Future of Information Media: Aggregating and Content Protection

[Sheilbh]

You've completely lost me.

Content is produced by people who sell it on for reproduction (wire services) or by news organisation sharing the costs of reporting (pool journalists).  It costs money but not a great deal compared to exclusives.  The costs are shared by news organisations, or are lower than maintaining their own correspondent.  The aggregator rips off the wire service - or the pool journalist - and this doesn't effect the money making.  The news organisations still need content, so will still share the costs through pooling or pay a wire service.  The piggy backing of the aggregator's relatively benign.

Exclusives cost money, borne by one news organisation.  They make that back by an increase in circulation.  There's no way that this could really be done by a wire service because they wouldn't be able to sell it to all publications and, from what I understand, their revenue isn't so based on circulation.  It also wouldn't work for cost sharing because several newspapers can't effectively share an exclusive (except, possibly, internationally - the Guardian's done a few pan-European stories with papers like Le Monde).  Subscribers aren't sharing the costs they're buying the product (like newspapers with wire services) and they're still not generally meant to reproduce that product (I think it's often against the T&C of a subscription).  Aggregator's ripping off a newspaper's exclusive investigative journalism is harming the financial case for that organisation to do that sort of journalism.

I've mentioned him before, I think, but I've a friend who works for a financial magazine.  They only report exclusives.  You can only read them online or in print if you subscribe and it's very expensive.  They're also pretty fierce in going after people who re-use their content because it destroys their business model.

One trend in the UK is that there's a fair bit of not-for-profit organisations who now work with news organisations to do investigative journalism.  My uni's got a very good journalism course and I think their Centre for Investigative Journalism has helped produce a few scoops.

[Admiral Yi]

The aggregator rips off the wire service - or the pool journalist - and this doesn't effect the money making.

Sure it does.  It reduces demand for the newspaper which runs the wire story, which reduces demand for the wire service.

[Grey Fox]

To the OP.

For someone who's for the elimination of IP protection, no that's a stupid idea.

[Sheilbh]

Sure it does.  It reduces demand for the newspaper which runs the wire story, which reduces demand for the wire service.

I don't think those two necessarily follow.  It reduces demand for the newspaper, but the content produced by wire service or pooled reporters is the price of being a respectable newspaper.  I'd argue they lose more readers for failing to carry those stories than by aggregators ripping them off.

While newspapers have reduced correspondents and reporting staff in recent years they have increased their dependence on wire services because they still need to carry those stories or they get a reputation as a not terribly credibly newspaper.  Tabloids on the other hand can happily get away with barely ever paying for the wire from Rome for example.

[Admiral Yi]

Newspapers can react to reduced revenue by running fewer wire stories.  Newspapers can go out of business.  Both of those impact demand for wire services.

[Sheilbh]

Newspapers can react to reduced revenue by running fewer wire stories.  Newspapers can go out of business.  Both of those impact demand for wire services.

Yeah but this is now getting rather general.  Aggregators stealing a newspapers exclusives has a rather more direct effect.

[Admiral Yi]

More immediate I can see, not so sure about direct.

[The Minsky Moment]

There is at least some level of IP protection for this kind of thing in the US under the "hot news doctrine"

For those interested follow the link: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/hot-news-doctrine-surviving-life-support