Ways to make yourself irrelevant

These are some really, really dumb ideas by the media to make itself a scarcity based industry again. It is not happening. Change or die. They seem to be choosing death.

1. San Jose Mercury News: No One Reads Us Any More, So Let's Start Charging

Media News, the current owner of the Merc, has announced that it's now going to start charging for online access to the paper, which seems like a move destined to fail dismally (and quickly). Already it's difficult to come up with any good reason to read the Merc online when it's free, and suddenly they want people to pay for it? All of the info that the paper provides is better provided elsewhere. It's difficult to see how they think that any significant number of people will actually pay to subscribe to the online version that's a tiny shell of what was once a great newspaper.

2. NY Times considers putting a usage meter on it's website and charging you if you read too much

The Observer’s John Koblin reports that the NY Times is considering putting a meter on usage of its site and charging once you’ve read too much.

Incredible.

They’ve spent the last 15 years trying to get people to stay longer and read more on their site and now they’re going to penalize their best customers? Readers’ inner dialogue is not hard to imagine: ‘Uh-oh, should I read that next story - and see that ad and maybe find something worth linking to and bring in other readers? It might start costing me. I’d better conserve my Times characters; they’re adding up; already read 20,000 of them. I think it’s time to go elsewhere now.’

3. Some want to change copyright to prevent search engines from working, and that's just for starters

There’s some dangerously wrong-headed lobbying from media lawyers in today’s Washington Post arguing for new laws to protect old media from new technology. Bruce Sanford and Bruce Brown of Baker Hostetler argue that Congress should:

* Change copyright law so that “the taking of entire Web pages by search engines, which is what powers their search functions, is not fair use but infringement.” This would be downright suicide for not only the media companies that I assume are their clients but for every business that wants to be discovered on the web. Not being able to analyze an entire page would mean that search engines could not reliably send searchers (aka customers) to relevant pages and that would mean that the owners of those pages would not be discovered. It would tear about the very essence of the web. This is so dangerously ignorant of the architecture of our new world and how it operates as to be stunning. It also is ignorant of the new link economy of the web. Why the hell do they think that companies hire SEO firms - so that Google will do a better job of analyzing all their content. (Who hires these people?)

Never underestimate dumb. Dumb almost always finds a way.