Murdoch’s view on good journalism

Fox owner Rupert Murdoch “goes candid on reporting” saying:

Stop having people write articles to win Pulitzer Prizes–give readers something they want to read.

I don’t know about you, but even though I don’t read every prize winning story or series, their value is undeniable. The awardees often have done a lot of hard (and thus “expensive”) work to write a top notch story.  Here’s a list of this year’s awardees, and a few summaries (Wikipedia, 5/29/08) to consider:

“… for the work of Dana Priest, Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille in exposing mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital, evoking a national outcry and producing reforms by federal officials.”

“… for its exceptional, multi-faceted coverage of the deadly shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, telling the developing story in print and online.”

“… for their lucid exploration of Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful yet sometimes disguised influence on national policy.”

FCC wants free broadband service, plus content filtering

National broadband sounds like a great idea, but a recent FCC proposal looks a little less appealing.

The Federal Communications Commission is looking for a bidder to provide free broadband service in the 1.9 GHz-2.1 GHz bands, agency Chair Kevin Martin told reporters on Friday. …

There will be one more requirement for the service. A spokesperson for the Commission has told Ars that the FCC wants it to include “content filters.” For what? We asked. “To protect children,” came the reply.

As outrageous as this sounds, I can understand the FCC’s logic. If we’re to provide “the Internet” over the airwaves, then it suddenly becomes like radio and television–pervasive. That’s the argument that’s typically been used to keep smut and the 7 deadly words off of the airwaves.

Here’s the difference: television and radio are centralized distribution media. The impact of the speech regulations is rather small, since they only affect an increasingly dwindling number of speakers (that being, the broadcasters).

The Internet, on the other hand, is a largely decentralized medium of distribution. The number of speakers on the internet comes close to the number of users; thus the impact of filtering would be massive. Decentralized mediums of expression typically get more First Amendment protection, although I can’t think of a case that would be as pervasive (or more likely to over-censor) as what is proposed.

It’s amazing that, when the FCC gets serious about our infrastructure–giving a large number of Americans some substantial bandwidth–it comes with strings like this attached.

e-Publishing on the B, C, and D list

David Pogue explains his hesitation to e-Publish his book:

Unfortunately, I’ve had terrible experiences releasing my books in electronic form. Twice in my career, ‘blind’ people e-mailed me, requesting a PDF of one of my books. Both times, I sent one over–and both times, it was all over the piracy sites within 48 hours, free for anyone to download.

He goes on to point out that the “pay what you like” model really only works well for creators with an established name.

So the choice appears to be: lock a work down in a physical publication / DRM, or go for broke… what’s an author to do? It’s a tough question–and one that Pogue admits he’s glad not to have to address for readily digitiz-able media like music and film. I won’t pretend to have any answers, but one other counter to the “Slashdot argument” is that arguably the majority of downloaders wouldn’t pay full price (or sometimes anything) for a copyrighted work. Exposure from free downloads might be worth something, even if it doesn’t put food in your family’s mouth. Naturally this view files in the face of the law and norms of publishing.

When everyone opts for the pirated download version and authors can’t make money from those of us who can afford a legit copy–then we have a problem.

Catsup

Some of these go way back…

  • Best Buy challenges FCC over analog TV sales penalty: If this continues it could become a defining case in the reach of the FCC.
  • YouTomb: “YouTomb continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown. The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm.” Great idea!
  • Fight shaping up over Oregon’s state law copyright claims: “State laws are not themselves copyrighted, of course, but Oregon claims that all the ancillary material in the Revised Statutes—including section numbers and headings—is copyrighted.” Can a body of law be useful without organization? Can a state copyright that organizational work product? I’d argue laws should be completely “open source” for reasons of transparency and legitimacy.
  • How YouTube’s sucking up to Modest Mouse (and other giants of media): Uploads [to YouTube] of music videos from the band by non-official sources now carry a link reading “Contains content from Sony BMG…” Very interesting permissive, automatic copyright licensing.