Irish newspapers demand money for linking

KyussBishop

There's a thread on this here in After Hours as well:
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056844687&page=2

Here is a blog post from McGarr Solicitors on this, who represent some clients faced with these demands:

...
This year the Irish newspaper industry asserted, first tentatively and then without any equivocation, that links -just bare links [...]- belonged to them. They said that they had the right to be paid to be linked to. They said they had the right to set the rates for those links, as they had set rates in the past for other forms of licensing of their intellectual property. And then they started a campaign to lobby for unauthorised linking to be outlawed.

These assertions were not merely academic positions. The Newspaper Industry (all these newspapers) had its agent write out demanding money. They wrote to Women’s Aid, (amongst others) who became our clients when they received letters, emails and phone calls asserting that they needed to buy a licence because they had linked to articles in newspapers carrying positive stories about their fundraising efforts.
These are the prices for linking they were supplied with:

1 – 5 €300.00
6 – 10 €500.00
11 – 15 €700.00
16 – 25 €950.00
26 – 50 €1,350.00
50 + Negotiable

They were quite clear in their demands. They told Women’s Aid “a licence is required to link directly to an online article even without uploading any of the content directly onto your own website.”
...

http://www.mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2012/12/30/2012-the-year-irish-newspapers-tried-to-destroy-the-web/

I haven't read any Irish newspapers in years, because just about all of them are subservient rags (without any real investigative journalism), but this is a rather extreme leap of stupidity for these newspapers; they are trying to make themselves relevant in the online world, to transition towards online publishing, and in doing it like this, they are going to singlehandedly destroy their readership.

This is one of the most idiotic things they could try and do; no matter what way it ends, it's guaranteed to hurt them, and in the process they are creating a serious threat to a free, uncensored internet.


If anything, news/journalist organizations should be one of the few groups trying to protect the Internet from censorship-enabling acts like allowing restrictions on linking, because it affects their very livelihood going into the future.

This, combined with Sherlock's SI last year, and more and more grumbling about cracking down on Internet trolls by removing online anonymity, in the wake of recent cyberbullying suicides, and the constant potential for frivolous libel suits in Ireland, makes me think an increasing government and corporate power-grab over the Internet is inevitable in Ireland; it seems very likely to me that we're going to see increasing Internet censorship and restrictions, in various forms, over the coming years, which threaten net neutrality, free speech and anonymity on the Internet.


This is the list of newspapers involved:

Irish Independent
Irish Examiner
The Irish Times
Irish Daily Star
Evening Herald
The Sunday Independent
Sunday World
The Sunday Business Post
Irish Mail on Sunday
Irish Farmers Journal
Irish Daily Mail
Irish Daily Mirror
Irish Sun
Irish Sunday Mirror
The Sunday Times
Irish Sun Sunday

KyussBishop

As others in the After Hours thread note as well, the website the newspapers took action against for linking (and demanded money from), Womens Aid is a charity website, dedicated to support regarding domestic abuse.

Perhaps people should petition Google/Facebook/Bing/Twitter etc. to remove all links to these newspapers websites, since by linking them, they are obviously violating the papers desire to not be linked?

Mr.Micro

The newspaper is almost dead and gone that is what the problem is. Most people get their news online now and newspapers are out of date as they are printed. The print industry is trying to play catch up now and get money where ever.

KyussBishop

Yea it's hilarious that this does just exactly the opposite, pushing people away from their site, potentially leading to their delisting from Google even, with nobody visiting the site.

A good Slashdot comment:

Get rich quick
Their next scheme: billboards covered with giant tarps. You have to pay them to unroll the tarp and show you the ad. Brilliant!

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/01/02/2056208/that-link-you-just-posted-could-cost-you-300-euros

FTA69

Mr.Micro wrote: »

The newspaper is almost dead and gone that is what the problem is. Most people get their news online now and newspapers are out of date as they are printed. The print industry is trying to play catch up now and get money where ever.

True, many of the most popular print newspapers now run on a completely loss-making basis. The Guardian for instance, loses a fortune, and Sky-owned Red Tops like the The Sun are printed below cost. Even the printed book is now seeing a rapid demise due to the popularity of online-reading on devices such as Kindles etc. The fact is, as you mentioned, is that most people nowadays have internet access; a situation different from even 10 years ago and as such news is available instantly at a click of a button. Even before the explosion of the internet we saw the proliferation of satellite TV and the various 24-hour news sites that come with it.

Scofflaw

KyussBishop wrote: »

As others in the After Hours thread note as well, the website the newspapers took action against for linking (and demanded money from), Womens Aid is a charity website, dedicated to support regarding domestic abuse.

Perhaps people should petition Google/Facebook/Bing/Twitter etc. to remove all links to these newspapers websites, since by linking them, they are obviously violating the papers desire to not be linked?

As far as I know, the NNI sent the demand letter to a lot of companies. Women's Aid were ones who responded through McGarr's pro bono representation, but other recipients will have either ignored the letter or paid up for a quiet life, and the latter will have made it worth the mailshot for newspapers, who are very much at the clutching at straws stage of financial desperation.

cordially,
Scofflaw

KyussBishop

Ya that's a good point; with the SI and the music industry in Ireland as well, they are trying to censor around 260 (I think) websites, and we have no idea what those websites are either (except for The Pirate Bay).

Too much of a lack of transparency with this stuff, and with websites open to frivolous litigation over links alone, it creates an automatic chilling effect, where any website without the money to defend itself, is open to de-facto censorship imposed by a third party (or is subject to total censorship if the SI is used, without due process or the opportunity to defend themselves, if from another country and unable to represent themselves here).

John_C

Can they not just block the site from visitors arriving from external links? That'd save them having to send out these letters.

GSF

Mr.Micro wrote: »

Most people get their news online now

Lifted from other sources usually.

VinLieger

John_C wrote: »

Can they not just block the site from visitors arriving from external links? That'd save them having to send out these letters.

You miss the point entirely they still want these visitors but they just want people who send people to their site to pay for the privilege of doing so, as without visitors to the site their ad revenue goes through the floor.

Basically they want to have their cake and eat it too

John_C

VinLieger wrote: »

You miss the point entirely they still want these visitors but they just want people who send people to their site to pay for the privilege of doing so, as without visitors to the site their ad revenue goes through the floor.

But there's a flip side to their position. If they want other sites to pay for the links, doesn't it follow that they want to block links which haven't paid?
They certainly seem to be saying that in their letter to the Women's Refuge: "It is the view of NLI that a link to copyright material does constitute infringement of copyright."

It's a bit of a contradiction in my mind. They're sending out legal letters and submissions to the government demanding that the links be removed when they could very simply block the links themselves.

VinLieger

John_C wrote: »

But there's a flip side to their position. If they want other sites to pay for the links, doesn't it follow that they want to block links which haven't paid?
They certainly seem to be saying that in their letter to the Women's Refuge: "It is the view of NLI that a link to copyright material does constitute infringement of copyright."

It's a bit of a contradiction in my mind. They're sending out legal letters and submissions to the government demanding that the links be removed when they could very simply block the links themselves.

Exactly it shows a complete lack of understanding of how the internet functions which explains they're failing business models

timbyr

John_C wrote: »

But there's a flip side to their position. If they want other sites to pay for the links, doesn't it follow that they want to block links which haven't paid?
They certainly seem to be saying that in their letter to the Women's Refuge: "It is the view of NLI that a link to copyright material does constitute infringement of copyright."

It's a bit of a contradiction in my mind. They're sending out legal letters and submissions to the government demanding that the links be removed when they could very simply block the links themselves.

Well they can't really. Links are a basic function of the web. There is no simple way to block them as you've no idea of the originating site without an extra referral mechanism that isn't a native part of linking.

The real point here is that have decided to reinterpret one of the foundations of the technology to suit themselves apparently without any real legal basis, just a "view".

Frankly if I received such an email I would have assumed it was a scam and passed the information onto a relevant authority.

The Corinthian

I hadn't realized quite how desperate the Irish print media had become.

Newspapers, and other print media, are dying. They can't compete with the time sensitivity of current events on the Web, let alone with the fact that the information is easily and freely available through a horde of indie news sites and bloggers.

Faced with collapsing print circulations, the first step was going pay-for-view. I remember when the IT did this a decade ago, the CTO of another national paper telling me that they were going to adopt a 'wait and see' approach to how this went. Given the lack of other papers going down this road, it appears that it didn't really pay dividends, or enough of them.

Subsequently, we've seen numerous experiments, using everything from advertising to premium rate SMS. Many publications have stopped printing altogether (Newsweek most recently) and simply gone digital in an effort to cut costs. Some of these, such as Rupert Murdoch's The Daily, closing down because even there the subscription model simply didn't work.

Personally, I get the impression that - especially in Ireland - those driving business strategy in the print media don't really know what they're doing. The thing that gets me is that even without inventing new revenue models, advertising as proved immensely profitable on the Web when properly implemented - why can't they even get this right?

My guess is that the papers in Ireland are probably going to continue scrambling for revenue in all the wrong places, wasting time and resources as they do so. Eventually some will begin to go digital-only, and largely fail after a few years, or just choose to close down rather than attempt that final attempt at profitability.

hardCopy

So we're not allowed post excerpts because it affects the papers website traffic and now we're not allowed link to them at all?

Shower of gobsheens. Are they really stupid enough to think that I'll buy a newspaper because I can't get a link to the article?

Maybe boards should start blocking all links to NNI member sites, see how they like that.

Valmont

KyussBishop wrote: »

...makes me think an increasing government and corporate power-grab over the Internet is inevitable in Ireland; it seems very likely to me that we're going to see increasing Internet censorship and restrictions, in various forms, over the coming years, which threaten net neutrality, free speech and anonymity on the Internet.

Careful, KyussBishop, you're starting to sound like a libertarian!

John_C

timbyr wrote: »

Well they can't really. Links are a basic function of the web. There is no simple way to block them as you've no idea of the originating site without an extra referral mechanism that isn't a native part of linking.

It's probably a side point overall but I don't think this is correct. If you follow a link to a page, the request for the page will include the details of any link you followed.

The point I'm making is that the papers don't seem to agree with their own policy. They could block these links if they wanted to so they must have some other motivation for sending out legal letters demanding that they be blocked.

The Corinthian

hardCopy wrote: »

So we're not allowed post excerpts because it affects the papers website traffic and now we're not allowed link to them at all?

All it means is that people will quote short excerpts from the articles, citing them, without a link. Quite legal unless the papers want to stop this practice themselves, which I doubt.

VinLieger

John_C wrote: »

It's probably a side point overall but I don't think this is correct. If you follow a link to a page, the request for the page will include the details of any link you followed.

The point I'm making is that the papers don't seem to agree with their own policy. They could block these links if they wanted to so they must have some other motivation for sending out legal letters demanding that they be blocked.

But they arent demanding they be blocked just that the sites linking to them cough up for the privilege, thats the backward logic here, if they didnt want to be linked to they could easily perform such a fucntion instead they just want money

Chips Lovell

They're not demanding people don't link to them. They're demanding that they get paid when they do.

John_C

VinLieger wrote: »

But they arent demanding they be blocked just that the sites linking to them cough up for the privilege, thats the backward logic here, if they didnt want to be linked to they could easily perform such a fucntion instead they just want money

The policy is such nonsense I feel a bit silly even debating it. But, if we take their arguments at face value, asking sites to pay for links implies that they want to block sites which haven't paid. No-one's going to pay for a link if they can put it up for free. They said as much in their letter to the women's refuge and their submission to government. That the link itself is their copyright and no-one can use it without their permission.

Chips Lovell

Oh it's utterly daft alright. But, from what they've been saying, they aren't going to block sites, they're just going to send them a bill.

VinLieger

John_C wrote: »

The policy is such nonsense I feel a bit silly even debating it. But, if we take their arguments at face value, asking sites to pay for links implies that they want to block sites which haven't paid. No-one's going to pay for a link if they can put it up for free. They said as much in their letter to the women's refuge and their submission to government. That the link itself is their copyright and no-one can use it without their permission.

No they arent gonna block those sites they are going to eventually sue them as they are pushing for their viewpoint on this to become law

John_C

VinLieger wrote: »

No they arent gonna block those sites they are going to eventually sue them as they are pushing for their viewpoint on this to become law

That's where things don't add up for me. They're calling for a law against linking to their website without permission when they could easily set that up without a change in law.
There's some other motivation behind this, I don't know what it is but the policy doesn't make sense on its own.

KyussBishop

Valmont wrote: »

Careful, KyussBishop, you're starting to sound like a libertarian!

Heh, well when it comes to the Internet it's about the one thing I am quite libertarian about, when it comes to actual data transmitted; at the same time though, it might end up difficult to preserve net neutrality going into the future (e.g. prevent ISP's offering websites preferential treatment, if paid, and crippling other websites), without some regulations.

Chips Lovell

John_C wrote: »

That's where things don't add up for me. They're calling for a law against linking to their website without permission when they could easily set that up without a change in law.
There's some other motivation behind this, I don't know what it is but the policy doesn't make sense on its own.

They're not calling for a law. They're claiming the law as it exists currently supports their position. And they're not saying people should get permission. They're saying people should pay when they link.

John_C

Vladimir Kurtains wrote: »

They're saying people should pay when they link.

And presumably not link if they haven't paid.

circadian

Crazy move. Anyone with half a brain would have a small team dedicated to developing and maintaining apps for every device you can think of. Then charging a reasonable subscription fee for full article access, made seamless by apps as well as desktop access.

PickledLime

John_C wrote: »

That's where things don't add up for me. They're calling for a law against linking to their website without permission when they could easily set that up without a change in law.
There's some other motivation behind this, I don't know what it is but the policy doesn't make sense on its own.

Quite an easy one, it's a slimy, underhand way to make an easy money grab. I'm eager to hear about them going after some internet giant for linking them. Don't think that'll happen as they'll get clobbered, so there's bully boy tactics going on here too, real charming.

I hope that Google, Bing etc. do remove them from their searches, let's see how long the advertisers stick around with virtually zero traffic.

As someone in the other thread said, we should all go and post links to the various comments sections to the other papers!

Chips Lovell

Yes, but blocking doesn't come into it.

VinLieger

John_C wrote: »

And presumably not link if they haven't paid.

NO how arent you getting this? They WANT people to link otherwise they lose ad revenue they just want people to pay for linking, they cant stop people doing it but if they get they're way they can force people to pay

John_C

VinLieger wrote: »

NO how arent you getting this? They WANT people to link otherwise they lose ad revenue they just want people to pay for linking, they cant stop people doing it but if they get they're way they can force people to pay

But most sites aren't going to pay 300 euro to put up a link to an article. If the papers managed to force other sites to pay for these links, nearly all of the links would be removed.
That's why I think there's some other motivation behind this.

VinLieger

John_C wrote: »

But most sites aren't going to pay 300 euro to put up a link to an article. If the papers managed to force other sites to pay for these links, nearly all of the links would be removed.
That's why I think there's some other motivation behind this.

Nope they honestly are just that stupid, this **** has been going on all year with traditional Irish media constantly whinging about bloggers, social media and twitter not being "real" journalism and putting them out of a job

dahamsta

I think the funniest thing about this is that they're confirming quite how far behind the rest of the world they are, since this nonsense played out in the USA years and years ago.

The labels and studios almost up to the minute in comparison to the Irish print news media. It's the new media people charged with dealing with this crap I feel sorry for, because they ain't driving it.

Redshift

Like a fish out of water old media having lost its monopoly on information distribution is desperately thrashing about looking for a way to survive in the new media world. Like the fish I suspect they haven't the ability to adapt before the new environment kills them. The old ways don't work any more and if you don't find your niche and move with the times you are dead.

VinLieger

LOL so apparently the response wasnt what the irish times expected anyway

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2013/0104/breaking41.html#.UOcLM4LUey0.twitter

timbyr

John_C wrote: »

It's probably a side point overall but I don't think this is correct. If you follow a link to a page, the request for the page will include the details of any link you followed.

The point I'm making is that the papers don't seem to agree with their own policy. They could block these links if they wanted to so they must have some other motivation for sending out legal letters demanding that they be blocked.

If you mean the HTTP referer in the request headers this is unreliable.
It is not sent when clicking links on https sites, browsers can be configured to disable it completely and IE6 doesn't support the header at all.

And never mind that you can skip all the hassle of this by just copying and pasting the link.

So my main point is still correct. There is no definitive way blocking access based on the origin of the link.

Tomk1

Shouldn't it work the other way, the newspaper paying sites that link to them. More Traffic = more adertisment revenue, you would expect they would want to move up the top-website lists, maybe they have an inventive plan of not being in the top 100 Irish websites.
Easy solution is a link advert, say when you open link, you get splash advert, then directed to the article. (not an annoying popup)

There is a huge market for them to grab as people start spending more time online than watching TV.

VinLieger

Tomk1 wrote: »

Shouldn't it work the other way, the newspaper paying sites that link to them. More Traffic = more adertisment revenue, you would expect they would want to move up the top-website lists, maybe they have an inventive plan of not being in the top 100 Irish websites.
Easy solution is a link advert, say when you open link, you get splash advert, then directed to the article. (not an annoying popup)

There is a huge market for them to grab as people start spending more time online than watching TV.

Ahh but you see that would require forward thinking, innovation and an entirely new business model which they refuse to do

V_Moth

The display of links to newspaper articles online is “an infringement of copyright” when it is done “for commercial purposes”, the National Newspapers of Ireland group has said

Ha ha. Following that logic, does that mean anyone's address is now a form of copyright? In that case, I could sue the Golden Pages for gorillions .

I am surprised that it has taken that long for Irish Newspapers to do this, considering the same tactic is being used in a number of other countries.

I don't understand why the newspapers don't look at some innovative solutions that were tried by other Newspapers abroad. For example, the TAZ newspaper in Berlin was facing closure and was taken over by the readers who now have an input in editorial policy. It is now turning a healthy profit.

But it seems Irish newspapers have become legacy industries in failing to adapt to the web and will eventually die out.

KyussBishop

That co-op newspaper thing is an interesting idea, though is tricky to see how it can resolve the problems of funding online; it is a legitimate problem that newspapers everywhere are facing, and even very successful online transitions like from the Guardian, are still putting them in the negative with funding:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/17/guardian-observer-report-losses-44m

A lot of the best journalism around online for certain topics, comes from bloggers now, many of which manage to develop enough funding in donations from their readers; a pretty high standard of writing is required in order to attract the readership and manage this though, which means it's only really financially manageable for really excellent/knowledgeable writers (so while it's good for them, it's not sustainable for the whole journalist industry).

Often, these bloggers earn their reputation, through working hard for years, without any pay at all.


So yes, interesting times ahead, and any newspapers that want to survive are going to have to put in a really special effort to try and retain their readership; they're going to have to cut out the excess non-news-worthy junk for starters, to both save money and increase quality, if they want to convince readers they are worth reading; there's so much high-quality high-value journalism out there to read (that isn't necessarily easy to find, I admit), that newspapers wasting peoples time with fluff, just isn't going to cut it anymore, and will harm their reputation and push readers away.

Newspapers should be embracing aggregators and the like (ones which link, or display the source article inline from the original website, not just copy entire articles wholesale), and try to streamline their integration into them, because aggregators are for saving readers time when reading lots of sources, and if news sources aren't friendly to functioning with them, they get dropped by readers and ignored entirely.

There are some excellent news sources and authors for topics I'm interested in, that I end up ignoring because they don't put out sensible RSS feeds for their content (a lot of news website don't do basic things, like have a per-author RSS feed, which makes me unable to follow particular authors).

KyussBishop

Issue is going to be raised in Oireachtas apparently; TD Sean Kenny makes a mention of boards.ie briefly, here:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2013/0105/breaking6.html

VinLieger

KyussBishop wrote: »

Issue is going to be raised in Oireachtas apparently; TD Sean Kenny makes a mention of boards.ie briefly, here:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2013/0105/breaking6.html

Yeah he seems to be on the ball, hopefully hes got his questions and information in order so he can properly grill them and show it for the scam it is.
Really wish stephen donnelly was on this committee just for this though as his work against the sopa stuff last year was fantastic

jimmycrackcorm

It's a bit rich for the newspapers to want to charge for links but they won't pay the people who appear in the photographs they print.

sock puppet

VinLieger wrote: »

Ahh but you see that would require forward thinking, innovation and an entirely new business model which they refuse to do

It also wouldn't save them anyway as there's much less money to be made through online advertisements. Doesn't matter how many readers they have.

The Corinthian

sock puppet wrote: »

It also wouldn't save them anyway as there's much less money to be made through online advertisements. Doesn't matter how many readers they have.

Not necessarily; after all, Google hasn't done so badly from online advertising.

Advertising in Print media is a very different beast to that on the Internet. To begin with it relies upon a smoke and mirrors metric known as circulation. This is where a multiplier is applied to the publication's sales (or print run, in the case of free publications), based upon the presumption that a single copy of the publication will end up being read more than once, and this becomes the basis of the advertising rates.

With the Internet, you can't really get away with this because you can tell exactly how many people have seen your advert, and worse still have taken an interest in it (the click-thru), and it makes it very difficult to inflate your figures and thus charge more.

Either the print media will be able to come to grips with an online advertising model that will allow them to survive, or will discover a new - presently unknown - model to do this, or will die.

As things stand, it looks increasingly like the last option.

28064212

Bizarre piece on irishtimes.com today (hmmm, to link or not to link...... I think I'll be safe enough).

Completely ignores the fact that the controversy arose over the NNI deciding that links are copyrightable, and pretends that the only issue is the reproduction of content. Really strange piece, can't fathom what the editor was thinking when they decided this was a piece to run.

The only possible way it makes any sense is if it's a dissenting piece, but the author shies away from openly disagreeing with the NNI, and just seems to pretend the controversy hasn't happened

Iwannahurl

I've often quoted chunks from the IT, and here goes again:

Linking versus reproduction
A clear separation of the benign issue of “linking to” content from the more fraught issue of “reproduction of” content is required to allow the copyright debate to proceed on the correct footing.

What writers at The Irish Times, in common with their colleagues at newspapers across the globe, take issue with is the unlicensed reproduction of their newspaper’s content for commercial gain.

A newspaper must be able to protect itself from the outright copying of its content and from the harvesting of its writers’ reporting by automated summarisation and aggregation engines for the commercial benefit of private interests in cases where its authorisation has not been sought.

While the public increasingly believes it has an interest in financially supporting the long-term future of insightful reporting, some commercial businesses have not yet adopted this position.

Conflating the unlicensed reproduction of content with the mere use of urls is drawing attention from the key issues of the copyright debate.

As Tim Berners-Lee envisaged, urls are merely references to content. But they are more: they are the lifeblood of online dialogue.

The author of that opinion piece, Johnny Ryan, is chief innovation officer of The Irish Times. Mr Ryan is paid a salary for his services to the IT; presumably they think he's worth their investment in him, and he may well be supporting a family on that wage.

I'm an IT reader, and I am one of those people who believes that there is a major public interest in the long-term future of insighful reporting.

The Fourth Estate isn't what it used to be, but IMO the print media are essential. Unfortunately I can't afford to buy the IT every day, or pay the annual subscription for the online edition.

The Corinthian

There appears to be some confusion, if not outright contradiction, between the sentiments expressed in the above IT article that feels that "urls are free to roam the web, as they should be" and the earlier quoted demand that "a licence is required to link directly to an online article even without uploading any of the content directly onto your own website".

Did the newspaper lawyers get overzealous? Are the newspapers not speaking with one voice on this? Or are they simply backtracking?

Who does appear to be the target, in this piece at least, are those "harvesting of its writers’ reporting by automated summarisation and aggregation engines for the commercial benefit of private interests in cases where its authorisation has not been sought" - companies such as Google or Zenark.

Such companies, generally scrape only a 'teaser', you are still ultimately directed to the site to read the actual content. The service they provide is the search and monitoring of articles, they aggregate the links, and teasers, not the content (which at worst they cache for the purposes of searching).

But if a teaser (essentially little more than a quote from the content) is "reproduction of" the content, then this is precisely what I've done here - just as journalists do everyday when they quote excepts from documents, or books, when they report on them? It makes it difficult to for them to argue that others cannot reproduce any part of their works, when they have no problem doing so with the works of others.

Which of course leads to the question of why they would have a problem with such aggrigators in the first place - and I mean this as a genuine question. Aggrigators, like search engines, drive traffic to your site, without which you'll get no new subscriptions or advertising click-thrus - unless I'm missing something, demanding payment from those who bring you customers, does appear a little greedy and nothing else.

Why this is bad is not really explained in the article, but instead, and tellingly, the author makes a plea that people should (or do) have an "interest in financially supporting the long-term future of insightful reporting", and this is what I am left with after a thorough reading of the peace; it's not so much that anyone's stealing their content, but that new businesses have sprung up and are turning a profit, and they want a piece of it because they need the money.

Iwannahurl wrote: »

The Fourth Estate isn't what it used to be, but IMO the print media are essential.

I'm not sure if the print media are all that essential any more - the only time I bother buying a newspaper or magazine is to read during take-off and landing.

The fourth estate is alive and well - it's no longer limited to a handful of newspapers (often all owned by an even smaller number of publishers), nor confined to paper and ink.

TBH, the whole thing sounds like a bunch of Gregorian monks complaining about the printing press. Evolve or die already.

Iwannahurl

The Corinthian wrote: »

it's not so much that anyone's stealing their content, but that new businesses have sprung up and are turning a profit, and they want a piece of it because they need the money.

A few questions for clarification:

1. Where are these "new businesses" obtaining their marketable material?

2. How are they turning a profit using that material?

3. Who bears the costs of originating the marketable materials they are using to turn a profit?

Scofflaw

Iwannahurl wrote: »

A few questions for clarification:

1. Where are these "new businesses" obtaining their marketable material?

2. How are they turning a profit using that material?

3. Who bears the costs of originating the marketable materials they are using to turn a profit?

The answers appear to be:

1. businesses like Google, and a lot of other news aggregators

2. Google's ad revenue is based on content aggregation and searchability - something like Google News in particular

3. from the websites of the newspapers.

I can see the idea behind this, that the newspapers create the content, and pay for the creation of the content, and then someone like Google News makes a profit based in large part on aggregating it and re-presenting it. However, where this falls down is that Google isn't making a profit that subtracts from those possible for the newspapers, but is instead making a profit out of something that actually enhances the prospects of the newspapers.

It's not possible for a newspaper to do something like Google News without doing to other newspapers what they're complaining about people doing to them - this is, then, purely an attempt to profit further out of a use of newspaper content that already profits the newspapers, or would, if they had worked out how to be profitable online at all.

cordially,
Scofflaw