Comment by schabernakk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by schabernakk | Hacker News Reader

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To be fair, there were a few positive/neutral articles, for example by Frank Rieger, a popular member of the Chaos Computer Club, in the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) but they are in the minority.

Of course, there is the obvious ignorance regarding technical facts like: "robots.txt is from the stone age. On or off for everyone is the only possibility" [1] which reminds me a lot of the discussion we had some time back regarding internet filters. But the one thing I find really dangerous is that they (meaning major newspapers, politicians, etc.) managed to spin the story so that the narrative is now "greedy google" vs hard working journalists. I applaud google for their efforts (and I am fully aware of their commercial interests in this matter) but I slowly begin to think they did their cause a disservice. If a discussion takes place its always about google and their lobbying. The extend of this law which could lead to bloggers being sued (btw: a side effect of the very fuzzy written law which leaves a lot open and almost certainly will need a court to decide on the details) when they link to news articles is almost never mentioned.

One last thing: Recently, two big news newspapers had to shut down and that print sales are declining is nothing new. I cant remember the last time I bought a newspaper and I am also pretty sure that although blogs/twitter/whatever are a good addition they cant replace classical media. There is definately a need for the discussion for new sources of incomes for classical paper based medias as ad sales from their online publication wont cut it. Perhaps something like a "culture/media tax/flatrate" as we currently have with the GEZ (for the financing of the public tv stations)? I dont know, but the #lsr is certainly not the way to go.

[1]http://www.golem.de/news/leistungsschutzrecht-springer-vergl...

"But the one thing I find really dangerous is that they (meaning major newspapers, politicians, etc.) managed to spin the story so that the narrative is now "greedy google" vs hard working journalists."

Isn't there a certain degree of truth in this? Truly, there is a big problem if the rates for borrowing content is too high. But I think what the German public is responding to is how journalism has changed and not in ways that are necessarily positive. There is far less incentive to be a good journalist now since the quality of a given article is likely much lower than in the past -- research is more limited, articles are written in a greater hurry, even some articles these days are largely written by computer or by individuals overseas.

What this law is reasonably trying to address is that content of whatever form -- be it newspaper articles, images, whatever -- has inherent value that should be recognized. Surely enforcing that value with an iron fist like the RIAA is not the right way to go. But allowing free expropriation (even of abstracts) may also be unfair.

I think a good analogy, fifty years ago, would be a newspaper that sends out people to read other newspapers very early in the morning (say at 5 AM) and then produces its own newspaper at 6. Surely such a thing would not have been possible fifty years ago, but something similar is possible today with the advent of the internet. If this behavior had occurred fifty years ago and hadn't been regulated, imagine what would have happened: the overall quality of newspapers would have been diluted and the incentive to produce good articles would have likely declined.

Now, of course, this isn't quite perfect. Again, Google is borrowing very small snippets. And surely -- if anyone remembers this -- the French courts were wrong several years ago when they allowed some newspapers to sue Google for simply posting a few sentences or a link to an article. But what if newspapers could charge a modest fee commensurate to the value an article link is to Google? Over time, the fees could certainly accrue. The question, I think, is how high these fees are and how this sort of regulation is imposed.

I think the problem here is that this goes against the basic premise of the web itself and hypermedia. What about my blog where I post the (in my opinion) most important news of the day and link to the sources. Okay, those links are manually curated. What if I write a script that automatically posts (tweets?) all the articles I visit. Ok I am not a search engine but where do you draw the line? My point is that this is very hard to define and write down as a law.

Is a discussion necessary? Absolutely. Do we need a strong press? You bet your ass we do. Do we perhaps need to restructure the current model and fund the fourth power? Yeah, I dont know. Is this the way? Certainly not.

But I think this is only another symptom of a trend currently manifestating where people with ties and no insight into the matter try to control and profit from a medium they are just beginning to understand. The ITU conference, this guy in the UK who wanted to sue everyoneone retweeting an article,....

the French courts were wrong several years ago when they allowed some newspapers to sue Google for simply posting a few sentences or a link to an article. But what if newspapers could charge a modest fee commensurate to the value an article link is to Google?

I don't understand the distinction you are making between these two situations.

Think about the larger precedent that you're setting here, however. Should I not be able to quote a few lines and link you to a news story without paying money to the source I'm linking to? (whether the license was compulsory or not). What is google news but a factual stating of "here's what a bunch of sources said about the news today"? If a major event happens in your home town, how much money will it cost you to put up a blog post saying, "here's a roundup of coverage on this event"?

Just for the record, French laws about "droits d'auteurs" and quotations allow you to quote any text under "droits d'auteur" as long as it remains a quotation (the definition of which is vague, and varies from one case of "jurisprudence" to another, but 300 words is generally considered reasonable)

This sortof is an essential preamble to free speech. Now, i agree with you, there's "quote" and there's "quote".

[C]ontent of whatever form -- be it newspaper articles, images, whatever -- has inherent value that should be recognized.

I don't buy the assertion of inherent value. There's a ton of crap out there.

If there's any value in content it's subjective, not inherent.

People who are so convinced of the value of their content are free to erect a paywall and rake in the cash.

But what if newspapers could charge a modest fee commensurate to the value an article link is to Google?

It' perhaps something to consider, but it has to be a consensual act, where the value is negotiated. Google may already be providing commensurate value by driving traffic to a site.

If it had zero value why would Google be interested in it?

Google's value is in its comprehensiveness. Both the marginal value and cost to maintain a single piece of content in their index is extremely close to zero.

> If it had zero value why would Google be interested in it?

Again, value is subjective. Even if you think it has zero value, even if every engineer at Google thinks it has zero value, it might have value to someone out there. If nothing else, it could be a part of a corpus linguistics study.

> I think a good analogy, fifty years ago, would be a newspaper that sends out people to read other newspapers very early in the morning (say at 5 AM) and then produces its own newspaper at 6.

Newspapers and newsmagazines have always been very mercenary/cavalier about this sort of thing. Especially pre-web but even today, newspapers routinely rewrite stories from competing papers without even the slightest mention of where they got that information, radio shows discuss today's print headlines and read excerpts, readers' digests (e.g. The Week) pay no license fees for the stories they summarize and it's an old lament in newsrooms that local TV news just copies whatever's in the paper that day.

By comparison, an aggregator that pulls headlines from news sites and links them back to the original content seems rather innocuous.

(Of course, I don't intend to argue that because journalists steal, aggregators shouldn't feel bad about stealing either. But it puts things into perspective. And if headlines and links aren't fair use I don't know what is.)

> Recently, two big news newspapers had to shut down and that print sales are declining is nothing new. I cant remember the last time I bought a newspaper and I am also pretty sure that although blogs/twitter/whatever are a good addition they cant replace classical media. There is definately a need for the discussion for new sources of incomes for classical paper based medias as ad sales from their online publication wont cut it.

... I like Clay Shirky's comment:

> Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

and

The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model.

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking...

Isn't the problem here that the benefit is not directly visible? Same reason there is still no global agreement on a proceeding against global warming. There is no doubt that you need a functioning, diverse and independent press for a functioning democracy. So indirectly everyone (corporations as well) benefits from this institution.

In germany we have a couple public tv stations which are financed through a fee everyone owning a tv must pay, regardless if they watch those channels or not. They arent bound to a viewing quota, are independet from the government and have an educational mandate.

Well, at least in theory: In practice huge amounts of money are just wasted by a gigantic bureaucratic apparatus, politicians and the church have a saying in the content and the stuff shown is becoming more and more like the crap on private tv stations.

I think something like this could be a viable solutions. But implementing it, especially the algorithm which decides who gets how much is very hard if not impossible. To much attack surface for illegitimate interventions.

edit: typed that comment before I had time to view your link. great read. Never really thought about the "save newspapers vs save journalists vs save society" aspect.

You appear to be arguing that we should subsidize businesses for which the market rate for their product is virtually zero. The idea that what's in the interests of big media companies and their owners is somehow in the interests of the creative talent (think - do musicians outside a tiny number of stars have any negotiating position with record giants?) and that that is in turn somehow in the interests of society just doesn't follow for me. Every industry that fails makes the same argument - the public should pay to save us (and you are paying if as a Google customer you are forced to have your services restricted because Google has to pay to subsidize these failed businesses). But just as the piano sheet music industry was successfully replaced by the recording industry, new industries rise and replace old ones and meet the demands of the market. Just because we cannot see what that future is - because if we could we'd be building it and be billionaires doing so - doesn't mean it won't happen.

Twitter's coverage of the Arab Spring was better than any Western media in the early days... food for thought.

>Twitter's coverage of the Arab Spring was better than any Western media in the early days... food for thought.

I would disagree. First of all, my parents dont know how to use twitter. But lets say thats just a generational problem which will solve itself over time. There is still another issue:

The signal to noise ratio on twitter is very low. To get a good information on, lets say the arab spring, I have to spend quite some time digging through many tweets to distill the relevant information. A not dismissible overhead. And even if I managed to find out all relevant tweets and managed to form a coherent image from those splinters of information (which could be hard because I may be missing relevant background information) I still dont know if I based my model on legitimate sources. Regimes knows just as well which power lies in the social media and are eager to spread false information and propaganda.

Of course, false information is a problem also existent with classical journalism, but to a much lesser degree. They build their reputation as a reliable source of information (especially abroad in very intransparent situations like the arab spring) over many years with a network of trusted correspondents.

Thats something which is very difficult to replace with social news mechanisms.

Tell folks who read the NYT in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, or people who watch Fox News - or any of the US mainstream media - that the traditional media has less misinformation.

Good point. I didnt say they were free from misinformation. Just that I know I can trust eyewitness reports from international correspondents more than I can trust a random twitter account.

To tackle the problem you describe its important to encourage critical thinking and to not rely on one newssource. And we need investigative journalists. And whistleblower. And social media. And luck.

Its very hard to counter governmental lies on such a big scale.

I hear what you're saying. I don't necessarily disagree fundamentally, but I do think most of these arguments about the news media revolve around the myth of the noble scrappy reporter fighting for the truth and the gritty editor who backs him against interference from above, and the owner that pulls for them both to succeed. I think that Hollywood version just no linger exists if it ever did. Media companies and their owners care about generating profits and the power and influence they get from controlling the picture of reality try masses get. The people who work in them seldom represent their platonic ideal any better. Most will write whatever pays them the best or assists their move up the media food chain - watch them abandon all pretense of principle when they get the TV gig!

> The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model.

In case you collect logical fallacies, this is a wonderful example of "Argument from adverse consequences":

A

But A leads to B, and B is bad

Therefore, Not A

This is reasonable if you're deciding whether to pursue A as a course of action, but it is idiotic if you're trying to decide whether A is true or not. A will be true or false regardless of whether you like what it leads to.

Well, if we're going to miss them when they're gone, then we should figure out a goddamned way to replace it, rather than saying, "The Internet is just too much revolution for you to handle, man."

Full-time investigative journalism cannot go away, for the sake of society. It's a matter of how we will continue it, or what model and best practices will supplant it. iReport doesn't count.

I'm not sure we are going to miss them when they're gone. The point of Clay's article, as I read it, is that's their argument.

In reality, I agree with Clay (and you, I think), which is to say that it isn't newpapers we might miss, but solid journalism. The interesting question is whether these are indpendent variables. I.e. could we have newspapers without good journalism and good journalism without newspapers.

I think a good case can be made that journalism has been declining for years, irrespective of the effect of the internet.

I also think it's quite possible we may end up with good journalism and no newspapers. I don't think wikileaks is the answer, for example, but such an organisation couldn't exist twenty years ago. I think we'll see a lot more attempts to create a 21st century journalism model before one sticks.

It won't go away it'll be replaced by other things. It already is. People get more news faster from voices on the ground in events like the Arab Spring than they ever did from a newspaper. So for immediacy other avenues are arising.

Newspapers and media companies, have had no problem killing off their news departments in the name of profits - eliminating foreign desks, reducing investigative reporting, focusing on lifestyle reportage and opinion pieces.

High quality opinion writers are finding success as bloggers - some are able to make a perfectly good living as such. They don't need the label of a newspaper to sit beneath any more.

There will always be outlets for investigative journalism. There will always be some form of news show and publication. Advertisers gain a certain value from placing their ads alongside high quality news content. Just not enough to support billions of dollars of newspaper revenue.

If the commercial radio and TV stations disappeared from the Bay Area we'd still have NPR - a high quality news alternative. Why? Because there are a certain number of people always prepared to pay something for high quality content.

Long way of saying I think you're right - we'll end up with good journalism and no newspapers.

After last few years here in Poland I've stopped believing in good reporting. No matter what you say, press is going to present it the way it wants, and it's impossible to break the glass and say to public what you really want. If there's order to show you're stupid, you will look stupid, no matter what you say. If there's order to show you're great - you will look and sound great.

I wish traditional massmedia fast demise. There's nothing there worth saving at this point.

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