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The 'iPad tax', or 'how not to bailout journalism in America'

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Edvard:
I don't know whether to be scared or angry.
This had better go down in flames or I'm out of this Orwellian nightmare as soon as I get a passport to Belize...
The Federal Trade Commission says it wants to save journalism. I'm not sure who asked it to.

In a just-released "staff discussion draft" of "potential policy recommendations to support the reinvention of journalism," the agency only circles its wagons around old newspapers and their fading business models.

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http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/how_not_to_save_news_2g7IgzaZNuwuZU80CVcQ7M#ixzz0qECUkMIu




Read an abstract here:
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2010/06/03/will-washington-bail-out-the-msm-with-an-ipad-tax/
and the gory details here:
http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/jun15/docs/new-staff-discussion.pdf

 :o >:( :o >:(
from the tinfoil hat department

Renegade:
from the tinfoil hat department
-Edvard (June 07, 2010, 10:33 PM)
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This is the problem, it isn't tinfoil hat stuff. This is very, sickeningly, repulsively real!

Most dangerous of all, the FTC considers a doctrine of "proprietary facts," as if anyone should gain the right to restrict the flow of information just as the information is opening it up. Copyright law protects the presentation of news but no one owns facts -- and if anyone did, you could be forbidden from sharing them. How does that serve free speech?

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Ummm... Please just shoot me now...

Lashiec:
Heh, never thought I read an article in a newspaper that would call themselves "old" and part of a "fading business model". Then again, we're talking about the newspaper that published legendary headlines like "Headless Bodies in Topless Bars", and looking around their webpage, calling the job they do "journalism" is stretching the concept of it quite a bit.

As I understand it, the FTC is only proposing ideas for discussion that were suggested by interested parties, not making any recommendations. Then again, I don't know why I am discussing something that is completely irrelevant to me :P

daddydave:
Hopefully this is the phase where "all ideas are on the table" including flying a little person on a kite.

Reminds me of the Fairness Doctrine, so I think it is unlikely but not impossible, and a good thing to keep a watch on.

daddydave:
Then again, we're talking about the newspaper that published legendary headlines like "Headless Bodies in Topless Bars",
-Lashiec (June 08, 2010, 09:20 AM)
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At least they're doing it on purpose. I remember seeing in my hometown newspaper "Oldest Living Man Dead" and I was going to send someone a link, but online they had already changed the headline.

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