{"id":278,"date":"2004-05-17T11:20:19","date_gmt":"2004-05-17T15:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/2004\/05\/17\/ny-times-article-eliminate-the-middlem"},"modified":"2012-05-07T15:33:36","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T19:33:36","slug":"ny-times-article-eliminate-the-middleman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/2004\/05\/17\/ny-times-article-eliminate-the-middleman\/","title":{"rendered":"NY Times article, &#8220;eliminate the middleman&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a196'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>James Fallows has discovered RSS, among other things.&nbsp; He has a<br \/>\nquestion for publishers, noting &#8220;Information is both invaluable and<br \/>\nimpossible to value.&#8221;&nbsp; He cites the phenomenon of the give-away<br \/>\nculture, exemplified in free web sites, blogs, and more or less the<br \/>\nopen access movement.&nbsp; Who&#8217;s going to pay for information if it is<br \/>\nfree?&nbsp; Well, for a long time libraries paid for information that<br \/>\nwas made freely available to the general public, albeit with greater or<br \/>\nlesser convenience to the individual.&nbsp; Now, there&#8217;s more material<br \/>\nfreely available and at increasing convenience, depending on the speed<br \/>\nand stability of one&#8217;s internet connection.&nbsp; But publishers and<br \/>\nlibraries still provide value by collecting and organizing disparate<br \/>\ndata.&nbsp; What the price of that should be is another question.&nbsp;<br \/>\nMany believe that the free, open source, file sharing, whatever you<br \/>\nwant to call it, movements harm those who are simply trying to make a<br \/>\nliving or cover costs (small companies, scientific societies,<br \/>\nindependent artists) and will not harm those who are making<br \/>\nastronomical profits (the record companies, the Microsofts, the<br \/>\nElseviers.)&nbsp; Maybe we need to educate others about choices, and<br \/>\nsome can play a role in that, rather than attacking the open movements<br \/>\nin fear of losing what they little they have. For example, it seems<br \/>\nthat scientific societies have in interest in open access rather than<br \/>\ndismissing it.&nbsp; Fallows (oh yeah, that&#8217;s what started this) ends<br \/>\non an optimistic note (but not for the &#8220;middlemen&#8221;:&#8221;No matter how that<br \/>\nbattle turns out, the public will win the longer war.&nbsp; The<br \/>\nInternet&#8217;s impact on the value of information may still be in flux, but<br \/>\nits long-term impact on middlemen is clear.&#8221; Maybe it isn&#8217;t so much<br \/>\nelimination of the &#8220;middlemen&#8221; but those who would profit extravagantly<br \/>\nand serve their shareholders first.&nbsp; (Sources; Open Access News; Bob Stepno)<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Fallows has discovered RSS, among other things.&nbsp; He has a question for publishers, noting &#8220;Information is both invaluable and impossible to value.&#8221;&nbsp; He cites the phenomenon of the give-away culture, exemplified in free web sites, blogs, and more or less the open access movement.&nbsp; Who&#8217;s going to pay for information if it is free?&nbsp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weblogs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":705,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions\/705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}