>It's not just newspapers. I was discussing this with Gaelen Lehman >(of Lehman's Non-Electric), and we were both quite baffled by >webmasters who go to a lot of trouble to get their websites up there >in the search engines and linked from as many other sites as possible >to improve their rankings - and then do a bit of a redesign and >change all the urls, without leaving jump-links. Leaving the sites >linked to them to look incompetent because of the "Not found" >results. Those webmasters, in turn, usually just cut the link rather >than searching about for the new url.
I think it's stupidity. In many cases, I think that it just doesn't occur to them that it might be good for business, that a critical aspect of the net is that "time" has a different meaning, so someone make come across a link and try to access a 6-month or 6 year or 60 year old article, or whatever, and that it is just simply, obviously (to an intelligent thinking person), a basic good common-sense webmastering practice to keep some continuity in links, if one wishes to encourage the fullest hassle-free least-discouraging use of one's site, putting readers in touch with the work of writers. But this type of thinking is dependent on practicing the thinking of putting oneself in the position of the potential visitor (i.e.: putting oneself in the position of the customer... an important business practice) and so I agree that your "What about the reader?" test applies here, as it amounts to, here, "What about the customer?" >Have you noticed that more and more US newspapers are requiring >registration at their websites, like the NY Times? Free, yes, but >they're getting a load of saleable info out of it. Maybe a cavalier >attitude to their copyright is just fair exchange, eh? Anyway I don't >think it works the way they think it does with copyright - the more >their stories get bandied around the web and the lists the more good >it does them. It's just free advertising, takes people to their >websites. Better than free advertising (it has some substance or it >wouldn't be bandied about). I reckon this is the real circulation >battle today, at least as much as how many hard-copies they sell. Yes, there's a sort of sloppy trade-off between reader and news-site in these early days of web economics. But getting to the hard-core issue: it doesn't bother me that a news site would want some payment for this or that, and I look forward to continued competition and idea-making in how to do this without discouraging and indeed encouraging guilt-free reading and news-sharing. In fact, I look forward to paying some modest price for every story I read: no problem. I have always thought that at some point this somewhat free news we early net people have been getting for the last few years would gradually transition to a different paradigm: something has to give. Writers cannot work for free any more than anyone else can. They need to eat and live and have substantial resources to research their topics, and they need to be motivated to do good work. If they want to give it away, fine, but that's their initial choice and to steal work of those who don't want to give it away ultimately will lead to a problem. I think part of this will be solved by implementation of a good microtransaction scheme, so that some publications can try different schemes that charge in the single and double-digit cents-per-article-view rather than too much money. Since, in these early days, and in the future, part of real net revenue is dependent on hits (which leads to ad-views), it is obviously taking money out of the pocket of a newspaper when we copy and paste an article, but there is *ample* excuse and reason for doing this, since so very few papers have done anything close to what is necessary to implement a fair and working scheme for news-sharing. Awhile back I copied and pasted a local article to a newsgroup that was discussing the local cable internet service, and there is some financial tie-in there with the local paper. They were immediately on my case, and I pointed out that since the paper webmaster did not make the archive URL handy from the way I accessed the paper (only the weekly URL and then changing it) that I did not wish to post a URL which would be invalid in 7 or less days. Then they told me some impossible-to-find way to find the archive URL. JERKS. As though I should figure this garbage out on my own? *They* are the reason there is a holdup to rational payment schemes in that example, not I. I have *never* heard a *single* person in these debates express the slightest concern for the amount of time and trouble that a consumer of news is cost in finding and sharing news, if he follows the rules and passes on a link rather than copying and pasting, if that link is then invalidated by newspaper negligence. How many readers, or dozens, or hundreds, or thousands, over the months, will be inconvenienced and be cost time (is time money when it's the time of a consumer, or just the time of an entrepeneur?) in trying to find a link that is no longer there, in searching archives, etc? Do we pass on links in email, knowing that it's something that hits the spot, that we should assign a price to the time we take to identify such a thing, to identify who would be interested in it, etc? Why is a value of "zero" attached to the time and trouble that is wasted for all of us, and our many associates, when we are told that we are violating copyright law and "costing" the news or commentary site "hits" and "therefore" "money"? I have some similar thoughts about the complexities of the issues in music copyright, but I'll stop there for now. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Kwick Pick opens locked car doors, front doors, drawers, briefcases, padlocks, and more. On sale now! http://us.click.yahoo.com/ehaLqB/Fg5DAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
