2012: The year Irish newspapers tried to destroy the web

http://www.mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2012/12/30/2012-the-year-irish-newspapers-tried-to-destroy-the-web/

by CountHackulus • 14 years ago

56 33 14 years ago

mcgarrsolicitors.ie

cathyreisenwitz• 14 years ago

Grooooss. Wonder how state-funded and regulated Irish newspapers are.

andybak• 14 years ago

Nothing in the article suggests they are at all. What made you say that?

skhg2• 14 years ago

We have extremely strict libel legislation, and an independent press ombudsman. State funding is not a factor in the finances of the major papers who pushed for the measures mentioned in this article

lostlogin2• 14 years ago

Regulation can be a form of oppression. Press freedom index. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index

rmc4• 14 years ago

State-funded? Not really at all? Regulated, not very.

coditor• 14 years ago

Anyone can try to get money for links. The internet alternative of course is to eliminate all of their readership from anyone other than the local pub.

skhg2• 14 years ago

Good luck to them... This was already tried in belgium http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/google-versus-bel... years ago

derleth3• 14 years ago

Belgium... Ireland... who's next, Andorra?

Frankly, 99.9+% of the world's population can get through their day without learning what happens in Ireland unless and until it affects a country with a more direct impact on their lives. The fact that country will almost certainly have newspapers that aren't actively trying to get blacklisted by search engines is just a nice extra.

FuzzyDunlop• 14 years ago

Ignorance may certainly be bliss but dismissing something because it presumably didn't happen in America takes that idea a bit too far.

materialhero2• 14 years ago

Let them. Let them start charging for links. Let them miss out on the free SEO and let them fall off the face of the search engines. Let them lose their readership because nobody can find them and let them go bankrupt because no one is looking at their ads. This is how the internet works. If they can't figure that out, then its no ones loss but their own. A less greedy company will be happy to have sites link back to them and will eventually take their place.

lostlogin2• 14 years ago

I honestly believe that this is happening to most papers already. There are notice exceptions, but they are few.

sp332• 14 years ago

Counterpoint: The New York Times Paywall Is Working Better Than Anyone Had Guessed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4970846

don_draper• 14 years ago

Counterpoints to your counterpoint: The New York Times is a) doing ok for now but not great [1] b) most importantly, the NYT is an American institution that is in a league of their own. Few newspapers have the prestige, quality and history of the NYT.

[1] Stock price for NYT has gone down 80% in the last 10 years: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ANYT&ei=g9XhUJiAJ6...

rmc4• 14 years ago

The newspapers listed in the article are nowhere near as big as the NYT.

Dylan16807• 14 years ago

That paywall works because it actually allows you to read some articles. Solid paywalls in the past have failed terribly.

mrgoldenbrown• 14 years ago

Does Google have to pay the NYT for each link to a NYT page in their search results? I doubt it. That is what the Irish papers are proposing. The NYT has decided that Google traffic is so important, they will let users access their content for free if they come from a Google results page. That to me reinforces the idea that charging people to link to you is self defeating.

rmc4• 14 years ago

Forget "Organic PageRank benefits", if Google can't link to it, then they can't show it on search results. This would kill any and all organic searches.

derleth3• 14 years ago

This isn't going to last very long.

In a few months, at the outside, they (the newspapers) will have a condescending piece of back-pedaling that implies we were all too stupid to understand their statements, because obviously they never so much as implied they would charge people to link to them, and saying they did means we just don't get it. Then they'll maintain strict silence over it and refuse to even acknowledge questions about it.

I hate when they do that.

charonn0• 14 years ago

Someone should get on the horn to the grandchildren of the newspaper executives; they need to explain the tubes again.

lucian303• 14 years ago

Those who don't learn history ...

smcgarr• 14 years ago

I'm the author of this piece. If you'd like to see the letters we wrote on behalf of Women's Aid in response to the demands for money for links you can see them http://www.mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2012/05/10/newspaper-licencin...

and

http://www.mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2012/12/06/newspaper-licensin...

Thank you for your interest.

2012: The year Irish newspapers tried to destroy the web

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