The Trend Of Killing News Comment Sections Because You 'Just Really Value Conversation' Stupidly Continues

from the mute-button dept

Over the last year, there has been a tidal wave of websites that have decided to close their news comment sections because the companies are no longer willing to invest time and effort into cultivating healthy on-site discussion. While that's any site's prerogative, these announcements have all too often been accompanied by amusing, disingenuous claims that the reason these sites are muting their on-site audience is because they're simply looking to build relationships or just really value conversation. Nothing says "we care about your opinions" like a shiny new muzzle, right?

And judging from this NiemanLab conversation with a lot of the sites that have chosen to shutter comments, most of the websites have no intention of looking back. After all, what's the use of a local, loyal, on-site community when you can just offload all conversation (and that traffic) to Facebook and Twitter, right? Dan Colarusso, executive editor of Reuters, for example, doesn't think comments are important because damnit people -- Reuters isn't looking to argue!

"We’re not the kind of news organization that’s about giving our ‘take’ on something. We’re not looking to start an argument; we’re looking to report the news. We felt that, since so much of the conversation around stories had gravitated toward social, that was the better place for that discourse to happen. We did keep comments on our opinion pieces, because we felt that that is where you are trying to start an argument in the best possible way."

Except comments aren't just about having arguments, they're a legitimate and transparent avenue for readers to publicly correct your errors right below the original article, which is something many of these sites likely grew tired of. Sure, poorly managed comments can devolve into a cesspool of banality, but good commenters almost always offer insights the writer or website may have missed, could have been wrong on, or never even thought of. In short, we want you to comment -- we just want you to comment privately so our errors aren't quite so painfully highlighted. For the sake of conversation, of course.

Last week On The Media was the latest to quietly kill comments on the bottom of its newsletter, informing readers that comments just don't provide the "kind of dialogue" they wanted:

"We value our listeners above all and are always keen to know what you're thinking, to hear your questions and concerns, to get feedback on what you like and dislike. So why shut down the comment section? As we hear more from listeners through Facebook and Twitter and directly through our website, we've concluded that the comment section just isn't the best way to have the kind of dialogue we want with our listeners."

By "kind of dialogue" you mean transparent and public? Over at the last bastion of website interaction known as Twitter, Mike amusingly highlighted the disjointed logic of claiming to value dialogue while dramatically reducing the number of avenues for it, and the website's response doesn't really make sense:

@mmasnick @onthemedia Our commenters risk nothing by owning their words. There's a rich mix of love and hate right here. And more readers.

— Brooke Gladstone (@OTMBrooke) September 17, 2015

Of course "nobody in our writing or editorial staff wants to take the time to cultivate local on-site community" or "we don't like having our mistakes highlighted publicly right below our articles" don't make for very good explanations when it's time to save a little money and axe ye olde comment section. So what we get instead are these vague bloviations about how this is really about an evolution in conversation, and punting the problem to Facebook is really the best thing for everyone. It's really time for some new, flimsy excuses for why websites can't be bothered to value local, on-site dialogue, because "we killed a major, on-site avenue of conversation for the sake of conversation" still doesn't really sound all that convincing.

Filed Under: comments, news, on the media, value conversation

Crowdsourcing Journalistic Pressure On Congress To Get Answers About DHS's Treatment Of US Citizens At The Border

from the join-in dept

A few weeks ago, we were among many who were stunned to hear the story of On the Media producer Sarah Abdurrahman on the show about how she, her family, and a bunch of friends were all detained at the Canadian/American border by US Customs and Border Patrol agents (CBP) in two different locations. Every single one of the people detained were American citizens, and they were all treated absolutely horribly. Many had their electronics confiscated, and they were kept in freezing conditions without any explanation or recourse. One man was taken away from his family, put in a cell, and then his family was told that "an agency" was coming to deal with him, and they were told nothing further (only later to find out it was because of an unpaid ticket from years ago.

Perhaps even more horrifying than the treatment that they all went through was the complete lack of response to any and all journalistic questions about this. The DHS basically refused to return any calls and just ignored the matter. Abdurrahman was able to get one person from one of the border crossings on the phone at one point, and was basically told that he wasn't going to tell her anything. The sheer lack of accountability, concern or transparency was both shocking and depressing. Since then, On the Media has continued to try to get answers... and has come up empty. Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol appear to be taking the position that maybe if they ignore this situation it'll go away.

Not likely.

In talking their situation over with some experts, the OTM team was told that the way to deal with this was to get Congress to hold DHS accountable, and the way to do that is to have constituents of Representatives who have oversight authority concerning DHS to call their Reps and demand answers. OTM has tried calling their own Reps without much luck, so they've instead decided to crowdsource the journalistic effort. They're asking basically all of their listeners to put on their journalist hats, and to call Congress, asking some specific questions. If that listener happens to be represented by someone on a DHS oversight committee, it connects you directly to that office. Otherwise, they'll pick randomly from the list (of course, non-constituent calls tend to have less sway with Congress).

To make this even easier, they've built a tool to make it easy to call Congress, complete with the list of questions they'd like you to ask and a form to fill out the answers. Oh, and they've made the whole thing embeddable. It's at the bottom of this post. For those who think this doesn't have an impact, you should never underestimate the power of phone calls to your Representatives. They tend to have significantly more influence that most people expect.

Filed Under: border patrol, cbp, crowdsourcing, customs and border patrol, homeland security, journalism, on the media

A Look At 'Ownership' Society

from the it's-gotten-out-of-hand dept

We're big fans here of the WNYC radio show On The Media which regularly covers a number of the same issues we cover here at Techdirt. So we were quite thrilled to hear that their latest episode was entirely devoted to one of our favorite topics: The Past, Present, and Future of Ownership, mostly as it relates to ownership of things that are non-rivalrous and non-excludable. There were lots of great segments:

• The Current State of Ownership: which covered the DRM Chair, and also talks to one of our favorite scholars on the subject, Professor James Boyle, about how the concept of "ownership" of culture has gone too far.
• Happy Birthday: which explored the history of the song and the claims that Warner Music owns it -- even though all of the evidence suggests that Happy Birthday is 100% in the public domain. In the segment, producer PJ Vogt suggests that he wanted to test this by putting up a version of the song on iTunes, but unfortunately, their lawyers nixed that idea.
• Fan Fiction and the Law: in which they talk to another of our favorite scholars, Rebecca Tushnet on the nature of fair use.
• 3D Printing, in which Chris Anderson explains how 3D printing is going to change the world in amazing and astounding ways.
• Don't Screw It Up, in which Public Knowledge's Michael Weinberg worries about politicians killing off all those amazing and astounding things that Chris Anderson talked about once they freak out about how 3D printing will disrupt a bunch of industries.
• Plaigiarism: Maybe It's Not So Bad where they talk to professor Kenneth Goldsmith, the new poet laureate of the NY MOMA, who apparently thinks that plagiarism is an art form. He apparently has his students buy an online term paper, hand it in, and then has them defend it as if it was their own. At one point, he notes that students are doing this anyway, so he might as well teach them to be better at it.

All in all a great program for folks interested in these topics. There was only one segment that I found disappointing. I get the feeling someone at OTM felt they needed someone to represent "the other side" of the argument that "ownership society" has gone too far, and so they had musician and critic of the "new media world," David Lowery (you may recall him from the past, like when he claimed that Apple iTunes did nothing more than host songs, leaving out the whole aspect of bringing everyone together, processing payments, etc.) In that segment, he chooses to take a swipe at The Sky is Rising report, which I co-authored, and he does so by completely misrepresenting what's in the report, as he has done in the past. I responded in the comments on that story on OTM's own site, and a lively discussion has ensued. Furthermore, Lowery took a completely gratuitous swipe at Amanda Palmer, bizarrely suggesting that the only reason she's successful is her penchant for getting naked. His disdain for someone who actually is successful by embracing fans and the internet is quite clear and insulting to the thousands of artists who have found success online whether or not they get naked. I don't mind people disagreeing with my opinion, but flat out saying we said stuff we never said is pretty bad, as is gratuitous insults for successful artists like Amanda Palmer, and it hurts OTM's reputation to present such things in that format.

Either way, it's great to see the rest of the segments get public attention, as more and more people are recognizing that copyright law today is broken, and is creating a society where a focus on "ownership" takes things so far, as to actually hinder the rights of the public in dangerous ways.

Filed Under: 3d printing, chris anderson, copyright, excludable, james boyle, non-rivalrous, on the media, ownership, ownership society, property, rebecca tushnet

NY Public Radio Station WNYC Decides That Time Shifting = Piracy

from the for-shame dept

I grew up in NY, and used to listen to WNYC quite a bit as a kid. It's the local public radio station. I'm pretty sure my parents still listen to it all the time. Also, I'm a huge fan of WNYC's On The Media program, which I link to frequently (and, full disclosure, who have had me on as a guest a couple of times). So it's somewhat disappointing to find out that someone at the organization appears to think that timeshifting is piracy. It is not, and the organization is wrong.

Trey Harris is a big fan of WNYC, and a regular pledge drive supporter. Of course, to make his listening easier, he uses a program called Flip4Mac, which not only lets him listen to the streams, but lets him do some basic time shifting of the streams: pause, rewind, fast-forward, etc. This makes the WNYC feed more valuable and useful for him, and he's shown it by supporting them even more, having recently increased his yearly contribution.

Unfortunately, WNYC thinks he's a crook. A few days ago, the app stopped working with the WNYC feed. Trey contacted them to let them know that there must be a bug that needed fixing... and he was told instead that the app had been blocked because of piracy! As he notes, the folks making the decisions at WNYC apparently are wholly unfamiliar with the ruling in the Betamax case that says that time-shifting is legal. It's why VCRs and DVRs are legal. There's no reason why streaming audio shouldn't be legal as well.

After complaining about this publicly, WNYC (actually, the "donor's office") contacted him to clarify. They said that they weren't accusing him of piracy, but that their streaming provider said that app was used for piracy, and that's why it was blocked. Still, they argued that time shifting is "piracy"... but only if done online.

She agreed that if I used a tape recorder, or a digital recorder, to store the over-the-air broadcast, I could listen to it later, pause, rewind, etc. But she said when it went over the Internet it was different. I brought up the TiVo example, and she responded that video-on-demand programs often disallow fast-forwarding. "It's a whole new world," she said.

It's not "a whole new world," in the way she thinks. There is no requirement that a DVR disable things like fast-forwarding. There is certainly no reason for them to disable this use. It's not "piracy." They're broadcasting this free over the air, and this is just someone recording the legitimate stream. All of that is perfectly legal. The only reason to break the ability to do this is to piss off legitimate listeners.

Of course, even if WNYC officials are totally wrong about this, it's really not that surprising. In a world of copyright maximalism, where we're continually taught about "ownership" of ideas and content, even where it doesn't make sense, some people almost have an instinctual reaction to think that any use like this must be "illegal" somehow. It is not, and it's a shame that WNYC seems to be sticking to this bogus explanation. Of course, I also wonder why WNYC thinks of services like dar.fm, which appears to offer up a bunch of WNYC shows for time shifting.

The whole thing remains pretty silly, of course. Time shifting is legal. An operation like WNYC shouldn't just be fine with it, it should encourage it because it makes their shows more valuable, meaning more people will listen -- and more people will be interested in donating and supporting what they do. It's a shame that they clearly haven't thought this through and simply jumped to the false conclusion that this was some sort of evil piracy.

Filed Under: on the media, public radio, timeshifting
Companies: wnyc

Discussing SOPA/PIPA Over At On The Media

from the have-fun-with-it dept

Been meaning to get to this for a few days now, but finally had the chance now. Last week the always excellent radio program On The Media from WNYC, I had a bit of a discussion on SOPA/PIPA (and the Megaupload shutdown). I was on the first segment discussing some of the problems with the bills. The actual interview happened Tuesday, before the big protest, before all the politicians dropped off, and before the Megaupload takedown occurred. Otherwise I might have had a few more comments about all of that. There's probably not too much surprising in what I have to say if you're a regular reader of my SOPA/PIPA coverage.

Right after me, however, they also talked to Steve Tepp from the US Chamber of Commerce. Tepp is the point person at the USCoC who has been more or less in charge of getting SOPA/PIPA passed. Amusingly, the segment that I recorded with OTM was recorded about half an hour after I got off stage at the Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the Net event, where I debated Tepp on some of these issues (video from that is apparently forthcoming). If I'd known they were going to have both of us on, perhaps we could have both gone into the same empty ballroom at the hotel to record the session together. Either way, Tepp, says a bunch of things that I believe are simply not true.

"The legislation is, in fact, very narrowly targeted. The bill requires - for example, the Senate bill, the Protect IP Act, that the website in question be dedicated to infringing activities, that its primary design and primary use is counterfeiting or piracy."

I know that SOPA/PIPA supporters love to say this, but they do so while ignoring what the specific definitions say. The problem is how broadly worded and open to interpretation the definitions actually are. While the most recent version of SOPA trimmed back some of the more ridiculous parts of the definition found in the original SOPA, I can't think of anyone who's looked at these laws objectively and seen them to be truly narrowly tailored. That may be the intention, but the language suggests otherwise.

Thankfully OTM host Bob Garfield calls Tepp out when Tepp tries to claim that all of the people protesting against the bill are doing so because of "misinformation online." Garfield notes that Google is against the bill, and it's not like it got its information via a Google search. Tepp's response is misleading:

Well, the one provision that got all these folks excited was the requirement that after the Attorney General brings a case and after a Federal court finds that a site is dedicated to this criminal activity, that the site not be reachable from the United States, that the Internet companies would block access to that site. And that's what a lot of folks said, oh, this is -- this is a problem for the Internet, it's gonna break the Internet.

Now, that seemed to me to be quite overblown but, in any event, in the spirit of compromise, sponsors of both the Senate bill and the House bill have said, we're gonna roll that back. And yet, folks are moving the goalpost and saying, nope, still not good enough. So I don't know what the concern is. To me if I get what I ask for, I stop complaining.

That was indeed one very big problem with the bill, but it was hardly the only problem. And Google and many others laid out a bunch of problems. The fact that DNS blocking was delayed (not removed, by the way) hardly fixed the problems. To pretend that that was all that Google wanted would be to ignore what Google has actually been saying. Either way, Tepp goes on to trot out the standard talking points:

But at the end of the day, we know that protecting American consumers and protecting American jobs from foreign criminals is in the best interest of this country. We know that members of Congress are gonna see that. And we are going to hold their feet to the fire and make sure that these criminals can't continue to get away scott free.

Except, of course, as was shown the very next day after the interview took place, existing laws already have the power for the US to take down foreign websites and arrest foreign website owners. That certainly seems to deflate much of the argument that Tepp has been making. Furthermore, it's worth noting that one of Tepp's favorite talking points -- about there being "53 billion visits" to these "foreign rogue websites," involves a study that concluded that Megaupload supplies a rather large percentage of those 53 billion visits. So, why, again, do we need this new bill?

If anything, the Megaupload takedowns are showing exactly the fears that many people worried about with SOPA. That is, even if Megaupload execs were skirting the law, the takedown has caused tons of legitimate users of Megaupload to lose out on their own content and storage, disrupted businesses, and caused many other cyberlockers to have to remove useful features, or block access to US users. These are exactly the kinds of collateral damage that people were worried about in protesting SOPA/PIPA -- and now they're realizing that the US government already has that power, and Tepp's insistence that there would be no real damage to anyone other than "foreign criminals" has been proven wrong.

Filed Under: on the media, pipa, protect ip, sopa, steven tepp
Companies: us chamber of commerce

On The Media Takes On The Music Industry

from the good-summary dept

WNYC's excellent radio program On The Media this week decided to spend an hour discussing the music industry. It's quite well done, in that it highlights how this is actually a great time in the music industry for musicians and fans -- with the only party really in trouble being the old record labels. The program talks to numerous knowledgeable people, including James Boyle, Amanda Palmer, Greg Kot and others. The one section, however, that I thought was a bit weak, was the section on live shows. That section only focused large stadium/amphitheater shows -- the kind that only a very small number of bands deal with. It doesn't even mention the much more common forms of touring and live shows. Furthermore, that section only seemed to talk to one individual -- a smaller concert promoter who used the part to basically bash Live Nation. Now there are things you can complain about with Live Nation (though, I'd argue that they've got a much better understanding of where the market is heading than most people give them credit for based on conversations I've had with Live Nation folks), but that segment was incredibly one-sided.

The other thing that I found incredibly telling was that the person who sounded most out of date and most in denial was not the RIAA representatives (who actually sounded at least somewhat circumspect on how the music industry was changing), but Rob Levine from Billboard Magazine, who still insists that it makes no sense to pay attention to "those who steal music." He brushes aside the band Ok Go for just doing "ok" as if you don't count unless you go platinum in record sales. He dismisses things done "as a hobby" as simply not mattering. He is, of course, defending Billboard's obsolete "charts" which are still based mostly on CD sales and radio play, but just comes across as someone who doesn't even realize what he's measuring (at 43:15 on the podcast):

"Right, okay, the one thing that does skew our ratings is that older people buy more music. They steal less music.... So like, you know, a Bruce Springsteen or a Madonna might overperform on the album sales chart relative to some more subjective measure of their popularity. But as far as like who's stealing what... I mean, what use is that?"

And that, right there, is why Billboard has become so obsolete. It's lead by people who think that file sharing is "stealing" and that it's meaningless in figuring out where the money is in music. It ignores the studies that have shown that people who download also end up buying more music. It ignores the studies that show people who download are more likely to attend a show or buy merchandise (things that Billboard doesn't appear to think matter at all in the industry). It's as if Billboard wanted to judge the popularity of the transportation industry by judging how many buggy whips are sold. Yes, as automobiles became more popular, buggy whip sales declined. Sucks to be you if you're focused just on measuring buggy ship sales, but the problem is that you're measuring the wrong thing.

Instead, the guy who sounds like he's really looking to the future is Duncan Freeman, of the site Band Metrics, who shows that the really important thing is not figuring out how many CDs are being sold, but how much fans are devoted to an artist (disclosure: I've met Duncan a few times at events, and talk to him occasionally about the music industry -- he's also given me an account on Band Metrics to check it out, even though it's not yet fully public -- though, I actually haven't used it yet). The program shows how a band can actually figure out where their biggest fans are, where they're getting the most buzz, and actually helps bands better connect with fans in multiple ways -- not just on the old model of selling them more CDs.

Oh yeah, one other point. Some Hollywood lawyers were getting on my case earlier this year, every time I claimed that the RIAA announced last year that it was no longer suing end users, even though it did keep suing. Those lawyers insisted that the RIAA said no such thing (even though that's what all of the press reported). In this podcast, the RIAA's Jonathan Lamy repeats: "Last December, we officially announced that we would end the litigation program against end users." Except it hasn't.

Overall, the program is a really great hour's worth of discussion on the types of things we regularly talk about here, and well worth a listen if you're interested in these things.

Filed Under: duncan freeman, james boyle, jonathan lamy, music, music business, on the media, rob levine
Companies: band metrics, billboard