Wednesday, December 02, 2009

FTC dislikes free speech


AP: ""News is a public good," FTCChairman Jon Leibowitz said. "We should be willing to take action if necessary to preserve the news that is vital to democracy."
...Among the options being discussed: tax law changes that would allow media companies to earn tax credits or become tax-exempt entities, and copyright law changes that would force search engines and other online aggregrators to compensate media companies for the content they produce.

Also on the table is a proposed change in antitrust rules to allow newspapers to jointly negotiate payments from Web sites that use their content."

Great. So the government needs to take action to save a failing product, the current newspapers and networks.

How?

By paying them or turning them into non-profit entities.

By making search engines and blogs pay to use their material.

Brilliant.

6 comments:

Sra. Madera said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sra. Madera said...

A government bailout of a dying industry is appropos for this day and age in American history. As we move ever closer to Socialism (Communism)and State owned industries, the dying newspapers must be kept viavable to be used as a propaganda machine. You know like the East Germans kept the Trabant in production regardless the quality of the vehicle and with no improvements over 30 years.

Bike Bubba said...

Well, ya gotta admit that most newspapers are technically speaking nonprofit entities these days..... :^)

Solameanie said...

As a guy who's been in broadcast journalism, the thought of the government paying or subsidizing media is abhorrent to me. Why not just call it TASS or Pravda?

RobertDWood said...

Sra, I've never heard of that.

Bike, thats funny. But at least right now, they pretend to seek a profit.

Joel, that are those?

Solameanie said...

TASS was the former Soviet News Agency, while Pravda was the communist newspaper in Russia.