Slashdot Mirror
EU Publishers Want a Law To Control Online News
suraj.sun writes with news that European publishers are also seeking ways to "protect" their content from the big bad intertubes. Their rant, termed the "Hamburg Declaration," asks the government to step in with a legislative fix. "Most of the statements in the relatively short declaration, which will surely take its place among thousands of other European declarations on intellectual property and other matters that have come out over the past few years, hinge on the idea that 'universal access to news' does not equal 'free.' In this respect, the publishers want to maintain the democratic ideal of a 'fourth estate' that provides news to an informed citizenry, while simultaneously restricting access to that news to those who can pay for it directly. What sets this declaration apart from the other Hamburg declarations out there, or from the various Geneva declarations or Berlin declarations, is that this one is intended to give the publishers' favorite solution to the news-stealing problem, the Automated Content Access Protocol, the force of law."
yes, the "fourth estate" and all its power worked so well at forcing the last administration to change its unpopular policies, uncover lies and corruption, prosecute wrong-doers in the white house, etc...
oh... wait...
there are official estimates of casualties, and the more reputable counters will only count casualties that are backed up by at least 2 news sources. it's fairly safe to assume these are conservative figures and the real, unknowable but true figure is much higher and it is a matter of public record that our western governments have done nothing but create a huge mess and human tragedy on a scale not seen since world war 2. on the plus side, oil is a few dollars cheaper...
firing hundreds of millions of dollars of missiles into a target is, quite literally, the same as money getting tossed into a black hole. besides that... giving large amounts of money to military contractors and pumping large amounts of money into the army as a way to fix the economy was tried before...
during the last great depression...
by the nazi party in germany...
wasn't this topic something about trying to keep the news only on the sites that pay for the reportage? let's get back to that...