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FTC Staff Discuss a Tax on Electronics To Support the News Business
dptalia links to this piece describing a staff discussion draft from the Federal Trade Commission, writing "The FTC is concerned about the death of the 'news.' Specifically newspapers. Rather than look to how old media models can be adapted to the Internet, they instead suggest taxing consumer electronics to support a huge newspaper bailout. Additionally, they suggest making facts 'proprietary' and allowing news organizations to copyright them."
Note, though, "The good news in all this is that the FTC's bureaucrats try hard to recommend little. They just discuss. And much of what the agency staff ponders are political impossibilities."
This would essentially put the government in charge of choosing which press agencies to sponser... Dangerous precedent...
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
Why are we always so concerned with keeping companies in business. We didn't try to artificially keep wagon wheel business alive when cars were invented. This is absurd, if a company can no longer sell something, sell something else, or die off.
The government has agreed to pass a bill taxing the sale of cars so that horse carriages can "stay afloat".
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unless congress passes a law i don't see this surviving a lawsuit. and with the clout of the electronics industry i doubt a law will pass allowing this
I absolutely do not want any form of "bailout" for the newspaper industry, they didn't change their business models to adjust to the changes over the last 15 years so they should fail.
Let them die.
Go ahead, "copyright" your investigated information. Good luck suing the hundreds of thousands of blogs and websites that will still link to your info. And besides, if they provide a link to the news company's website as a way to cite a source (just like I do with my own webpage when I post about content I have read elsewhere), what's the problem? You still get credit, you still get the traffic.
Living With a Nerd
The technology industry should declare independence and stop paying all levies which are funneled into other industries. The first one was too much already, because now everybody seems to think it's acceptable to rescue their failing business model by taxing the tech industry.
I am utterly blown away at hoe often the government is willing to step in and save failing business models. Car companies refusing to evolve, media companies failing to evolve, and more. Last time I checked, we live in a capitalist society where companies that succeed, in one way or another, are rewarded and companies that fail, for whatever reason, are supposed to go out of business. I can understand and be empathetic towards companies that have their business destroyed because of the actions of another, such as fishermen having their livelihoods wiped out because of BP's oil leak. Those businesses deserve some intervention to help them get through the rough time that is no fault of their own. Companies that fail to innovate, however, and end up watching their balance sheets shift more and more downwards? Nah. Sorry. You tried and failed. You don't have a right to be in business, just because. You have to work hard and succeed, just like the rest of us.
Failing businesses should be allowed to fail. Someone will figure out a successful business model and will fill the void or a market that no longer needs to exist (hello buggy whips) will fade into the history books.
It's frightening just how much modern American government has become like the nightmare Statist government in Ayn Rand's novels, constantly meddling with and attempting to control market forces that it and it's members are incapable of understanding or wanting to understand.
Regardless of what you may think of her personally, she was prescient.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Dear Washington,
You're doing it wrong.
Thanks,
Everyone
Seriously what the hell? Stop giving our money to greedy corporations. Want us to buy a house? Spend more on crap? Buy new cars? HOW CAN WE DO THAT WHEN YOU KEEP TAKING OUR $?
OH wait. You'll just take it and give it to corps for free.
Now, I am not a tax hater. I am fine with taxes for things like emergency services, libraries, roads, schools. The difference is those services provide for the public good. Forcing me to hand money over to your buddies at the "too big to fails" is bullshit. You crooked fucks.
No sig for you!!
I mean, it's like totally unfair that PC manufacturers pulled the rug from under the typewriter business. I propose a tax on... let's see... yes! deodorants! and, uhhm, pipe wrenches! to save the typewriter business. And the monk scribes that used to copy books before that horrid man Gutenberg took their jobs away, they deserve some recompense. Let's tax... exotic pets.
My Nintendo DS should be taxed to support a totally unrelated company using a totally unrelated business model.
Lets not let the business and business model stand (or fall) on it's own merit, no, it is to important to let it fail, lets subsidize it or pay for it out right so that there is no need for accountability...
Oh, right, I forgot, we all ready do that, Government (insert your agency of choices' name here.)
Everyday, I am more and more amazed, stupefied, and confused at how F@*&$#ing screwed up this society has become.
What. The. Fuck. Seriously, if you can't keep up with today's technology to stay in business, you have no business being in business. Let the media giants die if they refuse to change. Somebody more capable will come along and take their market share.
Obama doesn't want the New York Times to go under. By 2012, they'll be the only ones left who are stupid enough to vote for him again.
New automobile tax proposed to revive buggy whip industry..
Innovate or die.
Alot of Electronics are sold with out sales tax so is this just a back door tax to make up for that?
Oh, this is where I laugh. I'm a socially conscious, progressive kind of guy. I believe in humanitarian capitalism, not social darwinism. But in a case like this, they're proposing a tax to support a business model that cannot support itself in light of other players able to make a living providing the same kinds of services.
I do support operating businesses with a social benefit at a deficit. Public transit does not usually support itself entirely from the fares collected but receives subsidies from the taxpayers because it's of social benefit to all. After all, how much money does the local fire department collect from you to provide emergency services? There's no fees, it's all direct 100% taxpayer support. But we all agree that this is something we need. Same with public schools.
What I find especially amusing is the same free market evangelists who would huff and puff about how awful the fire department is would probably also line up behind the newspaper bailout, especially if they happen to be columnists. Socialism for the goose but show the door to the gander.
I do agree that competition is a good thing and a major problem with government-sponsored monopolies is that there's no competition, no choice for the customer if they don't like what they're getting. But there's not a whole lot of competition amongst "private" industry, either! Smaller competitors get gobbled up until we get too-big-to-fail companies every bit as broken and inefficient as the communist state-owned industries we were warned about in our economics textbooks. Oh, it's bad when they do it but ok when our guys are doing it? Riiiight.
I like what the brits have tone with the BBC. I could get behind that kind of government support. I don't want to see Ruport Murdoch sucking at the public teat while putting out his bullshit.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Newspapers were subsidized by the Federal government until about 1840 or so, due to the founder's desire to make sure there were plenty of options for people to be well informed.
Link here.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Most outlets are status quo parrots and are part of the problem, but there is nothing the government needs more than status quo parrots, so they will get recapitalized. Right after your local insolvent government gets bailed out. Merely fighting gravity as these bricks need to fall before we can move forward.
"Over my dead body!" but I know they'd only kill me to do this sheet...
Postponing the death of an industry with a huge influx of cash is not just illogical, it's such a stupid idea that only Washington could come up with it. For one, it does not fix the problem. People will still choose electronic media over paper. There is also something to be said for making the country's print media dependant upon the federal government. Print an article blasting the current administration? There goes your funding...
to be printed with ass friendly ink on amazing quality toilet paper. I release this gem patent free :)
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Does that mean I can blog about a sports game and claim copyright over the score?? Goodbye sports section.
Who the hell do they work for over there at the FTC? The American people or the newspaper industry?
The free market is talking to us right now about the death of newspapers and old media... much in the way it spoke about the lack of innovation in the U.S. auto industry. We love free markets and malign other countries that do not subscribe to it.
Yet here we are, looking to tax people to bail old media out. We can't have our cake and eat it too.
If the gummint wants to talk about new taxes, why not put it toward something like education or hunger?
Why can't the workers in the old media jobs learn new skills and bring their old skills to the new media jobs?
I don't see a problem with brainstorming and discussing all possible options, no matter how bad they may eventually turn out to be. It's an important step in the decision-making process. You list all the ideas, good and bad, then start weeding out the obvious bad ones, then debating the apparently not-too-bad ones until you have it narrowed down to a few good options - then pick the best option. IMHO that best, last remaining option would be "let the newspapers try to figure out how to survive, and if they can, great. If they can't, the electronic media can report on their eventual demise".
Of course over the past few decades, there seems to be an increasing trend for the most idiotic, most obviously flawed ideas to float to the top and become law. I attribute that to voter apathy and a press (both print and electronic) that have for a very long time been reduced to pandering for market share to survive.
have they considered this bit of law??
"Congress shall make no law ... or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
this fails on these grounds.
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It would be far more sensible to tax advertising to fund some agency that promoted news technology upgrades to communities which have their final source of local news about to go out of business - for example.
Additionally, they suggest making facts 'proprietary' and allowing news organizations to copyright them.
OK, that's just stupid. That's as blatant of an attempt to ignore the natural laws of the universe as declaring that pi is 3. Copyright produced works? Sure. People can still talk about the work without violating that copyright. Copyright facts? That's effectively saying that you can't talk about it. And I'm pretty sure we have a part of the Constitution that protects our natural right to do that.
The thought of that cunt Murdoch getting money from me when I used none of his services and despise his existence would be far too much.
Put a tax on lying.
There is good reason to worry about the loss of an independent source of information to an otherwise uninformed electorate.
True, but I thought we were talking about newspapers?
I'm against this, not because I think newspapers need to adapt to modern times (I think alot of them are trying now and I truly hope it works out for them) But I have a more serious problem with it.
Wouldn't this make the newspaper industry state sponsored? Which I think is one of the biggest mistakes possible and I know in the past Americans have always cried out against state sponsored news in other countries. I would hope they would cry out against this one.
This combined with the "emergency powers" over the internet that are being given to the Department of Homeland Security mean that most of the media in this country can conceivably be taken over by the government. If they don't like what you have to say they aren't going to allow you to say it.
why have an agency and taxes, those local papers smart enough to get online (which has very low barrier to entry and very low cost) can survive while the dodos should go extinct. Adapt or die.
Here is a link to the text of the proposal: http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/jun15/docs/new-staff-discussion.pdf
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
I mean, it's like totally unfair that PC manufacturers pulled the rug from under the typewriter business. I propose a tax on... let's see... yes! deodorants! and, uhhm, pipe wrenches! to save the typewriter business. And the monk scribes that used to copy books before that horrid man Gutenberg took their jobs away, they deserve some recompense. Let's tax... exotic pets.
You laugh, but we may have seen such lawsuits if the new industries that were forming were not born of the industries that were replaced.
Consider your typewriter example. Many manufacturers of these pieces of equipment were pioneers in the computing machinery industry. The nascent computing industry formed of these companies. Companies which saw profit to be had in developing new technologies.
In this sense, the internet information industry is parallel to the newspaper industry and not born OF the newspaper industry. So the newspaper industry is fighting it tooth and nail.
We saw a similar movement with the textile industry's response to hemp. Unfortunately, they won in that gambit.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
It's frightening just how much modern American government has become like the nightmare Statist government in Ayn Rand's novels, constantly meddling with and attempting to control market forces that it and it's members are incapable of understanding or wanting to understand.
Regardless of what you may think of her personally, she was prescient.
Regardless of the merit of this case, don't you think it's just a bit early to come with this magic market libertarian stuff as we are still in the midst of a major financial crisis caused by massive deregulation?
I am not bothered by the fact that you exist; I am seriously concerned, however, that there was one person to mod you insightful...
Great, maybe now we can get a tax on automotive goods! That should support my rickshaw business nicely.
100 years ago, you show someone a riding crop, and they'd think "transportation". Now a person might think "dominatrix". Well, if they're any fun, that is. Show someone a newspaper now and they think "information". Well, some think "liberal rag" or "conservative puppet", but they are definitely not any fun. Anyway, what will the people OF THE FUTURE (Wooooo!) think when shown a newspaper? Yeah, they may roll it up tight and think "dominatrix" again, but really, what if, er, um... I had a point here, but it seems to have lost track of itself.
...constantly meddling with and attempting to control market forces that it and it's members are incapable of understanding or wanting to understand.
Back in the 1800s, our economy would oscillate between booms and busts. Depressions were the norm during the dips in the business cycle. Sure there were corresponding booms, but the crashes would wipe out most of the wealth created. Businesses wanted government intervention to flatten out the business cycle and make things more predictable.
Completely free markets do not work. They eventually break down and we end up with a crash and an aristocracy. Start reading 19th century American business history (Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt, etc... ) and see what it was like when the Government was completely hands off.
On the other hand, it is possible to go too far, as in this case with the news or with the airlines, GM and Chrysler, the big banks - those should have been allowed to fail or in the case of the big banks, broken up so that they aren't such a threat to the financial system.
I say let the news organizations fail and the Government step in and create protections for the citizen journalist.
Rand over simplified things - she was speaking from a system and human ideal that is not attainable. Humans are just too frail, self centered, small minded, shallow and cruel for a World like Ayn Rand's to exist.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
"...they suggest making facts 'proprietary' and allowing news organizations to copyright them" is no thing a sane person could actually say.
There is good reason to worry about the loss of an independent source of information to an otherwise uninformed electorate. So all the comparisons to capitalism "we didn't bail out the wagon-wheel, buggy-whip, ...has-been technology" are a bit shoot from the hip.
How is it an independent source of information if it needs to rely on money from the government to stay in operation?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
We should be pointing out again that people have rarely bought a newspaper because they wanted the paper. If the point of this is to subsidize printing newspapers, then it's not a news-related bill at all. It's a bill to subsidize the killing of trees.
This might be more acceptable if it specifically subsidized non-print news distribution, e.g. via the Internet. That might solve the actual problem, which is that the newspapers are being killed by electronic news distribution.
There is plenty of precedent for this, of course. They go by initials like BBC and NPR, which started life as government subsidies to broadcast news sources. Of course, "news" should be interpreted rather liberally in these cases, since they also subsidized things like music, intellectual discussions, etc. But the general idea did work to a great degree. Stuff such as news and various intellectual pursuits that weren't very successful commercially did get better support and developed into an important part of our societies.
But subsidizing print publication of such things isn't what we need these days. We need to be encouraging the forward-looking organizations that are trying to supply such things via non-print distribution systems.
So spread the news: We didn't buy newspapers for the paper. We don't want the paper now (unless we have a lot of bird cages to line ;-). We want the news easily available, not the paper.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Can we call it Socialism now?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
How about we create a tax on video games to support the failing board game industry? Or 20% tax on fuel injectors to subsidize the failing buggy whip market? Give me a friggin break people. It was NEVER the government's responsibility to support failing market initiatives, or outdated technology. The need creates the market. If the market isn't buying it, then the need has moved elsewhere. Imagine this: We let the newspapers die. There are no longer major news websites associated with those papers to provide material for pseudo news groups to link to for free. Other new sources will spring up, and the more legitimate and satisfying of those will flourish, and grow to become larger news sites. Those new sources of news will decide how best to be profitable, either by charging a fee for access to their service, or by using the free popularity model to drive the desirability for advertising space within their site. How do you think all these "Free" sites became popular, and then desirable, and finally powerful? (Google, Myspace, Facebook, Yahoo, etc.) Let the genre evolve how it will. Stop squeezing more money out of our @$$E$ by trying to reverse time and evolution already!
Newspapers aren't, for the most part, loosing money. They're becoming less profitable. Historically, newspapers have enjoyed fantastically high profit margins. Due to a falloff in revenue from shrinking circulation and less interest in print classifieds, those margins have shrunk to being merely moderate.
Back in the days when newspapers were run by private companies or wealthy families most papers probably could have weathered these leaner times, these days most major papers are held by big public media companies. These companies can't tolerate a drop in profits, so they are firing reporters and closing beuros in order to maintain those margins.
You should learn to read the other replies before posting. You obviously have an agenda because the post right before yours spells out the fallacy you just committed:
Far too many people are willing to ignore good advice when they don't like the messenger, or the people associated with the advice. There is also another reason people ignore good advice that scares me even more. It's when the advice is ignored because they cannot accept the implications of what that would mean.
We desperately need an independent, publicly funded television network. News reporting has turned to complete and utter rubbish and it's time to put a stop to it. I say television because, let's face it, the number of people smart enough to read newspapers in this country is dwindling fast. TV gets much more exposure to a wider audience. This would benefit everyone and not just news--entertainment as well, which is suffering immensely and dumbing down the populous. I really do revel in the thought of an American BBC, just a shame we can't call it the ABC because of those bastards at Disney. The name isn't important, however, the content is!
It's a discussion paper. That's it. No one is proposing any laws. And in the paper, the author(s?) fully acknowledges the potential for undue influence of government on the media and questions whether the government should act at all, along with asking a list of other questions.
One of the suggestions is putting more information on government operations online for easier access. That's not exactly a bad thing.
A discussion. Relax, people.
I would much rather see America turn to public funding for public domain news, instead of trying to let businesses copyright facts. One of the best news organizations in the world is funding by a TV license fee.
News like this tends to rile people up about "the government." Let's take a step back and realize that these problems don't exist because of government, but because of undemocratic governments. Do you think people in FTC were just sitting around and said, "hey, let's introduce a new tax and give it to newspapers!" Obviously not. Giant "news" corporations are lobbying for it. It's more their government than yours. That's why it's being considered.
Absurd taxes (and other bailouts and laws in general) like these would never come up if a real democratic mechanism were in place.
Here's one clip from the first proposal:
Some stakeholders have proposed amending the Copyright Act to specifically recognize hot news protection. Advocates argue "the copyright act allows parasitic aggregators to 'free ride' on others' substantial journalistic investments," by protecting only expression and not the underlying facts, which are often gathered at great expense...
Hot news advocates are divided, however, on whether federal law should be revised to encourage state law development of hot news doctrine or to provide uniform, statutory federal hot news protection... The likely effects of a more vigorous hot news doctrine are controversial. For example, on eworkshop participant noted that New York's hot news doctrine was important to the AP's efforts to protect its intellectual property, but recognized that any "federalization" of the doctrine would need to be very carefully drafted to avoid unintended costs... Others also have argued that expanded IP protections for the news would be too costly. News organizations and writers, including print, broadcast, op-ed writers, and other commentators, routinely borrow from each other. One panelist suggested that "[m]uch of what is done by newspapers with each other is actually problematic under existing hot news doctrine."
The paper does include a number of possible direct revenue sources from the government as possibilities, such as tax breaks or increasing punding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. However, it also includes the following:
Representative Waxman noted in remarks to the FTC workshop on December 2, 2009, that those advocating for public funding "need to articulate the scope of such support, in terms of the activities to be supported and the dollars required. They need to respond to the concern that government support of journalism would lead to government control of content. And they need to explain the source of revenues."
Most of the paper goes on like this, presenting different sides of each proposal. Which is to say that unlike what the commentator in the OP states, this isn't so much the FTC dictating that the government deliberately save the news industry in any one particular way, but is more a roundtable discussion about different ways that it might occur. If you disagree with what's discussed, you might want to leave your Congressman a call.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
"Electronics are causing newspapers to die. Consumers need to consume fewer high-margin electronic devices and start consuming more low-margin newspapers."
From a pure economics standpoint, this is completely idiotic as it would tend to depress economic growth (though it would be a relatively minor effect).
Adding a tax to consumer electronics to support actual investigative journalism isn't a horrible idea, but bailing out newspapers is just ludicrous. I do think we need real investigative journalism, but not from dead tree newspapers. Things like FOX "Nuz" (cause that's not fucking news), just don't inform people. Now a govt. funded news agency? I'm not quite ready to say that would be a good thing either, but how can we get back real journalists? Bloggers, if you repeat news, do more to credit your sources.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
I really do revel in the thought of an American BBC, just a shame we can't call it the ABC because of those bastards at Disney. The name isn't important, however, the content is!
Which is odd, because most people I know in Britain revel in the thought of the BBC tax being eliminated because they're sick of being forced to pay for a left-wing propaganda station even if they don't watch it. Fox News may be just as bad on the other side of the political spectrum (I don't know because I've never watched it) but at least the government doesn't force you to pay for it.
The FTC finally gets copyright aproval for news papers. A week later a big story breaks, some no name newspaper publishes an article. Big time news company gets ahold of it, but it takes weeks to work out the copyright fees, so by the time they publish it is no longer news. Wow what a bright idea. WHo really cares that newspapers are going out of style, good get rid of print it is a waste of time ans precious resources. Besides journalism is no longer objective, we may as well make up stories (these can be copyrighted). So what is news of the future going to be like? Inquiring minds want to know.
Using this philosophy, they should have taxed electricity in order to subsidize and save the whale oil industry.
This is nothing but an attempt at a transfer of wealth from us little guys to the news media folks who are nothing but another bunch of fat cats. An even worse thought is that of the !@#$ government dolling out to the media iif they behave the way the government thinks they should. Me also thinks this woule be a violation of the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
I think the funny part of this summary is the claim that the federal government doesn't have the power to do something so stupid. Could we please take some more power from them?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I'm trying to work out how FTC spells "Rupert & James Murdoch".
Actually, I've got an idea about the C.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There's some logic to the idea of news companies being able to "copyright" facts they've uncovered. The only problem is that it's a horrible idea whose other consequences would be extremely dangerous.
The basic problem seems to me to be that investigative journalism and thoughtful in-depth analysis (as opposed to superficial opinion journalism) has all sorts of positive externalities. The market forces seem like they should always work against solid journalism, because there's nothing to stop others from just repeating the things you payed to find out. In a time where it took a day to turn out your stories, the desire for current news probably still pushed people to sources that did some quality reporting, but in the era of live-blogging there's little value to being the originator. Actually, the externalities go far beyond other news organizations,and bloggers, since good journalism helps us make sound decisions in our personal and political lives. I really don't get how people think some magical new Internet news business model is going to come along and fix this.
Allowing people some ability to control the dissemination of facts they've uncovered would help monetize good journalism, but it would be a *huge* threat to freedom of speech, probably to journalism itself, and god knows what else. It would also be unconstitutional. Having the government fund news agencies is also extremely dangerous, unless it could somehow be done in such a way that the power of controlling the funding doesn't rest with any small group of people (e.g. politicians), and I don't see how that's possible. (Although, I admit that the BBC seems to work out far better than I ever would have dreamed.) The only models I can really see working are donation-based models as with PBS, NPR, and ProPublica, or distributed volunteer models in the style FOSS projects. I remain skeptical that any of those would ever get enough funding to deliver the volume of reporting that we need to keep tabs on our government, our corporations, and the world around us.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
I think it's unfair to claim that the car companies deserved to die during this recession. GM needed the bailout because car companies depend heavily on the availability of credit to consumers and dealers. When that dried up, they faced a rough time due to fault of the banks, not themselves. They have already turned around and become profitable ($900 M in the 1Q2010). If they were truly obsolete then they wouldn't be making so much money already. But if they had been left to die, there would be a massive disruption to the economy as a vast system of suppliers crumbled.
Chrysler probably does deserve to die, but it wouldn't really be fair to offer a lifeline to one car company without offering it to all. Ford chose to pass on government help and live off their own reserves. Now that the credit crisis has passed, those companies should be left to live and die on their own.
If you rely on the mainstream news, you are *already* getting your news based on governmental and corporate press releases, and "word of mouth" from some doofus flown in reporter who somehow magically knows more within five minutes of disembarking off the plane about what is going on in some local area than the people who live there all the time do.
I guess if it has shiny white teeth and heavily laquered hair, it just must be uttering the truth, with no hidden agendas or biases....
The collapse is easily traceable to media consolidation. Forty years ago you had multiple, profitable local papers in each city with completely separate editorial staff and their own pool of reporters. Now you have basically the same McNews rag everywhere so not only is there no choice, the one or two that are left are not worth the effort of reading. Say thanks to Murdoch, Turner, Disney and Reagan for the death of news. Allowing the copyrighting facts will only tip US education into a worse state than it is now, which seems to be what the FTC proposal is about. Fixing the news problem is a very separate issue and it is quite likely that one effective remedy is rolling back the regulations about radio and newspaper ownership to what they were before consolidation started.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
its the news industry going through a transformation of which certain elements refuse to do so or cannot. Yet while I agree that I would not want to get all my information from blogs it mainly comes down to the fact there are so many and not all agree which are good, which are great, and which are just tripe. Yet there is valid comparison to newspapers in their earliest days to what blogs are now. It takes time for the new medium to sort itself out. With intelligent aggregation we very much have reliable new sources. Think of an extension of /. moderation, people rank the sources. Of course this requires some verifiable ranking system, one that cannot be easily gamed.
The reason this is getting traction is because the press is very friendly to many long term politicians whereas blogs tend to go after one or another. In other words, the majority of the press is beholden to the people the cover whether directly or indirectly. They also are bastions of unions as well and that has weight with many politicians. We got a great taste of what blogs can do when they brought down the CBS fake document story in 2004 which was timed to do the most damage. Should we help network news because of their past glory days? No. As we should not help newspapers.
If they cannot transform into something that can thrive in the internet age then someone will step in to fill the gap they leave behind.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Come on. Does anyone here use newspaper for anything other then starting fires in the fireplace or campfires? I have a friend and the San Fransisco Chronicle. She says they are looking at moving to e-readers and digital distribution now. To me that says the dying industry is proving to be more willing to adapt then say the MPAA or the RIAA.
The newspaper will die. A paper form of the news is needed too... Kill less trees and make those paper company towns not smell like a horses arse, as well as cut down on pollution. Stop bailing them out. Sink or swim should be the rule. Honestly why would I pay for the newspaper when I can pop onto any news site I want and get the same articles for free(not that I do).
Half the time I read Slashdot from a RSS reader on my iphone. What more news could I want?
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
Hey, why not an American version of the BBC? That would actually be a decent use of tax dollars, for once.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
More sane would be a tax on commenters on news sites instead.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The repeal of Glass-Stegall, the lowering of capital ratios needed to maintain leverage, the deliberate understaffing of the SEC as seen as an unnecessary vehicle, the maintenance of fed interest rates near zero during the last decade, these are all notions of deregulation. If we were standing back and letting the banks support their own ratings boards and believing that mortgage brokers could police themselves and would be natually trustworthy, how is that an argument against government intervention in those cases? I'm not sure what you mean by lots of "bad regulation"** - what we had was weak regulation that was powerless to stop any issues that could have potentially occurred.
Hell, you make Atlas Shrugged sound like an almost progressive book - it sounds like you're saying that the government should have been stronger than the corporations rather than the other way around. The idea that government should have no intervention in business whatsoever is a pipe dream, right up there with the idea that government should facilitate a society where everyone receives exactly equal pay and benefits. In a society where government stands back and allows profit-driven corporations to police themselves, then eventually you will have corruption as those corporations recognize the profit value in bribing and maintaining control of government, just as communist governments tend to become corrupt as officials recognize their special privileges. The "it was deregulation" rhetoric is a notion that government has a role to play in facilitating a free market, and that the extreme opposite of that is not a system in which the government goes completely hands-off - the extreme opposite is a government dictated by the whims of the corporations.
** "I don't give a damn about my bad regulation! You're living in the past, it's a new generation!" And now that will be stuck in my head all day.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Although, how dare you suggest that people actually take advantage of the option to talk back to their government rather than just ranting about it on /.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
One thing, of the many things, that bugs me about this is the idea that the electronics market should bear the burden of news print's failure. I could imagine reasons (if I really cared) for subsidizing newspapers, but that subsidy should come from a general fund.\n\n First, there's the obvious fact that a tax on electronics hinders the consumption of electronics goods. Screw that. But the second reason that really gets me is that the FTC is basically _blaming_ electronic print for the death of news (and newspapers). Not only has the internet done wonderful things for the availability of news in general, but the death of newspapers is at most the fault of newspapers for not being desirable enough. It's just how a functioning economy is supposed to work.\n\n So, in summary, this is ridiculous.\n\n By the way, how the hell do I separate paragraphs???
to support the buggywhip industry.
The paper in question discussed expanding protection for "hot news" items. As in, if my newspaper did a lot of research, spent money on sending reporters out into the fields, and was the first in the world to discover that people have 4 fingers and 1 thumb on each hand, it would be detrimental to the business of the paper if other outlets simply reworded my article and sold it without having contributed to the research.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Poor Rupert needs a socialist hand-out so he can afford to still rally against socialism in America and and his customers will probably lap it up.
I do not want tax payer money being given to any news-weasels to "save" or otherwise "preserve" the current news businesses.
They swim or sink like the rest of us, screw them!
You must know an awful lot of Tory cunts then, because any unbiased observer would see quite clearly that there is nothing remotely left-wing about the BBC, in fact they go out of their way to take a centrist position sometimes, even when the truth is frustratingly obvious! Fox News is provably much, much worse--this is a matter of fact, not just opinion. The difference is that, when Fox News gets out of line, there's not a damn thing we can do about it, other than whine and complain (which means someone actually has to watch it in the first place), but when the BBC is out of line, there is a public outcry and they have to answer for their mistakes to the people, as it should be. Without the BBC to temper them, I wouldn't be surprised if Sky news went (further) in the same direction.
must be because newspapers are more democratic. the FTC wouldn't want to be bailing out talk radio (conservative) at this time
We do have a BBC-near-equivalent called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS (television) and NPR (radio). Neither of these institutions is as large as the BBC - at least in comparison to scale between the two countries. Both, however, are generally well-received by the public if polling is to be believed.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
They need to legislate a separation of true news media from all of the vapid attention seeking media that calls itself the 'news'. Other professions are governed similarly; you cannot call yourself a Medical Doctor without earning that title and the same should go for News media.
Report on a celebrity crashing their car as news and you loose your news license. Fake or manipulate a news story and loose your license and you are no longer allowed to call your show a 'news' show. It would not support an particular medium; papers, or tv or blogs, but would support the news generating industry.
I think it would allow true news shows to hold up their heads and to proudly do what they do best, without having to worry about competing with entertainment gossip shows.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Under the system where everyone gets their news from newspapers, let's say I work for the Kentucky Farmpaper or something. The New York Times researches something important about government and prints an article about that. I consider it important and want it in my paper, so I call up the NYT, pay them a certain fee to use their reporting, and print their article in my paper. Under the system where everyone gets their news from the internet, the NYT goes and spends a great deal of money on researching a point of interest, and then everyone on the internet rewrites and summarizes the article to the point that you don't even need to go to the NYT site and kick them back a half-cent of advertising revenue for the ads on their site.
If you read the actual discussion text (the pdf is linked above), you'll note that's basically what's being discussed. The paper suggests that there might need to be a "hot news" regulation that allows news sources to control the articles that they personally fund and research for a certain period of time so that other sources can't simply rewrite their stories and post them.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
The only crisis we are in is the derivatives and casino derivatives gambling "industry" crisis, combined with the crony insider way we have of getting new currency into circulation via bank loans of some sort or another. Ya know, that isn't the only way currency can get into circulation....
If this elaborate conjob been allowed to fail, and not have their corporate insiders inside of government demand and receive a bailout, the real market would have adjusted already, the worst would be behind us, not in front of us, and everyone would have seen that those quadrillions in "worth" of all those derivative contracts were really worth about 12 cents or so tops, their weight in scrap paper value.
They used a massive FUD campaign and the threat of "crashing the economy" to railroad those bailouts through. It was pure extortion. A real free market would have been one where they were allowed to crash and burn like they deserve, and other industries that are relying on derivatives contracts-and governments-would have learned to "not do that" anymore.
Of all the big governments out there, at least one "gets it" and that's Germany, and kudos to them for standing up to those skunks and for telling timmy boy to F off the other day when he tried to buffalo them. They are making illegal a lot of the more stupid and obnoxious derivative trades and other bogus practices, like naked short selling poof created "contracts" of theoretical tranches of muni bonds, etc. Simple common sense stuff like you can't short what you do not possess in the first place. Ya, parts of the market there "crashed" when the new rules went into place, or the news hit, and good riddance to them as well, and that bloated bubble scene we have more than enough leeches and parasites siphoning off huge sums from everyone else for rather dubious "services" to the economy and society as a whole.
In other words, describing what we have now as an unregulated "free market" is erroneous, we have a globalist and fascist corporatacracy controlled and heavily regulated in favor of some really powerful fatcats who do indeed make sure we have regulations that mostly go to insure their skimming profits no matter what. In a *real* free market that wouldn't exist very much at all, we wouldn't be letting conman crooks dictate national economic policy and engage in what is in essence counterfeiting (creating financial products out of thin air then assigning taxpayer backed worth to them so they can keep gambling) and extortion (give us a bailout or we will crash your economy) and insider trading/market manipulation (microsecond fast trades, skewed towards those with the closest fastest computers to the trading floor, buying and selling within one second massive amounts of this or that *without* paying the same sort of transaction sales tax fee all other "products" are subject to, etc),
Sure, in a "free market" they could still try to play this big stakes casino gambling, but very few people would hand their loot to them to do it with, and no taxpayer would be guaranteeing their business model and profits. The stock market would settle back down into "investing" like it is supposed to.
Hopefully Germany will keep going further and eventually ban most of that crooked scene. They are in no mood to bailout all of Europe, and all these hedge fund and investment bank gamblers, and they still understand deep down that modern day wealth is made from manufacturing, not "financial products" gambling.
Mod parent UP!!!
National Public Radio and National Public TV. And it's as fuckin stoooooopid as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (except for Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap, forgive me Randy for I have missed a chord).
This is robbery.
Read radical news here
If newspapers become extinct we will save endless forests, unbelievable amounts of fuel and get rid of a lousy medium. Why the sam hell would our government show the slightest interest in preserving newpapers?
Or maybe you just read those that do not do their own journalist work.
But to give you an idea of what I mean, pickup a copy of the New York Times, Financial Times or Wall Street Journal. You just do not find the same material in those as you do elsewhere. Unfortunately, not enough people here read those papers and thus understand what it means to have a real journalist research and write copy.
If that goes away, maybe you won't notice. But a lot of people who don't read slashdot every day will notice.
I'm truely frightened by people such as yourself that think journalists are expendable/worthless and that news just needs to be reported in a one paragraph catch for you to preview in google news.
If you think newspapers need you buying papers to survive, think again.
People often say "if nobody pays for X, then nobody will want to do X". That's a gross misunderstanding. Just look at software, free software exists, even if you don't pay for it.
Then people say "but we need a big corporation to guarantee the quality of X". Sure, if you say so. Thank God there are people like these men looking for the integrity of our news, right?
Don't worry if some press magnates are unhappy right now, you can be sure they will always find a way to make some money.
This should stifle progress and prove the big government capability to tax "because we can and you have no choice."
{^_^}
News outlets are outdated. Our society can communicate any important news to each other to the point that everyone knows it in hours.
Plane goes down in the Hudson? A twitter user scooped all news outlets from his phone.
The internet is moving us toward a collective consciousness without the need to. We don't need a corporation spoonfeeding us what it thinks we need to know. We know it anyway whenever we want to.
A thousand years ago, if you wanted something written down, you'd hire a scribe. Today we're all scribes. A similar transition is happening in journalism. There will still be a place in journalism for big media companies just as the job of illuminating manuscripts has evolved into graphic designers, illustrators, and desktop publishing professionals.
When newspapers decided that they should report only what their major advertisers wanted to see, newspapers effectively took a stance against the vast majority of the population that was buying their product. Wasn't too many papers that stood up against "flood-up/trickle-down" economics, deregulation, and inequitable free trade...all policies that benefited "Business-with-a-capital-B" at the expense - figuratively and literally - of the newspapers' readership.
Who wants to buy something that constantly advocates policies that further distort the nation's inequality curve, when you're on the losing side of that graph - so much so, that the newspaper is transformed into a luxury item?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Well, the subject title says it all, really.
I think everybody can see that it is important for a democratic society, that we are well informed about everything that goes on in the world - otherwise, the population can't make an informed choice in an election, just to mention an example. However, introducing a tax to bail out ailing, private companies is probably the least intelligent way of tackling the problem - it would be far better to boost public service media both financially and in terms of democratic transparency.
As well as, of course, investing more in network infrastructure and other things in order to stimulate the growth of whatever is going to replace the outdated media models. I have no idea what it will be; personally I hope it will resemble the BBC, but with a better management model.
Maybe we should tax cars to pay for the man who walks in front with the red flag being made superflous ? Oh wait, technology has surpassed him already. In the words of Nelson "HaHa - your medium is dying". Anyone who responds "There's being right & There's being nice" will gain extra kudos. ;-)
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.