If the concepts in my Derivative Works Manifesto were put into law & practice, sites like GoogObits and Letters to the Editor, Jack O’Neil, Sewickley would be pretty well-covered. In these sites, I use the complete text of owned content in unique ways. Clearly there is original authorship in the selection and presentation of this text.
My archive of John F. Burns articles is somewhat more difficult to justify. Though I am taking the time to create the space for & surroundings of the text, and I am engaging in an act of curation, all I was really doing was building a place where people could get around paying the New York Times $2 for something.
I recently discovered that all links to New York Times content that come from RSS aggregators like Bloglines never require registration and will not be archived (placed behind the $2 wall) for the forseeable future. Here’s an example from months ago:
Fo Shizzle, That Big Bad Chrysler Really Does Sizzle
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/business/26bling.html?ex=1403582400&en=d0e1a81dda5bcff4&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
By DANNY HAKIM
Published: June 26, 2004
This is a very old article that one would expect to be archived, but it’s not. The magic in the URL string is the “partner=USERLAND” portion. If you want to generate your own archive-free NYT links, these guys made a nifty utility to do just that.
So here’s the upshot for the John F. Burns site:
- I removed the links to the 92 or so complete text articles I have
- I started linking to RSS-style links on the NYT site along with the first paragraph of text (“look ma, fair use!”)
- I added text about how to get complete articles:
This is an archive of links to John F. Burns articles on the New York
Times website. These links do not require registration on the NYT site
and are impervious to linkrot. If you are interested in obtaining the
complete text of John F. Burns articles going back over the last couple
of years, send an email noting the nature of your request (fair use, personal consumption, etc.) and I’ll see if the text is available.
Why am I doing this? Mainly because the New York Times was smart enough to change their technology so that it was favorable to people like me who only want to shine light on them. They get continued ad revenue, branding impressions, and hits. We get unfettered consumption of the content. And we all move forward in the dark, with our arms extended in front us, feeling our way to the future.