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Closing Off the Internet and Tossing Fair Use Over the Cliff

By Pamela Jones et al.

After reading about the ACAP system that Copiepresse is pushing to regulate access to content, I decided to take a closer look at the system of selling older articles that were free on the Internet when they first appeared. One company alone, Highbeam, says it provides access to 3,500 publications, like the Chicago Tribune, Harpers, and the Washington Post. They also offer older press releases, in case you have too much money cluttering up your wallet and want to buy to read one. Here's how Highbeam describes itself:

HighBeam is an online library and research tool for individuals, students and small businesses. We collect millions of research articles from published sources and put them all in one place.

Library, to me, means you can read for free forever. This is a paid library. I was researching trying out Google's new system for News whereby it makes older articles available by year, and I was using in particular those from the 1990s. Here's a sample results page. Look at how many on that list are press releases now subscription only, 13 out of 14. The last is an article from 1994 you could have read for free at the time. Actually, you still can find some of the materials for free elsewhere. I'll tell you how to find things like that, now that publishers are trying to close off the Internet.

Full post as published by Groklaw on October 18, 2008 (boomark / email).