Op-Ed: Trying to protect online journalism, but how?
A new perspective in online copyright is emerging as Germany attempts to create “a new kind of copyright.” To say this idea is currently a bit garbled would be an understatement, but everybody’s getting very defensive all of a sudden.
Photo courtesy Nathalie Caron
Nathalie Caron graduated from university with a degree in journalism, but has gone on to work public service for the Canadian government. She now covers news online as a citizen journalist.
has made a brave – almost unjustifiably so – attempt to get some specifics but apparently at the moment the concept is more newsworthy than the facts. This is ostensibly about protecting print publishers in their transition to the norms of this century, but it’s looking like some vested interests are sniffing about.
If your idea of fun is a Rubik's Cube with no solution, the
New York Times has given you fun for life in terms of the various perspectives emerging from the wreckage of what used to be a simple argument about who owns what content, and what rights are involved in its use. Fortunately for those interested, the people themselves are so vague about the issues that nobody will feel like an ignoramus after reading. These guys won't even commit to licenses as more than a theory...
The proposal, such as it is, pits publishers against the internet, which they believe is hurting their business.
The real working theory is this:
1. Mainstream news is already on its way to the sewage treatment plant in terms of revenue streams.
2. Online ads aren’t generating enough revenue for news websites.
3. People are making great squeaking noises about free speech, but the obvious intent is use of content.
4. The US “fair use” principle is pretty much the basis of the global demand for access to content for commentary.
5. Arguments for and against range from the Murdoch view of charging for selected content to no charges at all.
6. Most people refuse to pay for online news if they can avoid it.
In addition to this, some “net users” are also spreading the gospel about "the freedom of the internet". That’s cute, coming from Plagiarism Central.
Irritating as it is, even mainstream hardliners like AP do have a good point about wholesale copying, with one caveat: MSM news is no picture of original content itself.
I don’t take seriously “journalists” who just add bylines to Reuters or AP texts and add no actual content themselves. You have to wonder why anyone’s paying these photocopiers. The news sites are themselves very much secondary sources. In some cases the “news” is way behind the state of play. On DJ, we’ve got in ahead of CNN so many times it’s absurd.
To explain the vulnerability of news media a bit more: News is no longer an exclusive domain where people with access to a telegraph can dictate information to people with hay stuck between their teeth. Those days are long gone. The internet also means people with brains and computers can find and generate their own news.
Sorry to break it to you, MSM, but there are things called “press releases”, “telephones” and “email”. There’s even something called Twitter, which isn’t a character reference, it’s a source of a little known commodity called “information”.
It’s not like the world’s clustering around the old Victrola any more waiting for information. Quite the opposite. In many cases “news” is very much a debatable commodity. I spend enough time pulling apart contradictory bits of information from news “sources” for my work on DJ, and what’s called information often isn’t. It’s frequently the result of someone’s 5 second attention span. Some of the edits are apparently the result of deliberately scouring the world for people who can’t do jigsaw puzzles, so they can edit a selection of paragraphs into a sort of Irish omelet: It’s all there, but try and figure out what it was, or what it’s supposed to do.
Copyright isn’t the only show in town for net users. The market is the issue. People will not willingly pay for anything where the quality is so bad. Why should they?
Misreading the internet market is another hobby that seems to be doing well. Singled out for criticism in the NYT piece was Google News, ironically, the one place you can access all online news quickly and easily. Apparently the Google News function infringes on the right of obscure European news media to be obscure. Nobody would even know they existed, otherwise, but what have six billion people got to do with market share, anyway?
It generates more hits for these micro-media magnates than anything else.
That’s a copyright issue?
Why, in the name of Randolph Hearst’s righteous underwear?
It’s an access issue, idiots.
The lack of interest in online ads is based largely on the fact that they’re so uninteresting they could be used as insomnia cures. Where’s the actual presentation they teach ad writers in basic training? Non existent. “Drab” is the word. Of course nobody’s clicking on them. If you have a look at some ads by relatively small advertisers, and check out the graveyard-like ads both on and for MSM news, you can see who's doing their homework.
How, exactly, did Google Adsense become so popular, if nobody's clicking?
There are millions of altruistic advertisers, deliberately creating unsuccessful ads to keep the dream alive?
Come off it.
Exactly why MSM news media think they can ignore all the basics of marketing, and still make billions, would be nice to know.
Bottom line: Either the marketing works, or it's academic who charges for what.
If I can ever convince one of these MSM guys that marketing has something to do with media, I’ll think I’m getting somewhere. Ah well….
