Judge Says Hyperlinks Should Be Banned to Save Newspapers
Judge Says Hyperlinks Should Be Banned to Save Newspapers
Nicholas Carlson/The Business InsiderFamous and respected New York Judge Richard Posner says maybe we should ban links to save newspapers.
From his blog: “Imagine if the New York Times migrated entirely to the World Wide Web. Could it support, out of advertising and subscriber revenues, as large a news-gathering apparatus as it does today? This seems unlikely, because it is much easier to create a web site and free ride on other sites than to create a print newspaper and free ride on other print newspapers, in part because of the lag in print publication; what is staler than last week’s news.
Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.” Read entire article >>
The internet is only part of the reason that newspapers are going down the toilet. Only around 1 in 3 Americans are online and only a small percentage of them use hyperlinks in their posts. Most people don’t have a blog or a website.
The main reason is that newpaper and TV reporting has become shoddy, overly slanted towards the left(this last election being a prime example), and many Americans have become disgusted with the media. Start reporting the news with straight facts and see if the public will come back. It’s more a matter of lost trust than anything.
This is typical of what is happening in America. A failed business or individual, instead of taking a hard look at why their failing, finds someone else to blame. The music industry is using the same model and will continue to fail. It appears that the newspaper people have learned nothing from their debacle.
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