Monday, April 27th, 2009
by Chris
“I am tired of politicians who say it is probably inevitable we will become a republic at some stage, but who are unwilling to do anything to bring it about – that is extremely weak.”
– Peter Dunne, Time to have our say on republic issue – 26 April 2009
“As I have always said in the past one day it’s likely New Zealand will become a republic but, I don’t think anything is going to happen under my watch.”
– John Key, Key pours cold water on republic referendum – 27 April 2009
It must feel like being savaged by a rather wet goldfish.
Hmmm… “John Key plays into the hands of political genius Dunne”? No, that doesn’t sound right.
“Dunne calls out John Key as ‘weak’”
Can someone help me out here?!
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
by Chris
An interesting little tale has come up today, starting with Lance Wiggs complaining that a site is syndicating his blog headlines. He labels it stealing and discussion ensues.
My friend Dylan also contributed to the discussion and I left a largish comment on his post during lunch, which was consequently munged into an unreadable wall of text 
So I decided to post my reply here…
Firstly, in my defense, I left Stuff because of it’s content. Now the stories I want to read are aggregated with Google News. I still visit Stuffs site regularly to read the stories I want.
I would also argue that Jobs.org.nz (and by extention Google News, digg, techmeme and any other aggregator) are not stealing content. They’re using a headline and a small excerpt of the post (permitted under copyright “fair dealing”), and giving a perma-link to the content hosted on his blog. If they were using his entire post as content, referenced or not, I’d understand his anger and would agree that was “stealing content” because that would be copyright infringement and plagiarism.
Jobs.org.nz is obviously a questionable looking site, and I’m not saying that Lance is beyond his rights to ask his feed to be removed. I probably would as well – I wouldn’t want to be associated with that site as it has potential to damage your brand.
Dylan said:
Google News takes traffic away from publishers by “stealing” and republishing content within a news aggregation site where the original publisher has no opportunity to make revenue from ad sales.
I don’t understand how he came to this conclusion. Google uses a headline and sometimes a 20 character excerpt. If you want to read the story you have to link out to the publishers site (except for AP content which Google pays for syndication).
Dylan Said:
In conclusion I’d argue that Google News takes traffic and eye balls away from the publisher…thus reducing their revenues. If I were a publisher I’d be nervous.
I would agree that Google News takes eyeballs away from publishers front pages, but that’s simply because Google do a better job at providing a portal for content the user wants to see.
And of course publishers are nervous. So were the other industries when they realised that they had to change.
We’re entering a stage in our society where consumers want to pick and choose what they consume. The music industry is realising that some people don’t want to pay for an album for a few good songs (iTunes, other digital services). The television industry is realising some don’t want want to watch the endless river of shitty reality TV shows to get to the good stuff (TVNZ on demand, Hulu). The print industry must realise that some won’t want to wade through their quagmire of crap to get to the stories which are important to them.
