Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
Wankers Away!
I didn’t want to say anything yesterday because this story came out while I was busy linking to and quoting Associated Wankers articles (ZOMG! I’m a criminal!), but I think Atrios has the right idea. Going RIAA vs. Napster on bloggers is not a good move by the “venerable” news wire service. As Jeff Jarvis put it:
This comes out of the ethic of the link and quote that I have learned from blogs. It says to our readers: Don’t take my word for it, go see for yourself. And: Here’s what the source said; I won’t rephrase it but I will quote it directly so you can see for yourself.
*snip*
The AP was calling bloggers unethical even while the bloggers were operating under their own ethic of the link and the quote. The bloggers believe they are doing the right thing in quoting directly and they think they are doing the generous thing — generous to both their readers and to the AP — in providing links to the source material. The bloggers will also say that this is an ethic the AP itself violates when it homogenizes and commodifies news, rewriting it and stripping it of the identity — and now the address — of the original reporting done by its members and other sources.
Would that the Associated Wankers feel the same way about their so-called ethics. Then again, this is the wire service that gives Nedra Shit-Pickler a paycheck.
