(Early) this morning on Brian’s Education Blog I mentioned my unease about links to electronic newspaper articles that may, but may not, remain linkable-to. (I reproduced great gobs of an independent.co.uk piece, maybe superfluously.) John Ray (of this – which is a link that is likely to go on making sense for the foreseeable future) sent me this email:
I share your concern about linking to articles on sites run by newspapers. My solution is to put up on a separate site copies of articles that I think might “disappear”. See: www.foxhunt.blogspot.com.
I’d be particularly interested in comments on this matter. (For these purposes I suggest we treat the shambles that is the blogger/blogspot/whateverit’scalled archiving system as a separate issue.)
Much is made by bloggers of the notion of the “blogosphere”. We bloggers understandably focus on the distinction between a “blog” and a “not blog”. (See for example the critical comments on this Samizdata piece I did – and let’s all hope that that link still makes sense in five years time! – about what is apparently a “not blog”.)
But I believe that a more fundamental distinction is the one between all the stuff that is available at one press of one button (i.e. linkable to), for ever, and all the stuff that will perhaps not be available for ever, at one press of one button, either because it never was in the first place, or because, having dangled it in front of us all for a few months, the danglers are then instructed by their accountants and/or lawyers to put the stuff behind a registration and/or money wall.
John Ray’s solution seems unwieldy, and also vulnerable to small-print-wielding lawyers forcing him (or someone) to take the stuff down from his special site.
I’m not querying the right of electronic newshounds to behave like this – not in this posting anyway. (It’s costing them money to write these pieces, and our plan is that eventually we spoil their on-paper circulation numbers, right?) I’m merely wondering what we can do (that we have and will go on having a legal right to do) about it, in such a way that keeps all our postings making sense.
Because Perry de Havilland‘s solution – quote great gobs of the original piece thereby making the link less crucial – is not perfect either.
USS Clueless had a quick aside in a post about Denbeste’s choice of using ABC’s website wire reports over others’. That would be the first step – finding a source which keeps open archives of everything it posts. The next step would be finding multiple instances of the article and incorporating them into the blog post whenever a link to the article is warranted. Distributed link allocation or something. Google News is perfect for finding those duplicate wire reports and repostings. Checking your local newspaper or TV station’s website can also yield results and you can contact them directly about their policy on older story retention.
I haven’t dug around at any of the major news wire websites enough to know how they handle archives. Perhaps one way of doing it is to have a seperate private blog for personal reference only where you can post all the links you can find to a story and then post the full text of it on the private blog. Having it unaccessible to the public might deflect a potential copyright lawsuit. IANAL, so I don’t know for sure.
Way ahead of you, Brian – just look for the word “Masshole” (lol).
Sorry to disappoint, but I’m going for Romney. No effin’ way I want Shannon “Bitch” O’Brien in there.
Very nice website