Copyright and NY Times Editorials
Reading the final chapter in Vaidhyanathan's book and thinking a bit more about Lessig's speech got me thinking about how these topics affect blogs in particular. In my opinion, blogs have their greatest use in being a place where information from different sources can be synthesized. Bloggers will never be able to pursue a single story to the lengths that a Sy Hersch can, but they can look at reporting from several different sources and combine it in a way that makes a new and valuable point.
But what if the news sources stopped allowing bloggers to reference their sites? Certainly they'll never have a problem with blogs simply linking to their web pages, but what about excerpts? Most of the time excerpts are kept to at most a few paragraphs, and--like showing a clip from an interview that was conducted on another network or referencing a quote that showed up in a competing newspaper--this is probably considered fair use. But what about subscription sites?
Currently, the Wall Street Journal restricts their online news content to subscribers only, and the New York Times is about to do the same with their editorial page content. In the WSJ's case, they probably don't mind seeing a paragraph or two of a news item on their site showing up elsewhere (it would probably make buying a subscription seem more attractive to a reader, as she can see what she's missing), but it will be interested to see if the NYT takes the same approach.
The amount of content that will be offered under their new subscription system will actually be quite low, just a few articles a day. Considering that I'd probably be interested only in Krugman's and Rich's columns, and a conservative might just want to read what Brooks and that new hack Tierney have to say, that's just 3-4 articles a week. In such a case, seeing the juiciest paragraphs from these few articles excerpted on a blog might alleviate the need to pay $40 a year or whatever it will be to read the whole articles. Therefore, might the NYT crack down on excerpts--much less full articles--being posted on blogs? Certainly seems like they might.
If so, it would truly be a shame (of course, I think the entire idea of setting up a pay wall is pretty lame in the first place). Blogs are a medium that creates real political value for the country, and much of that is based on using copyrighted content as a springboard to explore new ideas. Some may belittle blogs' contribution or decry the rank partisanship that infuses most of these sites, but I think their net contribution to our political system is positive. This contribution moves even further into the black when existing ideas can be expanded upon, and restricting the content that can be excerpted would certainly diminish this. So let's hope the NYT continues to allow fair use excerpts; if not, it could be the first step in closing a promising new avenue for increased civic participation.
But what if the news sources stopped allowing bloggers to reference their sites? Certainly they'll never have a problem with blogs simply linking to their web pages, but what about excerpts? Most of the time excerpts are kept to at most a few paragraphs, and--like showing a clip from an interview that was conducted on another network or referencing a quote that showed up in a competing newspaper--this is probably considered fair use. But what about subscription sites?
Currently, the Wall Street Journal restricts their online news content to subscribers only, and the New York Times is about to do the same with their editorial page content. In the WSJ's case, they probably don't mind seeing a paragraph or two of a news item on their site showing up elsewhere (it would probably make buying a subscription seem more attractive to a reader, as she can see what she's missing), but it will be interested to see if the NYT takes the same approach.
The amount of content that will be offered under their new subscription system will actually be quite low, just a few articles a day. Considering that I'd probably be interested only in Krugman's and Rich's columns, and a conservative might just want to read what Brooks and that new hack Tierney have to say, that's just 3-4 articles a week. In such a case, seeing the juiciest paragraphs from these few articles excerpted on a blog might alleviate the need to pay $40 a year or whatever it will be to read the whole articles. Therefore, might the NYT crack down on excerpts--much less full articles--being posted on blogs? Certainly seems like they might.
If so, it would truly be a shame (of course, I think the entire idea of setting up a pay wall is pretty lame in the first place). Blogs are a medium that creates real political value for the country, and much of that is based on using copyrighted content as a springboard to explore new ideas. Some may belittle blogs' contribution or decry the rank partisanship that infuses most of these sites, but I think their net contribution to our political system is positive. This contribution moves even further into the black when existing ideas can be expanded upon, and restricting the content that can be excerpted would certainly diminish this. So let's hope the NYT continues to allow fair use excerpts; if not, it could be the first step in closing a promising new avenue for increased civic participation.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home