5 ms·

Good point, but do you think it's beneficial to humanity, research and education, and political critique that newspaper archives are locked down behind subscrip

Good point, but do you think it's beneficial to humanity, research and education, and political critique that newspaper archives are locked down behind subscription?

ghaff 5y ago
You can probably find libraries with subscriptions. Someone has to pay for it.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  A library with subscriptions has quite a lot of infrastructure to maintain. A digital archive of published newspapers can be maintained by a single worker using off-the-shelf hardware for an annual budget lesser than the salary of a single newspaper exec, or even better a community project like archive.org or Wikimedia Commons who's dedicated to that kind of stuff.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    So who is paying the organization that created the information in the first place? That's the cost. The cost of a local library subscribing to a service is fairly trivial. My tiny local library subscribes to a number of them. The cost is the subscription which goes to paying licensing fees.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      Subsidizing the cost of current production of stuff (whether hardware or immaterial) is an actual concern. The easiest solution of course is to abolish money and private property and to abundantly redistribute power and wealth, but that's not happening anytime soon as privileges cannot be abolished through wishful thinking or self-criticism from the elites. On the other hand, subsidizing the cost of production of information that's already been produced and account for? That makes no sense from an economic perspective. If you're talking about reaping benefits for past work (not accounting for a "cost" because past production costs nothing in the present by definition), it raises ethical questions: why would the newspaper/editor get paid and not the actual author, now that the logistical work of publishing the article has been accounted for (and even profited upon) by the editor? There is nothing inherently natural or fair about copyright laws. We need broader perspectives if we want to develop a knowledge economy based on sharing information and resources for social progress, if you'd like to call it like that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Good point, but do you think it's beneficial to humanity, research and education, and political critique that newspaper archives are locked down behind subscription?

ghaff 5y ago

You can probably find libraries with subscriptions. Someone has to pay for it.

southerntofu 5y ago
A library with subscriptions has quite a lot of infrastructure to maintain. A digital archive of published newspapers can be maintained by a single worker using off-the-shelf hardware for an annual budget lesser than the salary of a single newspaper exec, or even better a community project like archive.org or Wikimedia Commons who's dedicated to that kind of stuff.
- ghaff 5y ago
  So who is paying the organization that created the information in the first place? That's the cost. The cost of a local library subscribing to a service is fairly trivial. My tiny local library subscribes to a number of them. The cost is the subscription which goes to paying licensing fees.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Subsidizing the cost of current production of stuff (whether hardware or immaterial) is an actual concern. The easiest solution of course is to abolish money and private property and to abundantly redistribute power and wealth, but that's not happening anytime soon as privileges cannot be abolished through wishful thinking or self-criticism from the elites. On the other hand, subsidizing the cost of production of information that's already been produced and account for? That makes no sense from an economic perspective. If you're talking about reaping benefits for past work (not accounting for a "cost" because past production costs nothing in the present by definition), it raises ethical questions: why would the newspaper/editor get paid and not the actual author, now that the logistical work of publishing the article has been accounted for (and even profited upon) by the editor? There is nothing inherently natural or fair about copyright laws. We need broader perspectives if we want to develop a knowledge economy based on sharing information and resources for social progress, if you'd like to call it like that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]