Via Canadian Sentinel, a National Post bit on the CBC charging for quoting it's articles
Okay so let me get this right - a publicly funded news organization that offers it's articles online for free to anyone in the entire world for their reading pleasure, now wants to charge at least $125/month for people who quote their articles in, for example, blogs.
Sorry? Let me read that National Post piece again.
Yup I think I read it right, all 4 times. Surely there must be a mistake. How can they charge for something they offer up for FREE. Surely it was being done the right way before - such as if I quoted something from a CBC online news article, I would provide the link in order to be on the right side of plagarism/copyright infringement. At the same time, I would be generating higher traffic for the CBC website if anyone clicked the link to double-check my quote and/or read the entire article. But no - now I would be doing that wrong. Hmm. Interesting.
A different scenario would be if I subscribed online to my local paper. I would then have access to the archives, only because I paid. If I took an article from that paid list and posted it online, I can see where someone would say that was naughty. Because I would be putting a paid service online for free for others who were non-paying to read. That would not be very nice, and would take money from my local news paper.
But the CBC is not like that is it? I've never come across something I've had to be a paying member to read/watch. I don't even think I've come across something you have to be a registered (for free) member to read. Unlike some things on CNN or other news sites where you might have to pay a small fee to see certain videos, or register with a username to see.
How can you charge for something that you offer to the entire planet for free?
I guess I just won't be sending anyone to any cbc links from here on out!
Now here's another reason why the govt. should IMMEDIATELY stop funding the CBC. They don't need the govt's money and by this latest declaration of their intention to charge a fee, they are boldly and fearlessly slapping the federal govt. soundly and hard... right across their face.
ReplyDelete"Take that Harper govt, we don't need your funding" is what they are saying, bold and clear.
Will the Harper govt listen? That's a question we the Conservatives have been asking for a long time concerning the CBC.
MariaS
I couldn't believe what I was reading and will look into it more closely later on.
ReplyDeleteMaria as to your other remark to me on the side (unpublished as requested), yes I have noticed things going a bit off into crazy land for quite awhile now. I maybe read that place every other month these days and have contemplated removing that link. I don't know what's going on there,, perhaps being driven coo-coo over everything happening there?? Sad, because I enjoyed that link a lot in the past. Now..... not sure what's going on lol
Great! This will make the CBC even more irrelevant in dispersing the news. I'm hoping they raise it to $500 a month. (real conservative)
ReplyDelete