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The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

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Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#161

Post by briandear »

josephpmay wrote: post #73
meesterdude wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To also be fair, WSJ is hardly high caliber journalism, and since the sale to Murdoch has degraded significantly in quality

I would disagree. Their opinion pages have become more conservative, but their business news and investigative reporting is just as good as it always has been.

I agree. However I do always wonder why conservative views are devalued. I am a paid NY Times digital subscriber and I think the price is robbery however despite being conservative, I do find value in the other viewpoints. It seems like many equate conservative viewpoints as 'not worth supporting.' In my opinion, it's worth it for me to read the other side because I don't necessarily need an echo chamber reinforcing my own bias. Perhaps ironically, I subscribe to The NY Times and not the WSJ.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#162

Post by monochromatic »

azag0 wrote: post #103
ctrl_freak wrote: post #28

If anyone's looking for another workaround, the article actually hints at the solution: Facebook's l.php redirect that it uses when you click on a link shared through the platform. It functions similarly to the Google redirect, and you don't even need a Facebook account for it to work. E.g. https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/article...

How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for software or movies or music? I've read various reasons why people don't want to pay. That's fine. But then simply don't read it.

Everything on the web used to be free. We got used to that.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#163

Post by azag0 »

briandear wrote: post #155
azag0 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The publisher wants their subscribers to be able to share the stuff they pay for with other people. If you use that feature to read for free any content they publish, you misuse it. Now, I am very much against any DRM, I don't even really believe that intellectual property should be protected by law, but I believe that content creators have legitimate (but not necessarily legal) right to be paid for their content…

Don't believe IP should be protected? So every single author out there should not get paid? If their content isn't protected, they it's illogical to suggest they should also get paid. Anyone could reproduce that content and redistribute it. That's ludicrous. Film crews ought not be paid? Because if they can't sell their work, then what are they supposed to eat while making movies? Without IP protection, you no longer…

Obviously, this is too complex a problem to discuss here, so I'll make only a few points: (1) It isn't really relevant for my point about paying the publishers. If anything, IP protection makes my point stronger. (2) I'm not suggesting to abolish IP protection, because I'm not sure I'm right. That's why I said I believe IP protection is not needed. I know I cannot argue my opinion sufficiently. (3) My biggest issue with IP protection is that since there is no unambiguous definition of what IP is, all IP laws are necessarily too restrictive. Leading e.g. to the current craziness with patents. (4) Film crews out to be paid. There are different models of financing than copyright. Music industry got pretty far with the transition. (5) As for drugs, the governments should announce which drugs are needed, and when companies deliver such drugs, they should get a one-time payment. In present language, the governments would buy the copyright from the companies and release the recipes to public domain. It would be financed from health insurance.

Etc, etc. But again, I know there are holes in my reasoning.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#164

Post by monochromatic »

stop_thief wrote: post #156
rhaps0dy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for software or movies or music? Perhaps it is? I've almost never had anyone remark that I was doing something bad when not paying for a software or movie or music.

Well it is bad. You're basically a thief, no matter how you try to justify it to yourself. Really, you should be ashamed, rather than nonchalantly unconcerned about your behaviour.

Theft != copyright infringement.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#165

Post by nkozyra »

idiot_stick wrote: post #135
pascalxus wrote: post #4

First of all, I think it's great that journalists can get compensated for their work. but, strictly speaking as a consumer, I must say their paywall is completely out of touch with the way I want to pay for news consumption. I don't mind paying 5c or even 10c per article, but I'm certainly not going to sign up to pay 120$ for 6 months, if I'm only going to read 1 or 2 articles here and there. but since they've done i…

So 15 minutes of entertainment time to you (the time spent consuming a WSJ article) is worth 5 or 10 cents? Imagine if you were compensated at the same rate for your work. I suggest you try to find a substitute for those entertainment pennies. If you can, and that item is "free", good for you. But I doubt 5 or 10 cents gets you much.

That's probably more expensive per article then the print product, which included costs of physical production.

Journalism has always been about advertisers and scale. The problem now is lowered barriers to entry drove up supply, reducing advertising $ available to "real journalism" and entities like nyt and wsj still have vestigial anchors pulling them down further.

Couple that with growing adblocking and it's a bad recipe. How do you put that genie back in the bottle? The net effect has been lowered standards by former standouts in a race to the bottom. I don't see a fix, much less an easy one.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#166

Post by briandear »

teej wrote: post #49
wfunction wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount you want to pay for news is not anywhere close to the value it is providing you or that they make from ad revenue. What amount would be close to the value they make from ad revenue?

I would speculate they make between $5 - $20 CPM and they show 3-5 ads per article view. That puts the revenue between 1.5¢ and 10¢ per article pageview. Micropayment approaches and payment processor rates vary, but I'd generalize to probably 30% take rate. So assume 3.5¢ to 7¢ payment per article. Do you pay for every article you load? Do you pay again if you load the article twice? What if you don't like the articl…

A $20 CPM? I'm thinking it's nowhere close. That's exceeding TV level CPMs.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#167

Post by buzzkills »

oskarth wrote: post #125
pascalxus wrote: post #4

First of all, I think it's great that journalists can get compensated for their work. but, strictly speaking as a consumer, I must say their paywall is completely out of touch with the way I want to pay for news consumption. I don't mind paying 5c or even 10c per article, but I'm certainly not going to sign up to pay 120$ for 6 months, if I'm only going to read 1 or 2 articles here and there. but since they've done i…

While I agree, it is probably a case of not being in their target market: - Average age: 40+ - Average household income: 250k+ - Average household net worth: 1.5m+ From http://www.wsjmediakit.com/files/uploads/201410/2016_WSJcom_... .

link doesn't work

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#168

Post by tomjen3 »

azag0 wrote: post #103
ctrl_freak wrote: post #28

If anyone's looking for another workaround, the article actually hints at the solution: Facebook's l.php redirect that it uses when you click on a link shared through the platform. It functions similarly to the Google redirect, and you don't even need a Facebook account for it to work. E.g. https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/article...

How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for software or movies or music? I've read various reasons why people don't want to pay. That's fine. But then simply don't read it.

It is, music, software and movies are pirated illegally too.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#169

Post by monochromatic »

wfunction wrote: post #33
ikeboy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would give you HN gold if it existed (now we just need a bookmarklet/extension to automate this). Do we know that this will still work on Monday? Maybe this will also be closed and you'll need a special link?

Bookmarklet for Facebook: javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href); Bookmarklet for Google: javascript:window.location="https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&url="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

Beautiful.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#170

Post by briandear »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #64
the_duke wrote: post #6

Sadly for most newspapers, WSJ is in a special position. It has the highest circulation of any paper in the US, and it has a target audience that really doesn't mind paying. A paywall wouldn't work out well for many others.

I suspect most of the others would be better just posting teaser material on the web and trying to make the rest up in the paper edition.

The Houston Chronicle has a similar dual system. The print newspaper is online but paywalled: houstonchronicle.com the "chron.com" version is mostly buzzfeedish fluff that's free.
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