Let's Screw Up the Entire Internet to Save Newspapers
The hot new idea among people who think about "journalism," and the sanctity thereof: let's ban linking, on the internet! Let's also ban wheels, in order to save the horse industry. Let's also ban talking about things! This whole argument is premised on the assumption that we must save newspapers. At the cost of making the internet into an inefficient mess! So Richard Posner, professional smart man and US Appeals Court judge who writes 23,000 words per day, floated the idea of banning links (and more!), so internet cannibals don't keep stealing newspaper content for nothing: Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion. Periods, Richard Posner. Try them. To break up text. What you may notice here is that Posner proposes banning linking or paraphrasing copyrighted materials. The problem: this is America dude, we say what we fucking want, amirite? You can copyright a news story, but you can't copyright the news. "The news" just means "things that happen in the world." What would it mean, in practice, to make it illegal to paraphrase a copyrighted news story? Summing up, for example, political events, or a sports controversy, or even a fashion trend, could be interpreted as paraphrasing copyrighted material. So let's ban talking about anything. And banning links will help us make our references even more obscure, by making it impossible for anyone to refer to source materials! Good idea, Posner. This gross oversimplification makes you look none too freedom-loving! We all know journalism happens only at newspapers. Better to protect them at all costs than to invest in the murky "future." This idea is supported by a newspaper columnist! Connie Schultz, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer (who's married to a senator, btw, nothing to see here), also touts the idea of giving newspapers a 24-hour injunction on news they post, during which time it's all theirs, and can't be aggregated by others online. Fine. You can have your injunction. But you can't stop anyone from discussing, and writing about, current events. As they happen. Go read all those "Twitter Generation" stories you guys are always writing! The idea that it's worth crippling the entire free flow of information on the internet in order to add to the bottom line of newspaper companies is prima facie idiotic. I guess you could also help save newspapers by passing a law that everyone has to buy one every day, or by making it illegal for TV news to exist. That doesn't make those things good ideas. If Bill Gates pledged to make it so... MORE >>
NYC Prep: Embarrassment of the Riches
There was a moment on NYC Prep last night that was just so brutal, so true-to-life, that I feel I just have to get it out of my system and talk about it right now. Camille and her teeth. Hopefully you remember the moment to which I'm referring. Glass-eyed Camille is sitting at the fancy club birthday party and chatting up the rumply Russ troll that is Sebastian. See, she was trying to get information out of him so she could run and tell poor pointy-faced Kelli, but she's also a teenage girl and he's a teenage boy that everyone's in lurve with so she was also trying to flirt with him, just a little bit, just a little sad, aching bit. So she asked him some dumb question and gave him a big smile and a little coy head tilt and he just said to her: "You have something in your teeth." And there in the still glass of her eyes, something exploded or crumbled. She laughed and said "Wait, are you being serious?" and he nodded and she covered her mouth and ohhhh holy Anything in heaven, it was just so... We've been there. We've all been there as someone is just so flippant and casual about mortifying you. That she'd been leaning in close, trying to act cool (See, I can talk to boys...) and then there it went, up in smoke like flash paper. Oh man. It just hurt my soul and tickled my funny bone and then poor Camille just sat there, deflated and quiet, while the rest of the party raged on. Agh. A primal scream to you, poor Camille. Anyway. That was toward the end. So let's cycle back, through whole other series of embarrassments, to other moments of kids being precarious kids. The evening started with PC and Jessi, eating dinner in a fancy kitchen, leaning against the counter, feeling cool and whatevs about it all. They had their snappy little dialogue that they always have, because they are such dear friends, such dear hearts who are so similar, and PC said that everyone thinks Jessi is a bitch and she slapped him across the face (really, she did) and said "I am not a bitch!" and we were meant to see the irony there, or the contradiction, or whatever, and say "10 points to Bravo house!" or something. But instead I just watched it, slack-jawed on the couch, the sticky night cobwebbing my brain, and thought: Man, Jessi is really really in love with PC and it is sad. And it's true, and it's sad, but it's also pleasingly real in a way. There's a soft hurt that's not manufactured. There's something that Jessi will look back on, in the midst of the college sprawl, and say "Oh, yeah. I did feel that once." And then she'll keep walking. For now, though, it's probably miserable. So, sucks for you J. Speaking of miserable, dim Kelli went on a date with mumbling Sebastian. Well, she thought it was a date—he brought her cupcakes and she loves cupcakes, she's obsessed, she likes them more than cake!!—but he just seemed bored. She smiled and twinkled and giggled and cooed like she'd learned to do from TV but none of it worked. He just sorta smirked at her and... MORE >>
Pukey Pug Hugger or Kooky Jew Boo-er?
Yesterday, Chrissie Brodigan said she was manhandled by a cop and arrested just because her pug dog threw up on the L train. But the cop says she's a raving anti-Semite! Let's explore this breathtakingly minor controversy. Chrissie's version: Her pug got sick on the subway, so she took it out of its bag, then a cop ran up and grabbed her and harassed her and arrested her and said anti-woman things! The cop's version, courtesy of the New York Post, obv: Chrissie Brodigan is a crazy anti-Semite who went wild on the cop in question—NYPD's first Hasidic cop! But a witness, Viane Delgado, said Brodigan was the one out of line. Delgado said Witriol "repeatedly" asked the woman to place the barking pug in a carrier she had. But instead, she allegedly insulted him with anti-Semitic slurs and tried to walk away. "You f—-ing Jew, you're not even human," Delgado quoted Brodigan as saying. She repeatedly said, "Jewish people think they own everything," a source said. Ha, really? A little extreme, no? Chrissie denies saying this. Do people really say that, in Williamsburg? Pug owners? It seems doubtful. We're just reporting, here. No word on whether the pug is still puking, but we will bring you word as soon as this important saga develops further, puke-wise or otherwise. [NYP. Pic via Gothamist] MORE >>
Ruth Madoff: Innocent Victim
Bernie Madoff will rot in jail, but Ruth Madoff—his constant companion—didn't do anything criminal and won't be charged, the Feds say. Though she does still face social ostracism in Palm Beach. So. That decision comes after an intensive, six-month probe in which investigators scoured financial records and interviewed scores of people. In the end, the feds found "no criminal exposure" for Ruth, a source said. The Post says that the government plans to charge up to 10 more people in the Madoff case, and that Bernie's sons have not been ruled out as criminals. But Ruth—dear, beleaguered Ruth—is off the hook. This gives her a chance to collect her $2.5 million settlement and then put our redemption plan into action. In 15 or 20 years, people won't even remember your face, Ruth! Just tough it out. It could be much worse: Ezra Merkin, the financier who made millions steering investors into Madoff's funds, has been forced to sell his collection of Mark Rothko's to help pay back those same investors. Instead of staring at three parallel lines of varying colors, he will be distributing hundreds of millions of dollars to his ruined clients. These people suffer as well. On the inside. [NYDN, NYP. Pic: AP] MORE >>
What This Country Needs Is a Good Terrorist Attack!
Last night Glenn Beck's guest was ex-CIA person Michael Scheuer, who stated that the only hope for the country was for Osama Bin Laden to "deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States." Seriously. Why would any good, patriotic American say such a thing in a discussion about border protection? Because all of our politicians crave is the approval of Europeans and to hold on to their cushy jobs and it's going to take an attack from Bin Laden to wake America up to the fact that our leaders need to use "as much violence as necessary" to firmly establish our place in the world. Meanwhile Beck just sat there nodding his approval. Yeah. The neoconservatives aren't even trying to hide their pulling for such things anymore. And these are the same people who revel in cloaking their deranged beliefs in patriotism, mind you. Happy 4th of July weekend everybody! MORE >>
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