micropayments and sports journalism

[Lugnuts]

More on the idea:

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/03/27/Warners-New-Web-Guru

http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2009/03/23/story6.html?b=1237780800%5E1798069

And how it would work from a technological standpoint:

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/03/sxsw-music-exec.html

 

[RickStain]

It won't work for music, either. Call me when someone succeeds at implementing it.

Second, ISPs are trying to institute it as a fee for the illegal file sharing that goes on. You are talking about suing ISPs for letting people legally access the newspapers' own servers that the newspapers put up for people to use. Insanity.

 

[Lugnuts]

Actually, I'm talking about charging ISPs-- only suing if they pirate and refuse to pay.

One interesting thing about those articles I posted? They make it seem like the ISPs are not averse to the idea.

 

[RickStain]

Actually, I'm talking about charging ISPs-- only suing if they refuse to pay.

One interesting thing about those articles I posted? They make it seem like the ISPs are not averse to the idea.

Of course they did, they were trying to write a story to that angle. I'd like to see some more objective analysis.

You can't just decide to charge someone and then sue them if they don't agree. It simply does not work that way. You have to have some legal basis, and "they are letting people have the stuff we put up for free with the knowledge that the only way to access it was through the ISPs" isn't going to cut it. You will be laughed out of the courtroom. This idea is a non-starter in the extreme.

 

[Lugnuts]

It seems like Warner Music, EMI and Sony BMG disagree.

According to those articles, critics of this plan to charge the ISPs in exchange for an agreement not to sue amounts to "extortion"...

... But nowhere do I see anything about someone being laughed out of a courtroom.

 

[RickStain]

It seems like Warner Music, EMI and Sony BMG disagree.

According to those articles, critics of this plan to charge the ISPs in exchange for an agreement not to sue amounts to "extortion"...

... But nowhere do I see anything about someone being laughed out of a courtroom.

They disagree so hard that they hired a total of one person between the four of them to look into the idea. You can tell how seriously a corporation considers an idea by how many resources they throw behind it.

And again, you are ignoring the very important legal difference between illegal file downloading and legal site access.

 

[Lugnuts]

It's got to start somewhere-- and God knows it won't start with newspaper management. They'll be the last ones to jump on.

But you can bet that if the music industry succeeds in squeezing a fee out of the ISPs-- the other creative content fields will follow.

 

[PopeDirkBenedict]

The difference between the two is that ISPs are essentially being used as a conduit to violate the copyrights held by the music companies. The proposed deal revolves around whether the ISPs have fully complied with the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA. Newspapers don't have a good faith argument that their copyrights have been violated.

 

[JC]

Wow, Lugnuts, the ref is about ready to stop the fight. Your corner should throw in the towel.

 

[Simon_Cowbell]

Until you guys get over your issues with story comments, you're just going to keep digging the hole deeper.

"Issues"?

That is the easiest way to make money right now.

People's egos won't allow them to be silent on a story that spawns mass discussion.

How many people would drop off this site if it charged $5 a month?

Are you kidding? There are enough places to bench about stuff for free. Making people pay to comment is not a solution.

But you go ahead and try it, if you like. I'll be over there with my partner, waiting for you to buy our business model.

You absolutely need firebrand columnists to make it happen.

But, no, I wouldn't go somewhere else. I would pay to stay with the crew.

There's one of your biggest problems. You define your business model by what you, a journalist, would do.

Not by what a reader would do.

No, that was me, the reader.

 

[Simon_Cowbell]

Another issue is that while you keep talking about keeping piracy at bay (which never works, incidentally), you are ignoring that you can't copyright news.

Even if a news site is blocked and unpirated, there's nothing stopping someone from rewriting every news story on the site and putting up their own, completely legal news site.

Yep.

Quoteless, nondescriptive news.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

Luggie, much as I highly regard your views on things, this argument continues to be one of the most baffling and nonsensical things to appear here.

In addition to the things others have pointed out, I'll make one other observation: people subscribe to cable TV specifically to get ESPN. ESPN can charge a fee because the cable carrier will lose a huge number of subscribers if it drops ESPN.

Nobody, and I mean literally nobody on this earth, pays for internet service primarily so he or she can read the Times online, or go to CNN.com.

The reality is the New York Times needs the ISPs a heck of a lot more than the ISPs need the New York Times.