If You Think Writing For Free Undermines Your Profession, Just Don't Do It!

from the makes-me-want-to-write-for-the-huffington-post dept

I had kind of hoped we were done last month with the silly arguments about how writers should boycott writing for the Huffington Post because it doesn't pay people, when we explained how clueless the argument was. People who wrote for the Huffington Post for free did so out of their own free will. They did so for a variety of reasons, including the (free) exposure it gave their works. Assuming that any of those writers leveraged those works into greater success elsewhere (as some have), wouldn't we all think it's insane if Arianna Huffington suddenly called them up and demanded money for helping them get attention?

Of course we would. So why is anyone making the exact opposite argument? The latest is the Newspaper Guild, which should know better, but seems to be hellbent on attacking any innovative news platform that isn't a member of its old boys' club. It has called on all its members to boycott the Huffington Post with some really tortured logic. Let's dig in.

The Newspaper Guild is calling on unpaid writers of the Huffington Post to withhold their work in support of a strike launched by Visual Arts Source in response to the company’s practice or using unpaid labor. In addition, we are asking that our members and all supporters of fair and equitable compensation for journalists join us in shining a light on the unprofessional and unethical practices of this company.

Once again, "unpaid" is in the eye of the beholder. For many writers, the Huffington Post gave them a massive platform for attention, and attention is an incredibly valuable commodity. That the Newspaper Guild, of all places, doesn't understand this says some worrying things about the Newspaper Guild. As for "unprofessional and unethical," I would argue that the Newspaper Guild willfully misrepresenting the situation here is significantly more unethical and unprofessional than anything done by the Huffington Post. No one who wrote for the Huffington Post was misled about the arrangement. It's made quite clear upfront that if you're a blogger on the site, you don't get paid. You do get attention, however. It's then up to you to make the determination if it's worth it. If not, there are literally billions of other websites to go write for, or you can go create your own. Many people felt this was a fair trade: attention and platform in exchange for writing. Why claim it's unethical when so many people entered into it willingly?

Just as we would ask writers to stand fast and not cross a physical picket line, we ask that they honor this electronic picket line.

Good luck with that. The Huffington Post draws readers like almost no one else out there. If Newspaper Guild fans want to shut themselves off from that traffic firehose, that's their decision, just like it was their decision to use that firehose for free to get attention to their work.

In response to the Huffington Post’s refusal to compensate its thousands of writers in the wake of its $315 million merger with AOL, the Newspaper Guild has requested a meeting with company officials to discuss ways the Huffington Post might demonstrate its commitment to quality journalism. Thus far, the request has been ignored.

This is the part that bugs me the most. The whole $315 million merger bit is a total red herring, used to drum up emotion, but is meaningless. Again, would the Newspaper Guild support Arianna in asking someone who became successful, in part, by writing for the HuffPo for a cut of their earnings? Or, if the Huffington Post had run out of money, would the Guild have supported a request that the writers help hand over money to keep it running? Of course not. The investors and founders of the Huffington Post put the money in and took the risk. And they got rewarded for it. The writers did not. They didn't put their own money or equity on the line. They got the benefit of those who did. To then demand a piece of the $315 million suggests a complete misunderstanding of how basic capitalism works.

As Cherie Turner, one of the former writers, explained, "Certainly, we all have written for free for the great exposure the Huffington Post can give us, but what's the cost? Those of us on strike feel it undermines the value of our profession and is unethical, especially in light of great profits by those at the top. We are only asking for a fair share of what we are helping to create. We are also speaking out against real journalism being run side-by-side with advertorial.

"We feel it is unethical to expect trained and qualified professionals to contribute quality content for nothing. It is unethical to cannibalize the investment of other organizations that bear the cost of compensation and other overhead without payment for the usage of their content. It is extremely unethical to not merely blur but eradicate the distinction between the independent and informed voice of news and opinion and the voice of a shill.

In other words, Turner and her group want to get double paid. They know the deal they made: to get exposure. But apparently now that's not enough. They want to get paid for the exposure they got as well? And if they didn't get their "fair share" then why did Turner and her friends write for HuffPo in the first place? It's like the Newspaper Guild is flat out admitting that it's completely clueless on basic economics.

Honestly, I get two key urges out of this move by the Newspaper Guild: (1) figure out if there's any way to "short" the Newspaper Guild for pure economic cluelessness and (2) suddenly I feel like writing for the Huffington Post in protest against those who are now "boycotting." Oh, and one final point: it's not a boycott. It just means you're turning down the traffic that HuffPo gave you. I'm sure HuffPo can survive fine without you. Whether or not you can survive without that attention... well, we'll see.

Filed Under: payment, writing
Companies: aol, huffington post, newspaper guild

Why The Arguments That The Huffington Post Must Pay Bloggers Is Misguided: Payment Isn't Just Money

from the you-made-the-choice dept

We didn't mention the whole AOL buying Huffington Post story earlier this week, because there just didn't seem to be that much to say about it. It was an interesting deal, to be sure, and I'll be curious to watch what AOL does with the property, but, beyond that, it seemed like just another content acquisition deal. However, almost immediately after the deal went through, I started seeing some rumblings on Twitter, picking at the scab that has always annoyed a certain group of people about The Huffington Post: that it doesn't pay most of its writers. Sure enough, it didn't take long for this issue to start to spread, with the inevitable summary line of: "Hey, HuffPo became famous because all these people worked for free, and yet, they don't get a cut of the sale."

That story is now snowballing. Dan Gilmor wrote a blog post arguing that it was the "ethical" thing to do to start paying bloggers. Douglas Ruskoff said that he'd no longer blog on the site for free. And, of course, a bunch of cranky HuffPo contributors have created a whole campaign arguing that Arianna Huffington had no right to sell the site, since it was built off of their free labor.

They're all wrong.

Of course, we've been through this before. Five years ago, Nick Carr tried to argue that all the various big Web 2.0 sites like (at the time) Digg, YouTube and MySpace were really digital sharecroppers exploiting labor. As we argued at the time, this was hogwash. People were using those sites because they provided a valuable service. The reason they provided labor was because they got something of value in return -- whether it was attention or hosting or distribution or reputation.

Three years ago, we saw an almost identical controversy after AOL bought Bebo and musician Billy Bragg demanded some of the $850 million AOL paid (in retrospect, a massively bad decision). Bragg argued that Bebo made this money based on all of the "free labor" of musicians who used the site. But that ignored the fact that those musicians got tremendous value in using the Bebo platform to connect with fans and distribute their music... all for free. The folks who got to keep the money were the ones who took the actual risk. The ones who had to cover the expenses to keep the site and the service running, even when it wasn't making enough revenue. They took the risk, they should get the reward. The people who used the site did so of their own free will knowing quite well that the benefit they got from using the service was worth it to them at the time. Along those lines, if Bebo had struggled and faced bankruptcy instead of a massive buyout, would Bragg have felt obligated to give them money to keep it going? Similarly, if HuffPo had been running out of money, and Arianna had gone back and demanded that those who used the platform pay up retroactively, how would these people have reacted?

There are more ways to "get paid" than with money.

The reason that people chose to blog for free at the Huffington Post was because it's a fantastic platform for exposure. It brings traffic like no one else out there, and if you want to present something in a way that's likely to get more attention than on your own blog that no one visits, posting at HuffPo can be quite a good way to go.

And that's the point: the people who chose -- of their own free will -- to post at the Huffington Post for free did so because they clearly got value out of doing so. Otherwise, why would they have done so in the first place? To then say that the only proper thing is to pay them is completely missing the point. It's an attempt to retroactively go back and change the terms of a deal. If you wanted to get paid directly for what you write, fine, don't write for the Huffington Post. It's that simple. Go out and pitch your stories to publishers who pay freelancers. But don't go back and complain afterwards when the folks who actually did take the risk of putting together the site, financing it, organizing it, hiring the staff, buying the servers, paying for the bandwidth, and building it up so that it was such a successful platform, then get paid for their efforts.

Filed Under: business models, payment, platforms, value
Companies: aol, huffington post

Bank Of America -- Thought To Be Wikileaks Next Target -- Suddenly Tries To Block Payments To Wikileaks

from the barn-door-back-there dept

This is pretty amusing. Back at the end of November, Wikileaks had indicated that its next leak involved a very large US bank that was apparently doing some bad things -- and many people zeroed in on Bank of America as the target. And then, just a few weeks later, Bank of America announces (late on a Friday night, in an attempt to hide it) that it will join Paypal, Visa and Mastercard in trying to block all payments to Wikileaks.

Of course, I don't quite see how Bank of America does that. Is Bank of America really saying that it can block you from spending your money the way you want to? About the only thing it can really do is stop direct wire transfers, but I'd imagine not too many people are doing that. As for systems like Flattr, which is currently a way of supporting Wikileaks financially, I really don't see how any of the above firms can block people from using Flattr to support Wikileaks. All anyone knows with Flatter is that they're supporting Flattr, so you can use Visa or MasterCard via Paypal to pay Flattr, and then Flattr Wikileaks, and those financial firms won't know the difference.

It seems like all these financial firms are really doing is highlighting how they, too, don't quite understand the nature of a distributed internet, and a distributed payment infrastructure -- even if they think they power it.

Filed Under: blocks, payment, wikileaks
Companies: bank of america, wikileaks

US IP Czar Gets Companies To Cut Off Unlicensed Online Pharmacies

from the borderline... dept

Earlier this year, we noted that the US IP Czar, Victoria Espinel, had been making the rounds to ISPs, registrars, payment processors and others to get them to agree to voluntarily start shutting off certain "infringing" sites. Now we see the results of those talks. Espinel has announced that a variety of companies -- including Google, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Network Solutions -- have apparently agreed to effectively disappear and cut off certain websites. The focus, for now, is on "unlicensed web pharmacies," with the idea being that these companies will effectively kill off those sites:

Together, the firms hope to tackle every link in the chain that keeps unlicensed pharmacies operating by stopping them showing up in search results, taking their websites offline, delisting the domains they use and stopping payments reaching them.

Think COICA without COICA -- but just with government pressure on companies. Seeing Visa, Mastercard and Paypal on the list certainly isn't surprising, after those three already did the same thing in cutting off Wikileaks. However, it's a bit surprising to see Google agree to this (Update: Google says that it's only agreed to cut off advertising that violates its policies). If there's a trial and these sites are found guilty of violating the law, then I can see cutting them off -- but once again, it appears that this is the government trying to kill off websites, without a trial.

And, yes, it's for "unlicensed web pharmacies," and everyone plays up the spam and the fake (potentially dangerous) drugs. Those are a serious problem. But they also lump in the (quite common) grey market pharmacies as well -- which often allow people to get drugs from outside the country at much more affordable rates. Shutting down fake drug sellers is fine. Shutting down the grey market drug sellers is a bit of a bigger issue.

On top of that, given the recent ICE domain seizures and the whole COICA law -- both of which Espinel has spoken out in favor of -- it's not hard to see how the mandate behind this particular program is quite likely to grow well beyond "unauthorized web pharmacies" to other sites as well. In fact, MasterCard has apparently already agreed to cut off websites deemed "pirate" sites.

Filed Under: copyright, cut off, ip czar, isps, payment, pharmacies, victoria espinel
Companies: google, mastercard, network solutions, paypal, visa

Will Rupert Murdoch Pay Me For Making Money Off Links To Techdirt?

from the I'm-sending-an-invoice dept

You may recall that over in the UK there has been a bit of a battle between online news aggregator NewsNow (which, again, in my experience is one of the best aggregators out there) and various newspapers who are demanding payment from the company. The issue is not NewsNow's "free" aggregator, but the fact that NewsNow makes most of its money from offering businesses custom, private aggregation of links. NewsNow isn't providing full content at all -- just links and headlines. But the complaint from newspapers is that NewsNow is selling this service to companies and making money from it -- and thus, they deserve a cut.

Now, as the battle has escalated, it appears that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has taken the next step and blocked links coming from NewsNow. It's not clear what happens to NewsNow users who click on News Corp. stories, but apparently they don't get the story. The link above goes through all of the many, many reasons that it is absolutely a bad idea, and extremely "anti-internet" to block links from anywhere, but this whole thing got me thinking.

Based on Murdoch and News Corp's reasoning here, I believe Murdoch owes me money.

After all, News Corp. is most certainly a commercial enterprise. And, as we all know, the Wall Street Journal charges many people money in the form of subscription fees (just like NewsNow does) for access to the information it provides. Now, over the past couple of years, the Wall Street Journal online has linked to Techdirt more than a couple of times. A quick search of their archives shows at least nine stories over the past two years. So, if Murdoch is saying that NewsNow can't charge a subscription and link to him, why is it okay for him to charge a subscription and link to me?

Clearly, the answer is that Rupert Murdoch owes me money. Consider my invoice on the way... Of course, the alternative answer is that Murdoch doesn't owe me a dime... and NewsNow doesn't owe Murdoch either. But how can that be? It isn't like we've seen Rupert Murdoch suggest that rules that apply to others don't apply to him. Oh wait....

Filed Under: linking, payment
Companies: news corp., newsnow

Store Payment Info In Your Online Store? Watch Out For Patent Infringement Lawsuits

from the pay-now dept

Bill Squier alerts us to the news that a bunch of companies have been sued for daring to store consumer payment information and allow either stored value payments or one-click payments on their site. The article linked here focuses on Apple as a defendant, and notes 14 other companies were sued as well, but in researching this, I found that Joe Mullin actually wrote about another batch of companies (20 of them) that were sued back in April. The earlier lawsuit included Google, Wal-Mart, Bank of America, Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, Mastercard, Visa, Vivendi, Disney and Western Union among others. The more recent lawsuit has (as mentioned) Apple, Best Buy, Amazon, American Express, Barnes & Noble, Citigroup and eBay among others. So... basically any online e-commerce site, credit card company or big bank.

As for the patents in question, they're all a variation on a "method and apparatus for conducting electronic commerce transactions using electronic tokens." The specific patents are 7,376,621, 7,249,099, 7,328,189 and 7,177,838. Reading through the claims, this seems like an incredibly typical online system for storing payment info and seeing if the person can actually pay. Since the patent system defenders among our readers get quite upset whenever I say something seems "obvious" to me, let's flip this around. Can anyone explain how these concepts were not obvious at the time of filing?

Not surprisingly, the cases have been filed in Marshall, Texas... and as Joe Mullin figured out, the guy who is running "Actus" is a lawyer known for representing some infamous patent hoarding companies. He also discovered that the lawyer representing Actus in these lawsuits appears to share an office (or at least the same address) with the son (who is also a patent attorney) of the judge handling the case. At some point, do people start questioning whether or not there's a conflict of interest there?

Filed Under: patents, payment
Companies: actus, amazon, american express, apple, bank of america, barnes & noble, best buy, capital one, citigroup, disney, ebay, google, jp morgan, mastercard, visa, vivendi, wal-mart, western union

FBI Not Good At Paying Wiretap Bills

from the a-near-total-mess dept

While the FBI has regularly decided that court orders aren't necessary for wiretaps, it is a bit surprising to find out that it seems to feel the same way about paying the bills for wiretaps. Newly released info show that the FBI often failed to pay its wiretapping bills, leading one telco to cut off the FBI's wiretaps until it finally paid up. Given how screwed up the FBI's computer systems are, perhaps it's not surprising that they don't have an acceptable accounts payable system either.

Filed Under: fbi, payment, wiretaps
Companies: fbi