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I fully support the efforts. but are there not legal problems with this? (No I dont thik legal issues should prevent this) If I worked for CorporateMediaNews

I fully support the efforts. but are there not legal problems with this? (No I dont thik legal issues should prevent this) If I worked for CorporateMediaNews as a columnist and reporter for 10 years and they decide ot remove all of it. Does not CMN own the work and can (unfortunately) dispose of it if they so wish? I would not have any rights for the work? Thinking about my own career. I have written a hell of a lot of code and 80% at least are closed source system for various companies. I dont retain any copies of that code. It would be interesting if I heard that System X I wrote 15 years ago is being shut down, and I would try to obtain the source code in order to preserve it. I have never heard of anyone doing it, but probably in games and such it happens more often.

ghaff 2y ago
It's often probably at least a bit complicated. I cross-posted material between a couple of organizations (one of which is long gone) over a number of years via pretty much informal agreement. I also reused a fair bit of that material for other purposes. Everyone was OK with the state of affairs but who actually held the copyright? Who knows and I was certainly never going to bring it to a head. As a practical matter if CorporateMediaNews or the like don't care about something any longer, they mostly don't care if someone else makes use of it so long as it isn't embarrassing or misrepresenting the organization. In the end, I have created work that I've reused for a variety of organizations as well as independently and someone other than myself probably would claim copyright to but it's often been pretty loose.
ghaff 2y ago
Random old source code is probably pretty hard to do something useful with. But, honestly, random old work product is pretty hard for just about anyone to do something useful with. And even something self-contained (like writing), most of the the stuff I wrote 10 or 20 years ago is pretty uninteresting even if a few things have some historical interest.
jjmarr 2y ago
Journalists are often judged based on their public output. You get bylines on published articles, and you can use those to apply for jobs. There's not much emphasis on secrecy because the goal of a news outlet is to be read by as many people as possible. Being unable to provide examples of your work is a career-killer if everyone else can point to stuff they wrote. Preserving your work isn't altruistic, it's required. It's a very different environment compared to programming, because oftentimes the source code is valuable because it's a secret. Employees taking source code is dangerous because competitors can copy it; obviously that's bad for one's career. The analogy doesn't work here because the cost/benefits of taking legal action are different.
- ghaff 2y ago
  A ton of writing is done for (sometimes very expensive) paywalled and subscription-only publications--or internal-only at companies. Theoretically all my (pre-blogging) analyst work is in that category. That said, no one reasonable cares much that you display that several year old thing you wrote for someone (absent confidential or classified information). I put "greatest hits" on my website and everything is either from a company that no longer exists or it's years-old material from a news website. The situation isn't ideal but it works better than the letter of the law suggests it should.
Bluestein 2y ago
Does that (not too often) not happen with "abandonware" turned open source?
- ghaff 2y ago
  It rarely turns open source. Someone releases it and no one cares enough to try to do anything about it.
mediumsmart 2y ago
So if there was a hub where a reporter can send the url of their article when it’s published and the hub then saves that page as text (lynx —dump or whatever) if it’s not paywalled. That would be ok I guess until the hub makes it accessible. Or would it be ok since it was publicly available on the net at one time if the hub only publishes when the original url goes dark?
- msephton 2y ago
  - https://archive.today https://archive.today (works with some paywall content) - https://web.archive.org https://web.archive.org etc
  - mediumsmart 2y ago
    Thank you for sharing but that is not news, that’s everything and therefore not searchable. It will have the reporters article and every webpage that quoted, interpreted, summarized and commented on it.

ghaff 2y ago

It's often probably at least a bit complicated. I cross-posted material between a couple of organizations (one of which is long gone) over a number of years via pretty much informal agreement. I also reused a fair bit of that material for other purposes. Everyone was OK with the state of affairs but who actually held the copyright? Who knows and I was certainly never going to bring it to a head. As a practical matter if CorporateMediaNews or the like don't care about something any longer, they mostly don't care if someone else makes use of it so long as it isn't embarrassing or misrepresenting the organization. In the end, I have created work that I've reused for a variety of organizations as well as independently and someone other than myself probably would claim copyright to but it's often been pretty loose.

ghaff 2y ago

Random old source code is probably pretty hard to do something useful with. But, honestly, random old work product is pretty hard for just about anyone to do something useful with. And even something self-contained (like writing), most of the the stuff I wrote 10 or 20 years ago is pretty uninteresting even if a few things have some historical interest.

jjmarr 2y ago

Journalists are often judged based on their public output. You get bylines on published articles, and you can use those to apply for jobs. There's not much emphasis on secrecy because the goal of a news outlet is to be read by as many people as possible. Being unable to provide examples of your work is a career-killer if everyone else can point to stuff they wrote. Preserving your work isn't altruistic, it's required. It's a very different environment compared to programming, because oftentimes the source code is valuable because it's a secret. Employees taking source code is dangerous because competitors can copy it; obviously that's bad for one's career. The analogy doesn't work here because the cost/benefits of taking legal action are different.

ghaff 2y ago
A ton of writing is done for (sometimes very expensive) paywalled and subscription-only publications--or internal-only at companies. Theoretically all my (pre-blogging) analyst work is in that category. That said, no one reasonable cares much that you display that several year old thing you wrote for someone (absent confidential or classified information). I put "greatest hits" on my website and everything is either from a company that no longer exists or it's years-old material from a news website. The situation isn't ideal but it works better than the letter of the law suggests it should.

Bluestein 2y ago

Does that (not too often) not happen with "abandonware" turned open source?

ghaff 2y ago
It rarely turns open source. Someone releases it and no one cares enough to try to do anything about it.

mediumsmart 2y ago

So if there was a hub where a reporter can send the url of their article when it’s published and the hub then saves that page as text (lynx —dump or whatever) if it’s not paywalled. That would be ok I guess until the hub makes it accessible. Or would it be ok since it was publicly available on the net at one time if the hub only publishes when the original url goes dark?

msephton 2y ago
- https://archive.today https://archive.today (works with some paywall content) - https://web.archive.org https://web.archive.org etc
- mediumsmart 2y ago
  Thank you for sharing but that is not news, that’s everything and therefore not searchable. It will have the reporters article and every webpage that quoted, interpreted, summarized and commented on it.