Jeremy Erwin's Journal: Nytimes is afraid, very afraid

I confess I do like the nytimes. I've been reading it regularly since high school. Perhaps I'm attracted to the shear verbosity of it-- I'd rather read a 30 column inch story than an AP supplied 6 column inch blurb. With so much wordiness, it just has to be insightful... And, of course, the Grey Lady has a certain eliteness factor associated with it, adopting color presses long after the McPaper did it. They don't have an astrology column. They have a Science section. And so on.

But occasionally, the institutional interests of the New York Times Company pop up to remind its readers that the newspaper is a conservative beast, at odds with the interests of its readers. When David steals Goliath's Music is one of those occasions.

Both the court and Congress should be sensitive to evolving technologies. But they should not let technology evolve in a way that deprives people who create of the ability to be paid for their work.

Ooh. Now that's a solution. Leave the R&D up to Congress.

I'm not so sure

[Frisky070802]

I know Lawrence Lessig also commented [lessig.org] on how insane this editorial was, but it didn't rub me that way when I read it. I'm a geek, and I don't want geeks to fear lawsuits [freedom-to-tinker.com] over their technology, but I think the wonton disregard for copyright does need to be addressed by the courts.

In fact, as I read the editorial, I seemed to come out in the minority (in geekland that is) who thought "yeah, this is why I like the Times"....