How The NY Times Hides Behind Copyright Law To Hoard Information And Weaken Its Journalism
from the too-bad dept
In the past couple of years, I've tried to be a lot more diligent about putting up primary documents when discussing them in relevant posts. Many of you have certainly noticed the DocStoc or Scribd embeds that I frequently use. This was after talking it over with a few people, who pointed out that giving readers the actual source material was a lot more useful (and after a few snarky "dissenters" suggested that I was "hiding" the real details). I've actually found that it's worked out quite well, with the comments around the actual documents often quite enlightening and informative. These days, I actually get annoyed when I read reports about a lawsuit or some other type of document and the document itself is not available. It makes it that much harder to actually build a real discussion around the topic.So why is it that so many major news sources don't post source documents?
Felix Salmon has a long and interesting post about his discussion with the NY Times on this particular topic. Two really interesting points come out of this, neither of which is good:
- Many (though, certainly not all) old school journalists come from an era in which they want to hoard the information, and dribble it out, because that's how journalism used to be. The power was in those who held the information, and the journalist's role was to just give you what s/he felt you needed, rather than giving you the full download to analyze yourself.
- The NY Times and others then uses copyright law as a crutch to explain why they don't provide source material. They hide behind copyright law, claiming that it opens up too much liability to post certain documents that may be covered by copyright.
The one big thing I learned from talking to Samson is that when NYT journalists talk about copyright constraints preventing them from putting documents online, they're not particularly upset about that. In fact, they might secretly be quite happy that there's no question of posting the document they spent so much effort obtaining. Journalists are human, after all, and can be quite jealous and competitive: they don't want to simply give the story, on a plate, to their competitors, and will happily sit on documents rather than publishing them if they're given half a chance to do so. Samson said he couldn't think of a single instance where a journalist was begging him to be able to publish something and he said no, for copyright reasons.This is a rather antiquated view of the information economy these days. It's a view built on the idea that hoarding information is better than sharing it. In our own experience, that seems to create less valuable results, and for a publication like the NY Times, it seems like a huge waste. No one is saying that giving away the source material takes away from the actual reporting or commentary that happens on top of that. In fact, most people will still find that to be the most valuable part. But sharing the actual source material is an important part of the package.
After all, it's easy for the NYT to post copyrighted documents if it's so inclined -- it just needs to send them to any one of dozens of organizations who will happily put them online, and then link or embed the document into the story. Or the journalist can just ask their source to go ahead and post the document online, in some anonymous place where it can be linked to or embedded. But that never seems to happen. And even when there's no copyright at all, as in the case of the Hank Paulson ethics waiver, the NYT went on the record as saying that the reporters "would probably be uncomfortable simply handing over documents" even to one of their colleagues, let alone to the world in general. After all, said Tim O'Brien, an editor there, "they had spent a lot of time and energy to find, analyze, and report on" that document.
The other chilling part of Salmon's conversation with Samson was one of his rationale's for hiding behind copyright:
"We want our readers to respect intellectual property," says Samson. "Intellectual property is arguably the biggest asset of this company. We value others' IP rights, and we want their IP rights to be respected."No, your IP is not your biggest asset. The readers and the community you've built up is -- and if you treat them badly by hoarding information, they might start to go elsewhere. Hiding behind copyright law to provide less valuable reporting is a cheap cop out, that doesn't befit a news organization of the NY Times' stature.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: copyright, journalism, sources
Companies: ny times
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Let people figure out how much info they want.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Apparently he values Copyright so much that he thinks it should trump the first amendment. That's exactly what he's saying. The protection of a possible copyright over a document is more important that the freedom of the press to expose the document.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
None of that is going on here.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
You missed the part that said
"or abridging the freedom of speech"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
For the vast majority of the public, I'm going to guess that interest in most of NYT's IP is insignificantly small. Printed newspapers often end up wrapping garbage a day or two after publication.
Readers and community may be the effect of what NYT publishes, but those things derive from the quality of what the paper supplies on an ongoing daily basis, not on its moldy IP.
Unless you're trying to make that case that NYT's IP is somehow going to be stolen before readers get a chance at the original output?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
so the value of content of a newspaper or magazine is an unknown, except to say it isnt zero. that should be enough.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Good to know.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
my purchasing of an orourke book with have everything to do with other books of his i have read, and stories he has written in the past that appears in magazines that i purchase.
not everything comes off the internet, something more teens like yourself dont know.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The fact that you want to own the book even though the exact same content is available elsewhere for free IS THE POINT.
Now that I know that it exists, (thanks by the way,) I want a copy too.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
RtB
It's something that more old farts like yourself should know.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
I mean, HONESTLY.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
newspapers should not care about IP and should be giving away as much content as possible in order to broaden their subscriber and reader base.
you say its stunning to not realize the value of IP and locking it up, i say its not only stunning but ultimately scary as hell to see anyone such as yourself blinded by the idea that IP trumps all and that the government should have any say whatsoever into an issue that the a free market should correct naturally on its own.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
(For example, the Hutaree indictment was directly linked from their story about it.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not much new here.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A CONVENIENT INTERPRETATION
This bit in particular bothers me:
"We want our readers to respect intellectual property," says Samson. "Intellectual property is arguably the biggest asset of this company. We value others' IP rights, and we want their IP rights to be respected."
The question has nothing to do with readers respecting their IP, rather the principle issue is one of permitting subsequent journalistic pieces the freedom to draw from the work of the Times' writers. We're talking about derivative works. We're debating the legitimacy of remix.
The Times position is synonymous with that of other media companies and is mind-numbingly boring, not to mention aggravating. How are we to have any sympathy for their plight in the age of globally-networked-information (i.e.their struggling business models) when their actions seek to limit innovation and perpetuate a broken, non-sharing system?
An important post from Tech Dirt. Thank you.
JNomics
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Its the Proprietary Channel
This approach has become a major business practice, look at companies that seek to lock their customers into their product lines. Apple uses a proprietary USB connector and makes it difficult for the user to really have open inter-connectivity. Newspapers, by only providing "internal" links, are essentially mimicking the practice limiting choice for the purpose of locking the consumer into their product universe.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
want free NEW YORK TIMES logins and passwords
isnt affecting my life. OH right your americans......
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So you value IP privileges because you want others to respect IP privileges, not because you think IP privileges are good for society, but only because these privileges are good for you.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So it's a do onto others as you would have others do onto you kinda thing.
How about this.
I don't mind others copying me and would in fact be honored (provided they aren't mocking me or something), therefore, I see nothing wrong with copying others.
In fact, I wouldn't have others prevent me from copying them therefore it is wrong for me to prevent others from copying me.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]