There's extra irony that Keller is involved, what with the new NYT paywall (which, incidentally, blocks me from TNH's latest Particle).

Or perhaps this is all just the flu talking.
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* Whose expression in this context on this blog, I must emphasize, was originally mine, you pirate†
† iz joke.

If the NYT had deployed the buzzword "freemium" to characterize their new policy, the reception on the net might have been different. Then again, they'd still have a complicated pricing model, so maybe not.

2) re: the coda: I still have several Penguins on my shelves clearly marked "This edition not for sale in the U.S." When I eventually found out why...

Wha...? Isn't Somalia one of the last places one would expect to find the label "piracy" being tossed hyperbolically about?

I've already deleted their bookmark in my system. I have enough news sources that NYT is minor. I do glance at their headlines every couple of days, but I ain't paying for nuffin.

1) Automatic weapons involved? Yes/no.

If yes, piracy. If no, not piracy.

I'm getting frustrated by the NYT paywall - it's a new month, so I haven't gotten close to my month's quota, and I've been wondering whether the URLs pointing to the NYT from news-aggregator sites all count against it or not. Meanwhile, I've moved the NYT down my bookmark list and the local papers, LA Times, and Washington Post father up, but I liked the NYT better.

It seems to me that zunguzungu fails to make the point that while aggregation (either of the journalistic or bloggish variety) is producing something valuable and original, even when it consists primarily of reorganizing source material. Curating information is a needed service.

Re: the latest Koch Brothers particles, I'm starting to hear Vernor Vinge's creepy little rhyme:

Earth Bonds will keep you all your days
But Swiss gold gives off gamma rays

Yarrr.

We have been told all along that Cameron "Buck" Williams is the apotheosis of contemporary American journalism, and here we see that is true. Given the opportunity to tell the truth, to expose secretive financial dealings and the manipulative abuse of power for evil purposes, Buck chooses instead to keep silent because speaking up might put at risk the access to power he now enjoys.

(Does this count as piracy on my part, or fair use?)

I received a 'free' subsciption via the Lincoln automotive corp that was offered first via e-mail (how did Lincoln get my e-mail? presumably from my registration at the nyT ... which wasn't to be shared evah!) ... and then the offer was all over the nyT online at least a day later, good until March 27th -- 28th was the day the paywall went into effect. I took the Lincoln offer. Everything's just as it always was. The spouse didn't bother, and now he's run up against his limit because we both read the "Disunion" columns faithfully and they are daily.

There's a FAQ on the online site that tells you what is what and you all may understand it better than I do. But you can still browse the sections with their captions online. You just cannot access the full story.

I'll never give them my money because they've never apologized for what they did to help the Iraq invasion. That was the last straw.

I trust the UK Guardian and the BBC anyway, far more. Also, the UK Guardian is expanding its U.S. - NY coverage greatly, as they announced last week.

Love, c.

You are a pirate
They are engaged in intellectual property theft
I have a bold paradigm-busting new business model

I've noticed Duncan Black on multiple occasions wondering aloud about what they might be imagining the "social function of the press" to be, and I'm sure that both Keller and Huffington have, at some point since the emergence of the Internet as the dominant communication medium for analysis of news and current information, been confronted with a bout of solitude in a dimly lit room with only a bottle of whiskey and the time to cogitate deeply on the matter of What The *Fnord* They Are Doing With Themselves And Why They Are Doing It.

Surely, they must have some germ of an idea.

It may not be the force that drives them to get out of bed every morning, but surely they must have some idea what they are all about. They may not understand how the Internet works, but it's impossible they haven't noticed What It Does. It puts mindless machines in the role of connecting people browsing for information to the people who have information to make available, and it's maddeningly incapable of forgetting even the most trivial of things, much less the really important things that must not ever be remembered according to the current cultural hegemony.

In the face of that, they insist on fighting the machines and their terrifying capacity for remembering everything by operating corporations of human computers, all struggling like John Henry with their steam-drills each in their own personal Big Bend tunnels, in a futile attempt to retain control of the communication of news and information critical in the policymaking process.

I really believe that, when they think about the social function of the news at all, they do not think of it the way Jay Rosen would want them to think of it. I believe they think of their social function quite frankly as defending the traditional news and analysis networks that arose before the appearance of the Internet from incursion by what they deem to be a foreign culture. Their principle social concern is the defense of the cultural hegemony. The sweet, sweet lucre they receive in compensation for their labors certainly helps keep them from thinking about it very much, but when they do think about it, this is what they believe.

It's plainly visible in everything they do.

Apparently a simple edit of the URL is sufficient to bypass it (in addition to all of the other trivial methods available).

It's definitely from Brin's Earth.

As for me, I will be violating your copyright shortly.

I research
You plagiarize
They pirate.

Plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only be sure always to call it please "research"

Which is why The Pirates of Penzance opened in New York simultaneously with its UK opening. After the debacle of the HMS Pinafore shows (where the British touring company met with audiences who had "seen" it already, or at least pirated semi-accurate versions), Gilbert & Sullivan did not want to chance missing out on what turned out to be one of their most lucrative and successful properties.

The name of Pirates is not by chance, either. Even back then, authors got royally miffed when people just took their properties, legal or not.

—

On the topic of journalism, what Michael Totten does in journalism. That's the guy who wondered, "what's really going on in Iraq?" and went, on his own dime, to go find out. His stories are refreshingly free of "framing," which is where the so-called reporter has a mental template in place before the story is researched, and he or she looks for evidence to support that framework. Totten just writes about what he sees on his trips.

What a large portion of the various media are doing is not journalism. It's lazy, self-reinforcing claptrap. Honestly, I don't care that it's biased (all media are biased; you can't be human and not be biased), I care that it's bad. The New York Times used to be the gold standard of journalism, but they've slipped badly in the last couple of decades. And I haven't seen much that's improved elsewhere.

There are significant penalties for breaking bonds in the U, and Pu Series.