[p2p-research] is the huffington post pilfering?

[Kevin Carson]

On 9/20/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/09/19/aggregators-the-good-ones-vs-the-looters/


> Here are the Huffington Post’s “principles”:
> – Take an original story available on the internet, preferably outside a
> paywall.
> – Match the subject of the story against a traffic analysis of what readers
> like on your superblog.
>  – Process the story according a compression ratio of 15% to 30% (sometimes
> more); stay as much as possible within an elastic interpretation of “fair
> use”.
> – The result of your editorial meat-processing must absolutely be a
> self-sufficient entity.
>  – Always quote and link generously; your fairness and integrity must be
> unquestionable; linking is no big deal since no one will actually click and
> go to the original source (your treatment should be designed to prevent
> going back to the originl content).
>  – You get it: the reader has to stay in the environment of the Huffington
> Post, in which he will comment, babble profusely, (I spotted a 12,000
> comments on a copyright free video); he will Facebook-share the “piece”,
> creating further reverberation the HuffPo machine will sell to is
> advertisers. Comprende?

> The original content provider gets screwed? How come a story that cost the
> original publisher $10,000 or $30,000 to report, edit and produce gets
> transformed into a mere one-gulp self-sufficient capsule? That’s the
> internet, baby. If the publisher doesn’t want his stuff to be e-looted, he
> should put it behind a paywall, or into a smartphone application.

...where it won't get read at all.  That model has worked so well for
Rupert Murdoch, after all.

So long as HuffPo observes linking etiquette, I don't think the author
has anything to bitch about.  Most of the people who read the piece at
HuffPo probably never would have seen it or become aware of the
author's name at the original site.  And however small the number of
HuffPo readers who click on the link, it's probably larger than the
number who would have independently gone to read it behind a paywall.

And if the original newspaper of record adopts a paywall, it will have
a shrinking readership and increasingly irrelevant writers.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
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