Google plans to kill NY Times, Washington Post

There's one false assumption made in all this: this thread links together "high-quality news content" with the NY Times and Wash. Post.

High quality is in the eye of the beholder.

 

Google is just like sports talk radio---if newspapers go out of business, they have nothing left to link to/discuss.

 

I couldn't agree more.

And as far as hackers, those sharing, etc. it soon won't be worth their time AND there will be fewer sites doing that work, thereby making it easier to sue their asses off.

 

Nobody tell Jeff Jarvis this

It would cause his head to explode or something.

Someone made a point, I don't remember where, about newspapers and advertising. Even with a diminished product and even with fewer print readers, newspapers still make a tremendous amount of money off advertising, so why should the ad departments have ditched the print product to sell online.
And people complain that newspapers did nothing to innovate, but how many years ago did Dallas roll out the CAT reader?
So newspapers tried, nothing they did worked.
That all being said, if I was the Times and Post, I'd lawyer up and take Google to court. Fair use needs to be challenged because it wouldn't work in a print medium, so why should it work online?
For example, if started a city magazine with restaurant reviews and local attractions. If I took the first three grafs of the local papers reviews and then tell people to read more about the restaurant, pick up that paper, it wouldn't work.

 

Twelve posts for a whiny conservative to use this as a chance to take a shot at the "liberal press."

Congrats. I had hondo and 17.5 posts.

 

You're probably a fucking idiot.

 

You know how people bring up the fact that the Wall Street Journal can charge.

It's laughable since every WSJ story is available for free if you enter the article through Google. Just type in a locked headline and find out yourself. Even the newspaper that makes the most off of the Web or close to it need the eyeballs from free viewing.

 

Maybe I'm just hopelessly naive, but is there really no law to prevent this? Could I just set up a site streaming Paramount or Universal movies with my own advertising? I fail to see how this is any different. It's theft.

 

It's only theft if the person whose stuff is getting taken objects to it and tries to prevent it. If you put it out at the curb with a "Free" sign on it, and then convince yourself that you're doing the smart thing that way, it's not theft. Newspapers have done the latter.

 

What you could do is create your own webpage where you used an advanced algorithm to determine what movies the user likes and have a series of targeted direct links to movies Paramount or Universal is already streaming and sell ads on your page. As long as it is a page that offers direct links and doesn't use the entire article, it will fall within fair use. What Google seems to be offering is a very smart RSS feed.

 

AP is talking tough:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/30/associated-press-google-business-media-apee.html

 

No. Way. Google, in that incarnation, would be a lot more Napster and a lot less non-centralized torrent site. A company Google's size could never easily and actively distribute stolen content. It would be WAY too big of a target.