the state house. I never understand the glee some people seem to feel at the trouble of the newspaper industry. Certainly they created their own problems by not adapting quickly enough, but if there were an obvious solution someone probably would have found it sooner.
@MisterHippity: Wrong. You're thinking in a 19th century broadcast mindset, where owning and operating a printing press was not only difficult but expensive. So access to publications required vetting to allow only the most relevant stories be printed. Now, everyone can broadcast, whistle-blowers have dozens of outlets, and the newspaper is irrelevant by the time the evening edition comes out. News is free! It's what happens while you're doing other stuff. Journalism is over-priced and often biased... we're sick of it. Now instead of the Times, I can get dozens of viewpoints on the same news item for free. RIP to the 'broadcasters' (print included).
@foofybunny: Disagree totally. What is NOT free is good reporting. Sure, any idiot can post something on the Web, but do I trust that source? How do I know they have their facts straight, or that they aren't lying to me to serve some other agenda? Also, if the quality of the writing sucks, I'm not gonna read it. You need a reputable news source, and people good enough to get their facts straight and write well. You don't get that from most of the "free" information sources (unless they've lifted it from some work a paid journalist did). You need to pay people to get that kind of quality.
There is some information, to be sure, that is now a free commodity and once was available only through newspapers. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the information that takes work -- and professional skill -- to gather and present in a high-quality way, from a trusted source.
I think what bothers me the most about this is that Richard Posner is a US Appeals Court Judge, and he seems to be coming out in favor of the most amazingly stupid internet-related idea I've ever heard. I don't understand how, after finishing his piece, he didn't look back at it and say, "Wait...wait a minute. This is completely retarded."
@braak: You understand that Posner is like the Peter North of bad ideas, right? He can pump 'em out at an enormous rate and there's always someone idiot willing to take them right in the face and brag about how great they are.
Any institution that has actively fought against technological progress on sentimental and ideological grounds has perished. See GM for more details. And I hope Mr Posner also tries his best to save the poor sad little VHS tape industry too.
Whatever. I am so board of the Gawker empire's voice on this. Unless something changes (online CPM increases, publishers charge for content) then there won't be publishers with authority. Whether you like it or not, the Gawker Empire needs primary sources (publishers with authority) to excerpt or quote or link too and you're beginning to look as disrespectful of creators as Google.
@Mike_Hartley: Banning links is a stupid way to address the problem of intellectual property being given away for free online. The problem is not some stupid xml tag.
@Wrapitup: Who cares whether banning links is a good or bad idea (I'd be surprised if it is). I just think the Gawker Empire's voice is starting to look dumb on the topic of online publishing and how to make money, and I like the Empire because its clever. It's not lowest common denominator, which is where we are all headed right now. The Empire is part of a system that includes newspapers, without them, it has no relevance.
Posner is nuts. Free-flowing info is one of the enlightened things that makes the US of A one of the most progressive countries in the world, dorkmeister. Plus, you fail at US history: Revisit the age of revolutionary pamphleteers, they stole info from each other like gangbusters, egged each other on, fulminated and polemic-ated (yes, that's not a verb, but stick with me) until the cows came home. Nothing new here, buttercup. We wuz founded on these principles, by men much smarter than you and I.
This POLITICIAN sittin' and legistlatin' off the bench doesn't get it.
As a professional scribbler, I object and loudly boo at his proposal.
@snugbug: Before addressing anyone as "dorkmeister," you might also want to have a look into another pillar of US of A innovation and progress: Intellectual-property law. These questions are not as easily disposed of as you think they are.
@skahammer: Madam/Sir, am deeply familiar with the concept of intellectual property and how it has developed and evolved through the ages. The point I was making--which is kinda broad, alright, but that's the way I wish it to be--is that in the US, freedom of expression always trumps freedom of private ownership. I didn't write the Constitution, it's just the way it is in our country. There's a reason why the First Amendment was numbered as such.. I also think it's fundamentally wise and enlightened to prioritize as such.
@snugbug: in the US, freedom of expression always trumps freedom of private ownership
If this is your reading of the history of US copyright law (and the Constitution), then I suggest you're not "deeply familiar" with any of it. In fact your comments call into question whether you know what "copyright" is at all. Because private owners of copyrights frequently defeat defendants who claim a constitutional right to "freedom of expression," and in many areas the copyright-holders' position is actually getting stronger as time passes.
A narrow-copyright position is one worth defending, and can be advocated in many ways. I suggest that you'll be a much better advocate for it if you refrain from making completely nonsensical assertions about US law.
And come on, phrases like "Posner is nuts" and "dorkmeister" and "You fail at US history" just demonstrate that you haven't even tried to grapple with the tough questions here. Judge Posner's conjecture here is an entirely valid and necessary step in reasoning toward a legal conclusion. These are hard questions that deserve careful analysis of the alternatives -- and I'll bet most "professional scribblers" would agree.
Well, Hammie, you aren't creating "news" most of the time. Most of the time you are summarizing and getting snarky. That being the case, then come up with some ideas. Ideas for allowing the news to continue is what they need. The endowment idea makes sense, but has its own problems. I love you Ham, but stop bitching if your response is "I should just be able to summarize your stuff. /pout!" That might be fun now, but wait until the real journalist stop going to Iraq reporting on what you later summarize for the commenters to snark about.
@rockandhardPL: I think Hamilton's point was that, irrespective of his own role as a Gawker writer, trying to block links on the Internet is a ridiculous idea because it's absolutely unfeasible on so many levels.
@Moff:That is not how it is written. It is written in a more "Newspapers are Screwed Anyway" kind of tone which permiates everything he writes. And I get it. But ideas much?
@rockandhardPL: The point is that Posner is suggesting that ANYONE-- not just big aggregators, but every single person who writes anything-- would need permission even to "paraphrase" a news story. Which seems to me to be a scary level of censorship, not that I'm a lawyer. If you're interested in the various ideas about saving newspapers you can see:
@rockandhardPL: Also Hamilton 'Iron Teddybear' Nolan goes by the street name of HamNo. 'Hammie' is too reminiscent of a Prohibition-era Southern biscuit-making cheery matron with a snot-nosed baby on her hip.
Hmm, sounds like interesting articles you're referencing here. Too bad I can't read them -- I'm sure they're on the Internet somewhere, but I have no idea how to find them.
@contains_hot_liquid: It's been tried, and so far, the demand has been lacking. Contrary to popular belief, it seems like the demand for local and regional content isn't great enough (or the supply usually isn't of a high enough quality) to get readers to go through even the minimal hassle of entering their credit card number and then logging in when they want to read the news. And the demand for national and world news is ably met, at no cost to the reader, by Yahoo and Google et al.
@Moff: At least, this is my understanding. Obviously, because I am an Internet commenter, I'm hypothesizing and talking a little out of my ass instead of providing hard evidence.
@Moff: But it seems like the times they've tried, the subscription requirements have been limited to only a section of the paper... the Times' "Play," for instance, or when they charged for their OpEd pieces...
@contains_hot_liquid: Most people not only won't pay to read something on the Internet, they won't even register and sign in to read something when it's free. (The New York Times tried this for a while, but gave it up.)
@contains_hot_liquid: The argument against it is that as long as there is one single news outlet that *doesn't* charge, nobody will pay for those that do. Everybody will just flock to the free source. It's then suicidal for the rest who are trying to charge.
There has been talk of all the news orgs banding together and instituting fees collectively, but nothing much has come of it yet and it's not clear that it would be legal if it happened. (Anti-trust laws and whatnot.)
The WSJ is really the one newspaper that's been able to do it, and lots of other, dumber newspapers look at them and say "if they can do it, why not us?" but they don't realize that what the WSJ offers is unique and highly specialized content that nobody else does and that directly makes their subscribers money. $50 or $60 is nothing to pay for something that you can directly credit with being responsible for $10,000 or $100,000 or $1 million in investment gains per year.
That's not going to be the case for the NY Post or whatever.
@badasscat: The collusion argument is the primary one, I guess. My thinking was that the papers could institute a universal access fee, a subscription debited once a month that would allow a browser to go wherever they liked.
@contains_hot_liquid: I assume they're nervous because, if people weren't willing to pay for some of the content, there's that possibility that if the Times, for example, says readers have to pay for all of the content, readers might decide they could live without the Times.
On the other hand, it might work. But as others here point out, no one wants to be first to try it. Which is weird to me -- if you know for sure the end is coming, why not try the crazy remedy? I suppose because they don't want to risk losing money, and because, no matter how apparent it seems to the rest of us that newspapers are on their way to extinction, the fourth estate in this country has not exactly been noted for its handle on reality of late.
@Moff: Yes, that's what it looks like to me. I was hoping there was something more complicated about it than that.
It reminds me of the city government here in Kansas City; so much doesn't get accomplished because of petty things - it's a system maintained by people who have been marginally rewarded for adhering to it, and they are either unwilling or incapable of understanding how to go about changing it.
But sooner or later it will change. And when they haven't anticipated the coming change, they will be left behind.
I suppose it goes without saying that I'm been unemployed for months.
@contains_hot_liquid: Isn't it also partly that it's hard to "claim" things on the Internet? So if NYTimes posts something, a bunch of bloggers with subscriptions take it and post it on their sites, then no one else has to read it at the source. Everyone reads the copied version on some blog, and it's they who profit from the traffic. In a nutshell, it's easy, it seems, to undermine subscription. Until, that is, there is some sort of functioning regulation or policing of the Internet and its copyrights etc.
@MoscowNeverSleeps: A bunch of bloggers can't "post" the NYtimes content verbatim on their sites legally. They'd be violating copyright law. They can paraphrase it, but I'd rather read the original wording from the NYT reporter, thank you very much - not some blogger's re-wording of the same info.
The bloggers can link to the NYT, but that's were the money comes in. If the information source has pay-wall up, bloggers can't just link to it and give their readers the info that way.
So you can "claim things" on the internet through a combination of copyright law (to prevent wholesale copying of content) and charging for content (to prevent free linking to info).
07/02/09
In fact, I'd even go see the sequel, Brett Ratner's Galaga.
07/02/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
It's like those stories you read of some dude who gets pissed off at his wife and cuts his penis off. Yeah, that'll show HER!
07/01/09
What we need to save is not so much newspapers, per se, but professional news organizations that hire reporters (which traditionally have mostly been newspapers, and to a lesser extent, broadcast news orgs). Whether these news companies distribute their news on paper, or via broadcast media or the Web isn't the point. The point is, we DO need news companies to pay reporters. And giving away news free on the internet is a very bad thing, because the companies the produce this news will not have the money to pay reporters.
If we don't have enough professional reporters out there, we're all gonna be a lot worse off for it, believe me. Somebody needs to pay reporters to come up with good, investigative news - to go after government/police abuse or corruption, for example, or corporate manipulation of our government. Without good, paid journalists, this stuff is not gonna be exposed enough. "Free-blogging" won't substitute.
You young-uns who have been living in this "Web news" world your whole young-adult lives thing the "news fairy" will just keep reporting the news we need reported. But as you get older, you learn that not only is there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny; there's no news fairy either.
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
Or am I *really* pretending ...?
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
There is some information, to be sure, that is now a free commodity and once was available only through newspapers. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the information that takes work -- and professional skill -- to gather and present in a high-quality way, from a trusted source.
07/02/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
You are really starting to suck.
07/01/09
07/02/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
This POLITICIAN sittin' and legistlatin' off the bench doesn't get it.
As a professional scribbler, I object and loudly boo at his proposal.
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
If this is your reading of the history of US copyright law (and the Constitution), then I suggest you're not "deeply familiar" with any of it. In fact your comments call into question whether you know what "copyright" is at all. Because private owners of copyrights frequently defeat defendants who claim a constitutional right to "freedom of expression," and in many areas the copyright-holders' position is actually getting stronger as time passes.
A narrow-copyright position is one worth defending, and can be advocated in many ways. I suggest that you'll be a much better advocate for it if you refrain from making completely nonsensical assertions about US law.
And come on, phrases like "Posner is nuts" and "dorkmeister" and "You fail at US history" just demonstrate that you haven't even tried to grapple with the tough questions here. Judge Posner's conjecture here is an entirely valid and necessary step in reasoning toward a legal conclusion. These are hard questions that deserve careful analysis of the alternatives -- and I'll bet most "professional scribblers" would agree.
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
[gawker.com]
and
[gawker.com]
For starters. But really if anyone had a brilliant idea to save newspapers, it would already be happening.
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
Why don't the papers just start charging subscriptions for their online content? I'd pay $5 a month, if the alternative was no access.
Is there an argument against this?
07/01/09
Then when other sites link to it, the link-clickers get a message stating they need to register to view the content.
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
07/01/09
There has been talk of all the news orgs banding together and instituting fees collectively, but nothing much has come of it yet and it's not clear that it would be legal if it happened. (Anti-trust laws and whatnot.)
The WSJ is really the one newspaper that's been able to do it, and lots of other, dumber newspapers look at them and say "if they can do it, why not us?" but they don't realize that what the WSJ offers is unique and highly specialized content that nobody else does and that directly makes their subscribers money. $50 or $60 is nothing to pay for something that you can directly credit with being responsible for $10,000 or $100,000 or $1 million in investment gains per year.
That's not going to be the case for the NY Post or whatever.
07/01/09
07/01/09
On the other hand, it might work. But as others here point out, no one wants to be first to try it. Which is weird to me -- if you know for sure the end is coming, why not try the crazy remedy? I suppose because they don't want to risk losing money, and because, no matter how apparent it seems to the rest of us that newspapers are on their way to extinction, the fourth estate in this country has not exactly been noted for its handle on reality of late.
07/01/09
It reminds me of the city government here in Kansas City; so much doesn't get accomplished because of petty things - it's a system maintained by people who have been marginally rewarded for adhering to it, and they are either unwilling or incapable of understanding how to go about changing it.
But sooner or later it will change. And when they haven't anticipated the coming change, they will be left behind.
I suppose it goes without saying that I'm been unemployed for months.
07/01/09
07/01/09
The bloggers can link to the NYT, but that's were the money comes in. If the information source has pay-wall up, bloggers can't just link to it and give their readers the info that way.
So you can "claim things" on the internet through a combination of copyright law (to prevent wholesale copying of content) and charging for content (to prevent free linking to info).