UK Politician Believes News Organizations Should Hide Articles During Important Trials

from the where-theory-meets-reality-and-reality-laughs dept

A former Lord Chancellor in the UK (who was in charge of running the legal system, apparently) is suggesting that on certain important lawsuits, news organizations be forced not to report on the case and to remove any articles in archives that could influence the case, as he's worried about the articles influencing the outcome. This, of course, is similar to the story we were discussing yesterday, where a California court forced Wikileaks offline so it wouldn't influence a Swiss lawsuit. Of course, the response to that should be instructive of what would happen in the UK. Almost immediately, people started mirroring the content and making sure it was widely available. In fact, the very effort of trying to hide that content drove much more attention to it -- something that should come as no surprise to those familiar with the Streisand Effect. Also, thanks to the internet, where anyone can effectively report on any topic, it's impossible to see how the UK would successfully ban and block any reports on these particular cases. Sure, it's nice in theory to say that you don't want reporting that would influence the outcome of a case. Unfortunately, reality is unlikely to cooperate with that theory.

Filed Under: banning, censorship, news, trials

Reuters Wants To Add Value To Anyone's News Stories

from the watch-this-space dept

While the Associated Press has talked a lot about adapting to a new internet-centric world, there's still very little evidence that it's doing anything different. It's still trying to act like a gatekeeper rather than an enabler. However, it appears that Reuters is actually experimenting with something interesting. It has a new project, called OpenCalais, designed to help any information provider extract useful metadata from written content. In other words, it's an automated system that you can run an article or a blog post through, and it will return useful data in a structured manner. For example, if you wrote an article about Google's earning report, it would note that the article was about Google, that it had to do with an earnings report, and maybe connect some important other points. The idea, then, is that the more useful semantic data that's there, the more useful things that can be done on top of it. For those who believe that better use of semantic data is the key opportunity for newspapers to jump to the internet age, this could represent a very big deal. Of course, there's a very big "if" in that statement. The service actually needs to work well and be useful. It also needs to attract users. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here, as the really useful apps built on top of that data won't come unless the data itself is available. Having Reuters behind the project suggests a strong initial base of content, but it remains to be seen how much adoption can actually be driven through this system. Some of it may depend on how much in the way of resources Reuters has put behind this project to jumpstart it (and whether that commitment continues after Reuter's acquisition by Thomson Financial closes). Either way, it's an experiment worth following, and one a lot more interesting than simply demanding that people pay more money.

Filed Under: metadata, news, opencalais, semantic news
Companies: reuters

Another Attempt To Reinvent What A 'News' Provider Really Should Provide

from the about-time dept

We've been talking quite a bit lately about the news industry, all too often focusing on journalists (or former journalists) whining about the old days or making ridiculous or downright bizarre proposals for how to turn back time. Many of these are based on a faulty understanding of either economics or the very past they long to return to -- which never really existed in the first place.

Rather than pining for a mythical past, however, folks in the newspaper business should be looking at new opportunities and new models that are making themselves available every day. It starts by forgetting that they're "newspapers" and focusing instead on what real business they're in. That also means recognizing that the definition of "news" is different these days than it was in the past. When you had limited sources of information and only a few ways to get news, news was "big" stories that couldn't be covered elsewhere. But those big stories are everywhere these days, and newspapers don't add any additional value to those stories. Instead, "news" is a much more personalized experience, with different people valuing different types of "news" and information in very different ways. This is why teenagers have already shifted to sources that provide news that's actually relevant to them.

Based on all of this, it's good to see new companies springing up that are trying to take on this challenge. The buzz today is about the launch of Everyblock, a new "hyperlocal" news provider that recognizes "news" is different to different people -- and things like what building permits are being requested and what restaurants are being inspected may be news if they're on your block or places you go to regularly. It's no surprise that this company was started by Adrian Holovaty, whose ideas on how to reinvent the news business we discussed a few years ago. For years, he tried to put many of these ideas into practice within the framework of some traditional newspapers, so now it'll be interesting to see how well it goes from the point of view of a brand new startup.

Filed Under: adrian holovaty, data, news, newspapers
Companies: everyblock

Stop Scaring Teens With The News

from the the-front-page-is-irrelevant dept

A recent study reports that while most teenagers describe their online experiences on YouTube as a "treat," most classify their online news experiences as stressful or a "reminder of the world's dangers." Furthermore, most of the teenagers in the study do not actively keep up with the news. Rarely, if ever, do they go directly to the news websites, but rather end up there from portals and news aggregators, and only then if something catches their eye. The report recommends that news organizations help allay teen angst by making their sites better springboards for conversations and being more focused on solutions and problem-solvers. That said, is this really a problem with online news? Perhaps the way traditional news organizations approach the news is actually the problem. How many teenagers regularly watch the evening news? Perhaps news organizations should study why The Daily Show and Digg are so popular, since both present news in a more relevant, palatable, and oftentimes, more humorous fashion. Maybe it's not the online-ness of the news that is the cause of their waning popularity, but rather, the fact that they are at risk of becoming irrelevant to a new generation of news consumers.

Filed Under: news, teenagers

TechDaily Is The Latest Paywall Casualty

from the too-expensive dept

Here at Techdirt, we've been paywall skeptics for a long time, and the last year has given us a lot of examples to support that view, as company after company has dropped their paywalls. Jim Harper points us to the latest example of a failed paywall-based business model, although this one is a little sadder than the others we've covered: TechDaily, an in-depth tech news service for the inside-the-beltway crowd, has announced that it will close up shop early next year. TechDaily's paywall was a lot higher than the other paywalls we've seen fall this year: Jim Harper reports that a year's subscription could set you back more than a thousand bucks. In the late 1990s, that was worth the money to the well-compensated lobbyists who depended on it to stay abreast of the latest developments in the regulatory issues affecting their clients, but it appears that competition has intensified and TechDaily wasn't able to hold onto enough subscribers to stay in business. Jim switched to the dramatically cheaper (but still not free) Tech Law Journal long ago. And others may have concluded that they could get enough information from blogs and mainstream news sites that it wasn't worth the extra money for TechDaily's exclusive coverage. I suspect that the biggest weakness of TechDaily's business model was that it's extremely difficult to grow your subscriber base when you've got such a high paywall. Traffic growth on the web requires that you be part of the conversation, and a high paywall means that not only will ordinary readers not be able to read your stories, but a lot of bloggers (including me) won't either. Which means that even if you've got a great product (which by all accounts TechDaily did) very few people are going to find out about it, and even fewer will be willing to shell out the thousand bucks it costs to find out if it's worth the hype.

Filed Under: news, paywall
Companies: techdaily

AP Sues VeriSign For Copyright Infringement; Mostly Pointless

from the what's-going-on-here? dept

The Associated Press is apparently suing VeriSign's Moreover for copyright infringement, though the details are woefully unclear (even in the AP version of the article). It's unclear if the complaint is over the fact that Moreover scrapes and links people to AP content, or if there's something else going on (Update below). If it is just that Moreover is pointing people to AP content, then this is quite ridiculous -- but most likely driven by the AP's ability to get Google to pay up for the same thing. The article hints that there may be a bigger problem with Moreover providing the full text of the content, but details are lacking. If it is true that Moreover provides the full text -- then they probably are violating the copyright. However, if that content is simply stored away for indexing purposes, and people are sent to legitimate AP sources, then it's hard to see how this is a copyright violation at all. If anything, it's the opposite -- pointing more people to AP content. The AP is also complaining that Moreover lists the AP as a news source on its site -- but that's just a petty complaint from the AP. Listing out news sources hardly is a violation of trademark. Hell, the AP is a "news source" for the content we write here on Techdirt all the time -- and there's nothing wrong with saying so. All in all, unless more details prove otherwise, this sounds like the AP continuing to struggle with the changing marketplace it's facing, and lashing out at one of the companies that helps deliver more traffic to AP content for not paying the AP for the privilege of promoting AP content.

Update: Rafat Ali from PaidContent stopped by in the comments to point to the full lawsuit documents, posted on his site. From there, it appears that the AP's lawsuit is mostly ridiculous, with just a little tiny bit of reasonable thrown in. Most of the claims are about the fact that Moreover is spidering and scraping AP news feeds, and providing both free and paid subscribers headlines and the opening lede. However, it's pretty difficult for the AP to make a copyright claim here, since those links are almost definitely fair use, especially since they point people to legitimate AP licensees. There's a little gray area where Moreover indexes and caches the articles on its own servers -- but Google has been doing that for years without much of a problem -- and if the AP is really upset about it, there's always the old robots.txt solution. The one area where the AP may have a claim (though, the evidence does not seem clear from the exhibits) is in saying that there are times when Moreover will show subscribers a full AP article hosted on its own servers, rather than passing them through to a licensee. If true, then that would likely be copyright infringement -- though the "damages" would be minimal, if anything. Finally, the claim that this is an AP trademark infringement by listing the AP as a news source seems laughable. All in all, the original assessment stands: this is the AP unable to adapt and lashing out at those who are helping to promote their content.

Filed Under: copyright, news, scraping
Companies: associated press, moreover, verisign

NFL Still Thinks It Can Tell News Organizations How They Can Report The News

from the that's-not-how-this-all-works dept

Back in July, we couldn't figure out how the NFL could get away with telling news organizations that they could only put 45 seconds of video online that had either game clips or videos of players. This made no sense. The NFL does not have any right to determine how reporters report the news. If they conduct their own interviews with players or film their own footage, they should be able to broadcast as much of it as they feel appropriate. They also shouldn't (as demanded by the NFL) have to link back to the NFL's official website. While these may be what the NFL wants, it has no way of actually enforcing this -- as news reporters don't need the NFL's permission to broadcast an interview they filmed with a player. However, it still seems like broadcasters aren't up to challenging the NFL on this bogus rule. Reader Jon writes in to let us know that the NFL (how kind of it) has exempted NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN from these rules. However, the reasoning isn't that the NFL never had the right to demand such things of news organizations in the first place -- but that these TV networks have already paid fees to the NFL averaging more than $3 billion a year. Therefore, the NFL figures, they might as well post slightly more video online. Of course, this is still ridiculous. If any news organization wants to film their own interviews with players and broadcast them online, that's between the player being interviewed and the news organization. The NFL should have no say at all over what a news organization can or cannot post on their website. Any news organization going along with these restrictions should have its journalistic integrity questioned, since they're allowing the subjects of a story to dictate how they present the news.

Filed Under: control, fair use, news, nfl, reporting
Companies: nfl