[Reader-list] Pay or free? Newspaper archives not ready for open Web... yet

[Patrice Riemens]

On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 02:56:16PM +0530, Adreesh Katyal wrote:
> Pay or free? Newspaper archives not ready for open Web... yet
> 
> Wouldn't it be great if Google searches brought up every past
> newspaper article? But publishers aren't interested in opening up old
> articles if it would hurt their value in lucrative after-market
> database sales.

It is not only newspapers publishers who are reluctant to make their 
(past) content available online for free, journalists, especially the 
'free lance' ones, saw the web from the very beginning both as a threat to 
their rights and as an opportunity to milk out further revenue, 
vigourously argumenting that a newspaper's website constitutes a 'new 
publication' for which they should be remunerated over and again. 

All this clearly shows the need for a new economic model for financing
'content' - especially remunerating creators - if we want to get out of
the current dog eat dog quagmire. But I am not very optimistic, given the
distinctly 'petit bourgeois' mindframe (aka 'entrepreneurial syndrome')  
of an unfortunately large majority of these 'creators', particularly the
modestly succesfull ones. (Am I stiring up a controversy here? ;-)

cheers from Istanbul, patrizio & Diiiinoooos!