Helluva a piece from a J-school student

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-fishman/initiating-a-culture-of-c_b_167461.html

The Times needs to lead the way charging for (and legally protecting) its content.

 

It seems the call for paying for news online is growing. He's said what many of us have said time and again — only he said it very well.

I couldn't agree with him more.

The time is coming — it has to be — when everyone (readers, bloggers, aggregaters, et al) will pay for their news online.

 

Rob Fishman for President

 

I really, really, really wish The Times would take the plunge. Until they do, the industry is just kind of treading water. The Harvard analogy in the piece is apt.

 

That is a hell of a piece.

 

Yeah, I particularly enjoyed the glib use of "ill-fated" while drawing a clumsy analogy to Make-A-Wish in the lede.

 

For some reason, I never really took note of that. But on second thought, it's pretty bad.

However, the meat and potatoes after that lead is worth the read.

 

Look at the big brain on Rob!

I do wonder if the NYT figures it is better off staying free while metro papers around the country die off, thereby growing the potential of its paying audience. If it goes behind a firewall now, papers in Chicago, L.A., Denver, etc., could try the same. But if it waits, it can grab readers whose local rags have sputtered into oblivion. Maybe it's a matter of who can outlast whom.

 

Well, I needed SOME proof he is a college student.

 

Unless a way can be found to negate C and V, and negate "copy web page," keeping paid content from proliferating freely will be well nigh impossible.

 

There are sites that don't allow c+v, but his general point was to charge for third-party use. If someone takes the page and posts it elsewhere without compensation, then the Times just goes to the site (or parent company) and claims copyright infringement. No different than what movie and TV studios do on YouTube.

 

No company has the legal budget to go after the millions of bloggers and other such leeches, and certainly not the millions who would pass along compelling stories via e-mail.