I few days ago I posted the following reflection on the Nieman Journalism Lab, and I thought folks here would appreciate it as well. Unknown to me at the time, a court decision had just come down from the, Barclays vs Flyonthewall.com which further advanced discussion of the hot news doctrine. There are major policy questions about copyright and journalism currently bouncing around the FTC and FCC, and those of us in D.C. should be paying close attention. On April 9, Berkman will be hosting a symposium, "Journalism's Digital Transition: Unique Legal Challenges and Opportunities," which will include a discussion of these issues.
Remember all the way back to March 2009? Somali pirates roamed the ocean. The just-inaugurated President Barack Obamanominated Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Tiger Woods was happily married. Closer to the world of journalism, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was still a printed newspaper. In that vein, a look back at the Nieman Journalism Lab archives reminds us that March 2009 was still a time of innocence in the world of online news. Aggregation was good, linking was easy, and paywalls were a crazy idea. Google was still a search engine, not a six-letter word for “intestinal parasite of the Internet.”
