FTC Staff Discuss a Tax on Electronics To Support the News Business 381
dptalia links to this piece describing a staff discussion draft from the Federal Trade Commission, writing "The FTC is concerned about the death of the 'news.' Specifically newspapers. Rather than look to how old media models can be adapted to the Internet, they instead suggest taxing consumer electronics to support a huge newspaper bailout. Additionally, they suggest making facts 'proprietary' and allowing news organizations to copyright them."
Note, though, "The good news in all this is that the FTC's bureaucrats try hard to recommend little. They just discuss. And much of what the agency staff ponders are political impossibilities."
Wouldn't be the first time... (Score:5, Informative)
Newspapers were subsidized by the Federal government until about 1840 or so, due to the founder's desire to make sure there were plenty of options for people to be well informed.
Link here [suite101.com].
Re:Stop. Just... stop. (Score:3, Informative)
P.S. The oil seems to be getting a thick down south.
Re:Start laughing now... (Score:5, Informative)
RTFS
That's the other part of this proposal: that news agencies will be able to copyright the facts they report on so the blogs et al can't just take them and 'comment' on them to get their content.
Re:No bailout for newspapers (Score:3, Informative)
The automakers, yea they should have bailed them out, the got screwed because the banks screwed with their borrowing money.
The banks, well too big to fail is just full of fail.
No, the automakers are kind of strategic assets and the domino effect from their failure would have pushed the US and the industrialized world into a depression.
Link (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Let them Die (Score:4, Informative)
LOL! If this is true, Wow!
"In the United States, the state of Vermont passed a similar flurry of Red Flag Laws in 1894. The most infamous of the Red Flag Laws was enacted in Pennsylvania circa 1896, when Quaker legislators unanimously passed a bill through both houses of the state legislature, which would require all motorists piloting their "horseless carriages", upon chance encounters with cattle or livestock to (1) immediately stop the vehicle, (2) "immediately and as rapidly as possible... disassemble the automobile," and (3) "conceal the various components out of sight, behind nearby bushes" until equestrian or livestock is sufficiently pacified.[1] The bill did not pass, as Pennsylvania's governor used an executive veto.
Dear Lord, let's pacify the livestock by disassembling the car. It's a shame that retarded politics was around even back then...the more things change...the well, you know the rest.
Are they actually proposing anything? (Score:5, Informative)
Some stakeholders have proposed amending the Copyright Act to specifically recognize hot news protection. Advocates argue "the copyright act allows parasitic aggregators to 'free ride' on others' substantial journalistic investments," by protecting only expression and not the underlying facts, which are often gathered at great expense...
Hot news advocates are divided, however, on whether federal law should be revised to encourage state law development of hot news doctrine or to provide uniform, statutory federal hot news protection... The likely effects of a more vigorous hot news doctrine are controversial. For example, on eworkshop participant noted that New York's hot news doctrine was important to the AP's efforts to protect its intellectual property, but recognized that any "federalization" of the doctrine would need to be very carefully drafted to avoid unintended costs... Others also have argued that expanded IP protections for the news would be too costly. News organizations and writers, including print, broadcast, op-ed writers, and other commentators, routinely borrow from each other. One panelist suggested that "[m]uch of what is done by newspapers with each other is actually problematic under existing hot news doctrine."
The paper does include a number of possible direct revenue sources from the government as possibilities, such as tax breaks or increasing punding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. However, it also includes the following:
Representative Waxman noted in remarks to the FTC workshop on December 2, 2009, that those advocating for public funding "need to articulate the scope of such support, in terms of the activities to be supported and the dollars required. They need to respond to the concern that government support of journalism would lead to government control of content. And they need to explain the source of revenues."
Most of the paper goes on like this, presenting different sides of each proposal. Which is to say that unlike what the commentator in the OP states, this isn't so much the FTC dictating that the government deliberately save the news industry in any one particular way, but is more a roundtable discussion about different ways that it might occur. If you disagree with what's discussed, you might want to leave your Congressman a call.
Re:Libertarian alert! (Score:3, Informative)
You obviously have not read "Atlas Shrugged", or tried to understand the regulatory environment created around the banking system. There was plenty of regulation, and the book cited did a pretty good job of explaining how it broke. Alan Greenspan claims to be a true believer of the book, but that makes him either an idiot, liar, or thief.
Let me explain myself. In "Atlas Shrugged", the government played a role in the downfall of the country, but that role was mostly as a pawn for the true villains of the book, greedy corporatists that used the power of government to spawn their own short term profits. The corporatist would gladly sacrifice their own companies long term viability for a quick return. What did we see in the banking industry? Rating companies taking payoffs to give bogus ratings to high risk vehicles. Mortgage brokers falsifying documents to get a quick payoff. And basically, everybody pissing in the public well.
So, back of the "it was deregulation" rhetoric. There was plenty of regulation. It was just mostly bad regulation.
Re:Let them Die (Score:1, Informative)
Wait... what did they think was going to happen? The horses were going to freak out upon seeing a carriage with no horse in front of it?
I believe that the actual idea was to make it impossible to use one of these vehicles. If you constantly have to disassemble your car during a trip then reassemble it, you'll probably choose to take your horsey-carriage instead of the horseless one.
You can see similar laws being passed today, in order to support unions and illegal aliens.
Re:Let them Die (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, and no one goes to shows anymore - they're too crowded.
I'm afraid the more tabloidy stuff and the more charged editorial stuff is what goes out because that's what makes money. I wonder what the ratings are for a show with generally neutral debate - Macneill/Lehrer, Meet the Press - as compared to O'Reilly, Olbermann, Beck. Punditry sells, in-depth analysis of facts with equal weighting to all sides is boring and heady.
Re:Want to save the news business? (Score:1, Informative)
Put a tax on lying.
Politicians and cops would be broke within hours.