7 comments

• 

  Michael Masnick

  4 years ago

  Under the Times' new business model, however, each of those readers would represent a lost potential customer.
  

  
  Are you serious?
  

  
  "Lost potential customer" is the most ridiculous phrase I hear from people concerning business model decisions.
  

  
  Let's see... if I have $3 in my pocket and there's a pizza place on the left offering a $3 lunch deal and a sandwich shop on the right offering a lunch deal for $2.50... If I choose the sandwich shop, why aren't you complaining that this is a "lost potential customer" for the pizza shop (it is) and that the pizza shop should sue the sandwich shop.
  

  
  A lost potential customer just means you have a bad marketing program. It means you didn't do enough to convince that customer to shell out for your product -- whether in product offering, pricing, promotion or whatever "P" you want. It's a market problem, not a legal one, and the idea that anyone should sue because of their own stupid marketing seems pretty ridiculous to me.
• 

  Tom W. Bell

  4 years ago

  Of course *I'm* serious, Mike; serious that the Times might well view the situation as I describe. I'm not propounding that view, myself. I'm just saying that under the proposed business model the Times would have an incentive to use copyright law to try to prevent the loss of potential customers to bloggers who make unauthorized copies of Times' articles.
  
  You may be right that, in that event, the Times would have adopted the wrong business model. I'm not so sure, myself. Your example does not illuminate, since an overpriced pizza place has no right to stop cheaper competitors, whereas a copyright owner does have the right to sue infringers. But,at any rate, that is not an issue I was trying to address.
• 

  Mike Liveright

  4 years ago

  Charge for organization not end content

  
  
  Obviously the Times has the right to determine their own business model for their content, but I'd prefer that they limited the access to their organization and not to the end content.
  

  
  What I'd like to see is for them to limit, if they want, and charge for, their Front Page, their search capability, etc. Though I might want everything for free, I understanding paying for the access to NEWS in general. (Personally I'd also like the access to be available to any hard copy reader so that the WEB site is really an extension of the hard copy version)
  

  
  Similarly, I'd understand if the Times wanted to charge Bloggers for being listed in a TraceBack ring from each article. That way when I went to an article, I could get a list of all the Bloggers who had paid the Times for being listed as commentort on the article.
  

  
  On the other hand, I'd also prefer that they not charge for the specific articles, columns, etc. (Perhaps behind an Ad) available for linking to and reading FREE. If the Web is to grow in value, it should be easy for a writer to point to their original source and then comment on it rather than trying to abstract it, perhaps out of context, or pointing to a blind ally.
  
  
• 

  Anonymous

  4 years ago

  Has the Wall Street Journal engaged in any of this anti-blogging behavior that you 'predict' will occur?
• 

  Lynne

  4 years ago

  Hi Tom!
  
  What about those of us who can access such publications without a fee through our university libraries? We can continue excerpting them. Right now I just don't bother to take the extra step of going through the library b/c it's not necessary.
  
  The Wall Street Journal does forego some customers because of their subscription fee, but I find in my case that I compensate by excerpting them more liberally because I'm paying for access.
• 

  Tom W. Bell

  4 years ago

  Anon. of 1/11/05: I thought of that potential counterargument, but concluded that the WSJ simply does not arouse as much animus--and thus commentary--as the Times does. That the WSJ has not apparently cracked down on bloggers thus does not disprove my conjecture.
  
  Hey, Lynn! If I understand your point, you mean to say that the Times' proposed change of business model won't affect *all* bloggers (such as you, for instance). OK, granted. But it seems to me you would still, like any other blogger, have an increased incentive to redistribute the Times' content. Relatively few of your blog's readers would, after all, enjoy the sort of access that your workplace provides.
• 

  Sarah Lai Stirland

  4 years ago

  The Times has already been through this to some extent and there is already a way for people to access the paid for parts of the Times with some code written by RSS guru Dave Winer and others.
  
  See:
  
  http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink
  
  You can click through one of the links and read Dave Winer's page.