Slashdot Mirror
Blogspace vs. NPR
jonkl writes "National Public Radio's linking policy at npr.org has caused a fuss within the blog community that's hot and getting hotter. The policy's simply stated in two sentences: 'Linking to or framing of any material on this site without the prior written consent of NPR is prohibited. If you would like to link to NPR from your Web site, please fill out the link permission request form.' This is buried, of course, in a page linked to the site's footer, but somebody noticed and mentioned it to Howard Rheingold, who passed it on to Cory Doctorow of boingboing.net. Cory wrote scathing commentary, calling the policy 'brutally stupid,' even 'fatally stupid.' The outrage is spreading; this has to be a rough day for the NPR ombudsman who's deluged with email by now... ~24 hours after Cory's report." Reminds of the KPMG policy.
So, when does NPR start suing Google, Alltheweb, and others for indexing, and even worse, CACHE-ING their site.
Damn Pirates!
Did we (slashdot) ask permission to link
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." -- Plato (427?-347? BC)
I just can't wrap my brain around something like this. What is the point of being on the web if you don't want people to visit your site? Provided, you actually want people to visit your site, don't you want to get your information out to as many as possible? (bandwidth issues not withstanding) Ergo, wouldn't you want every possible site that might be interested to link to your content?
Tough to think there is something you could refer to as "old fashioned" in regards to the web, but I can't find another way to describe it...
Jason
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
i thought the spirit of NPR was freedom of communication? or was i misled?
So we'll /. NPR and thus demonstrate to them that linking really *is* harmless, right?
What do you wanna bet that NPR doesn't bother checking another sites linking policy before they link to it.
How many times does this need to come up before there is a conclusive precendent set? It seems there needs to be a nice hard fast ruling on deep links.
Google on linking:
Searched the web for linking suit settle.
Results 1 - 10 of about 12,500. Search took 0.15 seconds
It seems to me companies keep settling just to prevent the law from ever being decided on by a judge. Deep linking should not be a website's ATM.
Never confuse volume with power.
It's trivial to block linking by looking at the referrer field and only allowing access if it's empty or from npr.org.
Why would NPR rather sue people than just prevent it at the source?
But I really don't get this whole "blog" thing. When did it become so popular, and why? Yeah yeah, there's the whole "freedom" and "empowerment" lines, but I still don't get the attraction of putting what seems to me to be a diary online for the world to see. Can anyone else provide me with a clue about this phenomenon?
I guess the web pages I put up when my wife was pregnant with our first child was a sort of blog - I should get around to re-posting that somwehere, actually... but as a geek with a wife, two kids, and a mortgage, I don't seem to have the lifestyle that would make good blog material anymore.
-----
Let "them" know you're not a terrorist
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Wait... I just deep linked to a link prohibiting deep links! Ack! My brain!
With all that legal linking nonsense, it's funny that they don't even have a robots.txt file on their site.
I keep saying you oughta be licensed to use the internet, and you should have to pass a basic intelligence test to qualify.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
This is clearly a case of freedom of speech. Let's see NPR try to bring charges against someone for linking to their site. It'll be laughed out of court. It's a basic right for someone to be able to publish publically available information, such as a universal resource locator.
Just ask 2600.
whoops
"And like that
Like that time they lobbied to prevent microtransmitters?
OK, they don't want me to link them. So istead I will set up a dynamic mirror on my server and link to that.
I'm not sure which is worse, a goofy policy like that, or that 'I' pay for NPR as a Tax-Paying citizen of the U, S, of A and am not free to utilize the information that 'I' paid for in way 'I' want to.
With the power of
anything I want from NPR's
website.
</sarcasm>
:P
/*drunk.. fix later*/
These are the same people who lobbied congress with Clear Channel when the FCC was going to open up short range radio channels for public use. (Schools, community centers, public groups would be able to transmit low power FM frequencies, so your town city or whatever could put up it's own public radio station.)
NPR didn't speak up when the FCC was holding hearings asking for comments and conducting studies, they waited until after the FCC had made up it's mind to grant the frequencies, and then cried wolf, saying that they'd interfer with NPR's. The FCC said too little too late, and pointed to studies that were conducted showing contrary to NPR's unbased claim. So NPR lobbied congress and got them to stop the FCC.
NPR has always been a control freak. There's nothing new about that.
Get's me a hell of a lot of page views don't it?
www.ctipowersolutions.com
www.latechcenter.com
www.ahmansonpet.net
www.petscanarizona.net
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
...if it weren't for someone (I'm assuming) breaking the linking policy, I wouldn't have been able to find out about their wonderful fleece pullover. Think of all the money NPR could be losing! Seriously, though...if valid, how far could this extend? If I need to ask their permission to link to them, would I also need to ask their permission to tell other people about the site?
If they lose money by 'deep linking', then they should just filter by HTTP Referer: and redirect people to the front page, or maybe an interstitial advertisement or something.
/. or Fark)...
Legal policies and lawsuits are exactly the wrong approach to take. The whole point of web advertising is that you want as many people as possible to see the ads. If you forbid people to link to your site, even the front page (as NPR's policy seems to do), then you lose traffic and revenue. Not to mention the negative publicity that you'll get from web community sites (like
Plenty of suits have been settled, but I can't recall ever hearing a court actually rule on this.
But hyperlinks are one-directional pointers from other sites. Why do they get to dictate which pointers other people choose to put in their sites?
If they want control over incoming links, they should create their own text markup language, network protocol and browsers that only support bidirectional linking. They can publish their site on their new network and link up with like-minded content providers. Who knows, it could be the killer app of the new millenium. (But I doubt it.)
Their "linking policy" will have absolutely no affect.
The perfect revenge is to put up a website explaining your policies about requiring permission to sending you cookies to your browser.
Secondly, send a cease-and-decist letter to npr.org to stop setting cookies while you browse their site.
Maybe then they'll learn, that if you put information free to the public, without authentication, what the hell are they to expect?
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Naw, Congress forced NPR to become beholden to commercial interests long ago. Remember the Gingrich era?
The middle mind speaks!
There is no requirement that ads be viewed, either on a website or on television.
There is no law mandating that viewers pay attention to certain content.
There is no implicit agreement that viewing certain content also requires watching a commercial message.
Fact is, people can ignore advertising.
The problem and misunderstanding exists because of the power of the advertising industry. Advertisers have taken for granted they can influence the pysche of the public by advertising, never realizing that, given a choice, people may not watch what they have to offer.
I just dare the government to mandate me to watch advertising....
I used to work for a regional public radio network's web shop, and we had some contact with NPR. They are a fairly slow-moving, bureaucratic organization -- partly because they are controversial and always under attack, and partly because their board of directors is made up of their several hundred member stations. For both these reasons, they tend to be a bit overprotective.
However, they're not completely backwards or out of touch with the web -- not by a long shot. They were online before most companies realized it was important, and were one of the first major media outlets to start giving all their content away -- free! -- online.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the stupid policy in question was penned by some lawyer in the early days of the web, when the answers to these questions were a lot less clear.
Hopefully this exposure will wake them up, and get their policy re-grounded in reality.
STOP! THINK! Why would NPR do this?
.ra files than NPR's got a problem. I can make money off of NPR's work and cost them a fortune.
The reason is that NPR hosts high-bandwidth audio material and the website archives many of the shows. NPR doesn't care if you link to a text article, but if I create
www.bestofnpr.com
and then offer DIRECT links to the
You may agree or disagree with the policy, but at least understand that NPR has some pretty legetimate fears. Personally, though, I don't see this as a legitamate solution, but it's understandable.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
While we're on the subject, ever notice how many "commercials" there are on "commercial-free" NPR? I hope that the executive recruiters from the Corn Fairy (is that like the Tooth Fairy?) or whoever they are die long slow deaths.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I have always felt that framing someone else's website inside yours is, in fact, something a bit vicious.
Sigged!
Plenty of suits have been settled, but I can't recall ever hearing a court actually rule on this
How about Ticketmaster vs. Tickets.com.
The judge in this case ruled "Hyperlinking does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act. There is no deception in what is happening. This is analogous to using a library's card index to get reference to particular items, albeit faster and more efficiently.
It isn't public property, it's the state's property. If it were "public property" any American would have a legal right to link to the content.
Google lists 20600 pages that link to npr.org. Imagine having to approve all those requests? Argh!
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Why is censorship becoming the answer more and more rather than creativity? If they're worried about people bypassing adds and the like by direct linking to their media files, why not build ads into those files or just mention in those files that the content you are receiving is from a listner supported organization that needs your help if (and only if) you
- appreciate
the services they provide.Spitefull fooey
ôó
Well, for one thing, they're not taxpayer-funded, aside from a couple of percent from competitive grants. For another thing, even if they were taxpayer-funded, this would hardly a unique example of access limitations to taxpayer-funded information.
(I also think it's a really dumb thing for them to do, but your objection is a bit simplistic.)
For no good reason I viewed the source of the permission form. Ironically, the form's action tag is: http://iris.npr.org/cgi-bin/watchingyou.pl
Not only that, but the high-tech folks at NPR use this form to generate an email. The recipients are listed in a hidden field on the form. So if you want to give the ombudsman a break, you can send your thoughts directly to the people who evaluate the link requests: jrichards@npr.org, bmelzer@npr.org, nprhelp@npr.org, tholzman@npr.org.
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I have no problems with linking to my site from anywhere, but when other sites frame my site and try to present my information as their own, I don't particularly enjoy that. Here's how you can prevent "framing":
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
if (self.location.href != top.location.href) {
top.location.href = self.location.href;
}
// -->
</script>
--It's Pimptastic!--
http://www.npr.org/about/linking_form.html
Instead of flooding the ombudsman's mailbox with outraged email.
Why doesn't the word get spread to simply fill out the form, and
leave your negative comments in there?
Assuming you are a tax paying citizen, you should be informed that even if you pay $1000 (including withheld on the W2), less than half of a penny goes into supporting both public radio and television, and even including state taxes, you still haven't paid a full cent. The funneling of tax goes to stations in need of self-support on a case by case basis, everything else, from your favourite programmes to your favourite hosts are funded by people that pledge a donation during drives. You're probably not even paying enough for the cost of electricity to parse through the database and send a copy of the article to you.
Additionally, there is a permit you may request for mirroring under most circumstance if you ever actually intend to go through with it (more so for those that actually would like to mirror, as I doubt you could).
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
It makes sense for an organization to dislike deep linking because
A. It can make their content appear to be someone else's and
B. They have no control over broken links when they change their content and this makes their site look broken and stupid.
C. Framing someone else's site is bullshit, and people who don't like it can do what it takes to stop it.
However, is it really all that hard to redirect foreign deep links to the main page? Is it? Or to send the not founds there so they don't just send most people to microsoft? Come on kids, read your docs! Learn your trade!
If you still want the search engines to deep link, it's a little more work, but it can't possibly be more of a hassel than a lawsuit you probably won't win.
As for the main page, I think it's as simple as asking for 'the right not to be refered to', which it's been shown repeatedly that you just don't have.
If only people would quit wasting time and just move on to something beneficial, like harnessing the power of stupidity, the earth would be a better place.
=mortimer
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 12:26:45 -0700
To: ombudsman@npr.org
Subject: Link Permission Request
Hello,
It is trivial to tell your webserver to check the referring page of a
visitor. If the visitor is referred to npr.org from an address that is
*not* npr.org, you can deny them access, or redirect them to a page
explaining why npr.org does not allow hyperlinks.
While this is really lame, it would address your bandwidth cost concerns
without resorting to such ineffectual assertions that linking is
"prohibited". That's wishful thinking.
Love,
Jason
"It's a basic right for someone to be able to publish publically available information, such as a universal resource locator."
That's not entirely true. There have actually been court cases where they have ruled that linking to a URL can be infringing. Some of these include Starbucks, Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-Line Communication Services, and US Intellectual Reserve Inc vs. Utah Lighthouse Ministry Inc. Here's a good article about the topic.
If you don't want just anyone linking to your web site, just make the initial page a dead end that requires a password protected account to gain access to the deeper pages. And make those all pages dynamic to that deep linking would be a waste of time. Either that or get your heads screwed straight and learn how the Web is supposed to work.
And finally, for NPR: IANAL but I suspect that you'd lose if you wanted to pursue enforcing your linking policy via the courts. At best you could just jeopardize your public funding. If I'm not mistaken, the ``P'' stands for Public, right? Not Private (as in club).
These organizations crack me up.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I work for a small local government doing web developement. From accross the state we get together once a quarter to share ideas. One time we had a bunch of lawyers come and give a presentation. I got alot of information out of it and we actually discussed this topic. The lawyers say that linking is a problem and point to some of the existing deep linking precedints (M$ vs TicketMa$ter). They recomended putting such a policy on our websites. We argued that this is against the concept of the web but they argued back (don't remember all of the argument).
I believe that if you look at a lot of sites, especially large comercial sites they will include this policy.
Wouldn't it make more sense for NPR to write a policy that OK's all links but allows them to reserve the right to block links from specific referrers?
This gives them control, allows sites to get the links you know NPR is approving, and only requires technical response to deal with abusers.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Waitasec... didn't Slashdot just violate NPR's linking policy by linking to their linking policy?
The other irony is, if everyone filled out those damn requests to link to NPR's site, NPR would be so deluged with such requests that they would quickly abandon the policy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I wonder what these bozos think about "Ask Jeeves", which frames every site it links to? My guess is that some Internet-illiterate management-type person at NPR wrote this policy after experiencing net plagiarism or something. That still does not excuse them however.
Seems NPR has hit quite a nerve.
/. and requires a reg. Free as it is, what purpose does it serve? To see who is reading what? Or to stop people from linking directly to their stories?
/. poll, how many of those complaining pledge to NPR?
/. has ads.
What about The New York Times site? (free reg req'd, blah, blah) Their site is often linked to from
Next
Ever listen to NPR? Hear any ads? See any on their website? Even our precious
I also don't see the problem. NPR is a public radio station. They aren't supported by advertising but by member contributions. If your bestofnpr.com has a nicer layout and causes more people to listen to their audio, all the better. If you make a dollar in the process (I doubt it), you will hopefully have the good sense of donating some money to them. Also, you should have the good sense of not using their trademark ("NPR") in your web address because that they can legally control.
Actually, maybe we could convince some of the search engines -- Google would be especially nice -- to simply de-list anyone with such terms, along with a friendly notice about why.
I think it'd put a stop to things like this rather quickly.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
If there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. Writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artists would not.
This is, of course, nonsense! How do you explain Mozart, Beethoven, Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo, Descartes, etc... What intellectual property rights did they have beside general societal rules against plagiarism? You, sir, are a fool in a foolish world. You are forgiven though, because we are all fools to one degree or another.
What a looser (not you, the socializer twat).
Prolly just some kiddie. Sounds to me like he's making threats against you, or at least your site's connectivity. I think you have more legal grounds for a "suite" against him than he has against you.
Again, with all the spelling errors and immature language, it's probably Chris' little cousin or something.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Disclaimer: I DON'T have cable, so I cannot comment thereon. The commercial broadcast (and sadly, most of the print) media I see and hear outside public radio and TV are ANYTHING but diverse, friends. With media outlets being sucked into fewer and fewer hands, and news departments becoming seen as profit centers and advertising venues rather than independent journalistic operations, diversity of news is vanishing. This phenomenon is real and well-documented. If anything, we need public broadcasting MORE rather than LESS as time goes on. Mind you, NPR ain't perfect either, but it DOES fill a gap...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
everyone, pick an npr link, fill out the form and then send them the form. you might also enclose a note saying that you're deducting a dollar from your yearly npr donations that year for each form you send in.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
"A person's use of OSDN and any of its Services (as defined below) at any time is subject to OSDN's then-current Terms of Service ("TOS"), which may be updated from time to time as set forth below."
often policies like this are meant to be rpesent but really never enforced unless in the most extreme circumstance. this way legally they have protected and stated the most extreme case.
then maybe if they were upset that some farm sex site decided to link them for whatever reason, they have some recourse.
on another side of this, certainly they have to know that link popularity (incoming links) is a major factor for search engine algorythms and any policy against that would push their site down in rankings on both yahoo and google among others if this policy were ever successfully enforced.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
You can disable the HTTP referer (tells the web server which URL you were at before you clicked the link) in Mozilla also. Just edit your prefs.js or user.js file and add:
user_pref("network.http.sendRefererHeader", x);
where x is:
0 means NEVER send the referer,
1 means send only for images,
and 2 means always send referer. Note that if you disable this, some sites won't work, specifically sites dealing with lots of images and shopping sites.
Got friends?
Nothing stops anyone from recording the entire "This American Life" archive and burning it to CD. I have *MY* complete set, anyway.
But I still paid audible.com for the right to download TAL episodes there, and I'm still a contributing member of two different NPR stations. So I guess my personal copies aren't too far out of line.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
I mean, sheesh, it's not like it's THAT hard to check the referrer in certain areas of the site (perhaps everything except index.html) and give the users a "We don't allow linking to this site" or better yet just redirect 'em to the front door when coming from an outside machine. Since NPR hasn't (apparently) done this it hasn't done due diligence and thus should have no legal grounds here. If they *REALLY* don't want linking then stop it technologically and just deal with the complaints therein. ... just my .02 ...
It's definitely easy to control technically, including the ability to explicitly list what sites' links will be accepted. Unfortunately, there have been increasing numbers of companies out there trying to use policy statements and lawyers, and sometimes lawsuits, rather than understanding the technology and using it. The Shetland newspaper case was one of the first (one paper pointing to its competitors' stories), and unfortunately the UK judge didn't understand the issues, and other lawyers seem to think that was a good idea.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
NPR is finding itself in trouble with Jewish groups who see NPR's policy of "balance" as little more than sponsorship of Palestinian terror against Israel.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Even better: ASK them for permission. If everybody links to their site and asks them for permission to do so, they're going to get REAL tired of it real fast. Just like Jesus, when he suggested that the Palestinians carry their master's packs for two leagues instead of just one. Imagine the poor Roman soldier, begging the Palestinian to give him back his pack: "No, no, it's alright, I'm not tired--here, I'll just carry it a few more steps. Nevermind that I'm a tired old woman, older than your mother, God bless her soul. I'll be fine, you just rest in the shade."
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Hello,
:
With regard to the following web linking policy which NPR posts at
Linking to or framing of any material on this site without
the prior written consent of NPR is prohibited. If you
would like to link to NPR from your Web site, please fill
out the link permission request form.
This policy is absurd in concept and unenforceable in practice, and is completely unbefitting a fine institution of public information such as NPR. I respectfully request that you alter this policy. To assist in making the case for this change sufficiently compelling, I will be suspending my donations to NPR until this policy is no longer in force. As I expect prompt action on this issue, I trust this will not affect NPR's funds or the satisfaction I derive from donating.
Thank you for the great programming.
Sincerely,
my name
my phone
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Didn't they already outlaw fast-forward? Oh, now wait, that's only the next generation of PVRs. And possibly DVDs. Oh, and of course, this is just about the time that some larger companies are terminating their investment in VHS.
Someone who has a schmuck about "fair use" and "public domain" and "the Internet" needs to get put in public office and make some *intelligent* law surrounding this stuff to stop this kind of stupid crap once and for permanent.
I guess NPR must not like donations eh?
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Nevermind that the entire point of a slashdot posting is for people to be able to read it, I don't want you to read this. Even though I'm seriously underfunded much of the time, and on federal subsidies, I can't think of anything better to do with what money I do have than to give it to my lawyer so I can post things on /. free from the fear that they might be read by someone.
If you object to alcohol, don't go to a bar. If you don't want your diary to be read, don't put the pages on a public bulletin board, and if you don't want people to link to your stuff, don't put it on the web.
Posting on the web, and then complaining when people ues the web in the way it is intended is an abuse of a public space. It's no different than building a house in a public park and then demanding that everyone else go away so you can enjoy 'your' 'front yard'.
OK, I don't know what planet you're on, but here in Minnesota, listener donations are the largest single source of funding for Minnesota Public Radio, and account for a very significant chunk (about half, IIRC) of the overall budget. By contrast, state funding accounts for a small amount, which they spend exclusively on captial expenditures (new antennas in rural areas, etc.). MPR is not a government entity, and they don't like to rely too much on government funding.
... and for each, you'll get a totally different answer.
Bottom line: listener dollars pay for most of programming, at least around here.
A lot of libertarian-leaning Slashdotters seem to presume that because it's called "public" broadcasting, it must be a government entity and therefore wasteful. In fact, the truth is much more complicated, and much more varied. Ask about NPR, MPR, PRI, the CPB
Public broadcasting is a nebulous collection of hundreds of separate organizations, some governmental, some private, some associated with colleges and universities, some non-governmental but relying on government subsidies and/or grants...
...kind of like the computer industry, come to think of it.
Like that time they lobbied to prevent microtransmitters?
I know a lot of people give NPR's director flack about that policy. _I_ do not like that policy. However, if you step back one foot it makes (a little) sense.
In big cities, NPR's local transmitter is generally a megastation. At my home, the two stations broadcast at 50,000 and 100,000 watts respectively. When I heard about that decision, it seemed bloody-minded. Why would an organization which broadcasts on those sort of transmitters give a rats about 10 watt community stations?
Then I left Seattle and started travelling in the United States.
The station where I am this week is broadcasting at a power of 2000 watts. At that power level, a 10 watt station on the periphery of your broadcast area can cut a pretty good-sized swatch out of your listening area through interference.
(if someone can find a tutorial on-line which explains the distance-squared rule and the roughly 10-to-1 rule on radiated broadcast power effectively jamming FM broadcast, I'd appreciate it).
Summary: From a freedom-of-speech point of view, it doesn't make sense. From an engineering standpoint, it does.
Crappy books can be just as much of a mind numbing time killer as crappy TV can. There is a lot of junk on TV, but there are a number of quality shows as well. Judge the shows by quality, don't merely dismiss them because you're elitist and it's just TV.
I'd say you give the game away when you pick Noam Chomsky, who is at the rabid fringe of the left as your example of a mainstream liberal. Certainly, most actual liberals would contest any characterization of Mr. Chomsky's inanities as `mainstream'.
As for bias in the media, I would like to point out that on a normal evening on Fox I can see representatives from a wide range of left and right groups debating the issues, while CNN (and much more so ABC, CBS, and NBC) do not seek to provide such balance. Indeed,if you tried to describe the broadcast networks as `center' or `mainstream' to most Americans, they would laugh at you -- there's a reason Bernard Goldberg's book Bias is a nationwide best-seller while the broadcast networks are losing viewers hand-over-fist to Fox.
As soon as some idiot repeals the DMCA, which grants these sites permission to do these things.
Whenever I refer to copyright law's prohibition of circumvention of access control (17 USC chapter 12), I call it "the DMCA's circumvention ban", making it clear as to to which part of the DMCA I refer: not the search engine safe harbor, not the copyright office procedural changes, not the vessel hull protection, and not the copyright term extension that was separately enacted the same week but is often incorrectly considered by media and college professors to be part of the DMCA and/or to be required by the WIPO Copyright Treaty, but the circumvention ban.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Fox packages the news in a neat, easily digestible package. It is clearly labeled in a manner in which anyone, regardless of effort or intellectual capacity, can decide whether they are "for" or "against" this or that issue. It may be reporting, but it wants of analysis, and only barely fits the description of journalism. Of course the same could be said of most major media outlets, but in my opinion, Fox is the worst. Whether it's "conservative" or "liberal" is irrelevant; it's just *bad*.
NPR by contrast suffers from no obligation to advertisers and therefore doesn't have to worry about drawing the most listeners. Their market is a set of people who are capable of thinking for themselves and realize that the news isn't a story with beginning-middle-end, protagonists and bad guys. The difference shows. Smart conservatives and liberals alike listen to NPR because they know they're being valued as an intelligent listener, rather than as a "consumer" whose sole function is to buy the products hawked on the station.
I agree completely. NPR attempts to paint itself as being different from large media companies. However, just last night they had a segment where for five minutes a reviewer raved about the glory of the DVD format without even mentioning the draconian measures taken by the RIAA against persons who try to exercise their legal rights for fair use with DVDs they have purchased.
People were actually sued because they wrote a computer program and posted it on the Internet. This deserves some mention in a discussion of how "great" DVD is.
They will need every one them to read all the comments being mailed to them. I posted mine on the comments section of their link request page =:> Hopefully, they will listen. They depend on public good will to fund their broadcasts into every corner of these United States. One or two elections could bring down the voice of big brother.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This part is interesting:
"Fowl"? What does Calumet City have against content about birds?
When you consider that they receive as much as 1/3rd of their funding from DIRECT taxpayer subsidy, and even more than that from inderect subsidy (the increased taxes all others bear because of their tax exempt status), to say that I don't have any right to link to any damn part of their website I want to is ludicrous.
Get out of my back pocket, NPR, and REALLY become a private company, with private property, and get back to me.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
You haven't listened to it much, then.
During the debate about campaign finance reform, I heard two Republican senators do opinion pieces where they gave their reasons for opposing the legislation. (I was [innapproriately, yes] screaming "Godwin's Law!" at the radio, because one of them equated CFR with Nazism.) I have never heard a Democratic senator give an opinion piece on NPR.
In your opinion, is unbiased approximately equal to liberal? I keep seeing this term ("liberal") being used, and it seems to be applied to organizations that I consider relatively unbiased. If they are not unbiased, can you list a media organization that deals with current events who you think is?
If they are not unbiased, can you list a media organization that deals with current events who you think is?
:-}
Slashdot?
By your logic, not only should they have covered the RIAA stuff, but everything else at all related to DVDs. If they're doing a piece on DVDs, they don't have to include every single piece of info on the system (be it RIAA's copy protection, how the lasers are made, or who thought up the name "DVD"). Duh?
I would guess you'd end up wasting a lot of your bandwidth, certainly far more than you'd cost anyone else. I would think that many places have a limit on how large a robots.txt they are willing to download.. or they should.
Wow... does that guy seriously believe you're gonna fall for his act? lol...
" Just as the United States Post Office can sue over abuse of its logo, and just as you can sue over someone taking an article you wrote out of context, NPR has the right to protect its work. If you review The Copyright and Amendments Act, you'll notice that "any party that produces an original work" is allowed to protect their work."
I disagree with that interpretation... If the government is "any party" then it's the people, the collective citizenry of the USA. Which means that ANY citizen should share equally in the copyright.
Not saying that this is how the courts interpret it (the courts are naturally pro government biased, seeing as they are part of it), but by the wording of that statement taken literally that is what it means.
The government isn't a private entity. It's a PUBLIC entity, "invested" in and owned by taxpayers.
I don't see how the White House and the Washington Monument can be called "public" property, but the NPR website and the USPS logo called "private", and thus entitled to shielding from the "public" in terms of invoking copyright.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
When I worked for a month in Sweden, I heard about a concept called "everyman's right" which was basically the right of a person to walk anywhere, if they damaged nothing. Trespassing was not a crime if it was legal to walk anywhere.
I think that the Internet needs and "everyman's right" as well, to link anywhere and everywhere they choose to link, in whatever way they choose to link, provided that they cause no damage. That would mean that I could link to NPR but not from within an advertising frame. The ads could be construed as causing damage. A simple link does not cause damage.
Anyway, I put a nice fat link up on my log, and I didn't ask permission. (I hope they sue me, because my 15 minutes of fame were hogged last week by that bitch Brittany Spears and I am trying to get them back.)
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Since I pay for the US Navy, would they be so kind as to invade Cuba and bring back a few boxes of Havannas for me ?
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
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Yes, you are correct: government funding affects public radio in many ways, and comes from many places.
... or just about anything else. Do you think that Microsoft isn't benefitting from tax dollars from Seattle and the State of Washington? What about government grants which fund university research which leads to new commercial ventures? Are these necessarily bad things? Sometimes; not always. The government intermingles with business in many ways, some good, some bad, some wasteful, some productive.
Like, as I said before, the computer industry
The point is this: "public" radio is not wholly governmental; it is an industry, like any other, which involves both governmental and non-governmental organizations, and which receives both government and private money. It is not a simple picture.
As for the tax-deductible argument, that's a half-valid point. Public broadcasting isn't getting a particularly special exemption on this -- it's not uncommon for non-profits to be categorized as charitable organizations. The question is really: should we encourage philanthropy at the expense of potential tax revenue? I tend to think so.
OK, fair enough. Here is MPR's 2001 financial audit. In case your PDF reader is acting up, I'll pull out the relevant numbers:
TOTAL SUPPORT FROM PUBLIC: $30,070k
TOTAL SUPPORT FROM GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES: $4,384k
Here are the top separate sources of funding:
Membership (individual contributions): $8,406k
National underwriting (e.g. PHC sponsorship): $4,999
Grants from endowments: $4,836k
Regional underwriting (local ads): $4,062k
Corporation for Public Broadcasting: $3,523k
Individual contributions are not as large as I remembered, but are still by far the largest. The top-ranking government source is fifth on the list.
a broadcast network pushing an editorial line which is pretty far out of touch with the majority of Americans.
Oh really? Ask any politician who's ever cut public broadcasting funding what kind of response they've received from their constituents.
Or just ask Land's End how much they pay for product placement on Prairie Home Companion. (Hint: you are not going to be a sponsor.)
Sure, you may personally not like NPR, and may have trouble finding people among your friends who do. If you had it your way, you'd cut their budget. Fair enough. If I had it my way, I'd cut the military's budget by about 70%, and eliminate farm subsidies entirely. But neither of us is going to get our way. Welcome to Democracy, kid!
I'm afraid you've got your facts mixed up. Those Washington journalists of whom you speak - employed by megacorps, and having incomes well over the American median - are in fact farther to the right (i.e., more conservative on economic issues) than the average American.
Well, by that measure, Micheal Moore's Stupid White Men is striking more of a chord. And Atkin's "New Diet Revolution" (which is a hideous thing to do to your body BTW) is the best health advice you can get, and "Chicken Soup for the Teacher's Soul" is the most resonant spiritual advice now available.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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We believed you meant what you said. It's just that you're wrong.
-no broken link