Yesterday news came out that the New York Times is ready to announce a new “pay for content” model for their website. There has been a lot of talk lately of news organizations moving to this system, and with one of the leading newspapers making taking the plunge it will only be a matter of time before we see more follow suit.
I have been very opposed to these moves for quiet some time. There are tons of other revenue generating models the organizations could use for their websites, but they have failed to even test them out. Just in terms of online advertising, there are new trends out there, such as site skins, that I haven’t seen any major news organization test out. These ads are by far the most profitable of them all so far, and would most likely generate a decent revenue boost for the faltering news companies.
This decision will spell trouble for blogs. First it will add to the overhead for bloggers, having to subscribe to news sites to find post worthy items. It doesn’t mean all blogs will have to do it. Sure some of the bigger ones will, but then the smaller blogs will have to rely on those bigger blogs for content. That’s the route I am taking.
But there is even more troubling news this brings. Once news organizations have a concrete method to show how much copied articles will cost them, then they will really ramp up the DMCA takedown notices. With no real definition of fair use, we can expect the news organizations to launch a full forced attack against blogs. I have never received one of these notices for my blog, but I do know of larger and smaller blogs that have.
The rumors have been that 2010 is going to see a big escalation in the war between bigger news organizations and other sites that use their content, even if it is just quoting a paragraph or two. Some bloggers have said that they are ready to fight this, but given the enormous legal costs associated with such a lawsuit, I personally can’t afford it.
My plan to counter this is by changing my writing format and how I link articles. I am trying to move away from doing the “copy and paste” posting and switch to more of an editorialized style posting. I did this in my previous post. It does take a lot more time to write an article, but over all I believe I will benefit from it by becoming a better writer.
Another system I developed over the weekend and started testing out today is “footnotes”. Instead of directly linking to an article, they will have a superscript reference number like Wikipedia. You can click on that link and it will take you to the reference list at the bottom of the article (on the single post view only), where you can follow through to the actual article. I do have control over which links get footnoted and plan on using it only for linking to major news organizations.
Both of these practices will provide some benefits and even offer a little payback to the bigger organizations. First the big news organizations are using systems that are like advanced search engines. They look for copies of their text on the web and then flag that to be reviewed. If it is a copy and paste job then legal can fire off a takedown notice. By editorializing the article this system won’t be able to find the articles, plus since I am now putting their article(s) in my own words I get a stronger case for falling under fair use.
The footnotes will also mean less people will click on links to these websites, thus putting a dent in their traffic. I can also highlight which links require a subscription easier, so my readers know what they are clicking on.
This system is in the early phases of testing. I wanted to roll it out here today because we are going to start using it on Crooks and Liars within the next couple of months also. As my long time readers know, a lot of this site is actually the testing bed for features I plan to roll out on Crooks and Liars down the road. It works out great that way, so please leave feedback on what you think of the new footnote system. If it seems to work out for everyone, then I might look at releasing a Drupal module and WordPress plugin for it in the future.