Not many journalists actually do any research nowadays. They just copy and paste from other news sites or repeat what they are told to.

Think we’ll manage for 24 hours Stephen. After all, Hugh managed to figure out how to write the article above…
Susan, Editor, TheJournal.ie

That’s a pretty sweeping generalisation there Kitalpha. It’s also not very true.

Sites down but have a read tomorrow Hugh!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership Alot of AP releases on ths site.

don’t worry Susan I’ve a print out of the internet if you need to borrow it

Kitalpha, there are very few as far as I can see and we pay for use of the AP feed as we currently don’t have international reporters. But you will find that most Irish and other news is generated by us and I don’t think your original point was really about media ownership.

Surely then you have a duty to say something along the lines of:

This Press Release is from AP owned by the Rothschilds and may or may not actually be true. There may or may not be an alternative agenda here. As we have no journalists on the ground we have to take their word for it.

I dont know, use your imagination. I was sick reading the coverage of the genocide in Libya.

Or lack thereof.. ..

Thanks Stephen. I’ll get the messenger pigeon out of the coop to drop by and pick it up from you in a while :)

AP is owned by the various US broadcasters and newspapers who contribute material to it. Its ownership, therefore, is essentially the same as the ownership of the 1,700 newspapers who contribute material to it. That’s not the Rothschilds.

Also, what is the point in providing this work-around, unless The Journal supports SOPA?

Alternatively look at the cached version of the page, they still are working.

@Gavan Reuters owns the AP and Rothschilds own Reuters.

Not strictly true.

A) The bill only affects the US.
B) It only offers control over the DNS entries for the sites, so anyone in the US wishing to use them would be able to use any DNS server outside the US, or browse using the IP addresses.

It only affects the US in that internal sites can be seized. This, in *theory* could include a site like facebook if the some singers get their knickers in a twist after some 12 year old uploads a video of their song.

But what I meant really was that if these bills pass in the states, I can imagine them being introduced in more countries.

There are already records of the states putting pressure on Spain and New Zealand to introduce these types of bills and I believe Denmark already has some similar laws under the disguise of child pornography protection.

If they do get it passed at home, it would give them

@ObligPic – You’re right, but the US considers ‘.com’, ‘.net’ and ‘.org’ to be US domains, and can therefore demand the blockade of any .com website even if it is based outside the US.

Also, I just noticed that the broadsheet.ie is doing their own blackout too and have highlighted the point about similar forms of censorship being introduced here. As highlighted by the attempted three-strike rule.

The Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOx) is American only legislation, however it effect most business’ in the western world as in order to trade in/with the USA the must comply. The same would be true for SOPA/PIPA.

Focusing purely on DNS records was a stroke of genius for this act, as US owned/based company either own or manage the majority of top level domains (.com, .net, .info, mobi, .org, .edu, .gov). Even country specific TLD’s aren’t immune as many countries get service providers in the US to run/manage their ccTLD for them (.cc, .tv, .in, .me, .ln, .ag etc).
The FBI has in the past walked into DNS management companies and forced them to alter DNS records for sites they deemed illegal (AbsolutePoker.com, FullTiltPoker.com, PokerStarts.com).

You can also download a version of Wikipedia (one from 2008) directly to a desktop through the site itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#English-language_Wikipedia

There’s an Irish charity, Camara, which salvages and refurbishes old PCs and brings them to Africa. They put full copies of Wikipedia onto the computers, allowing the children to get full access to the world’s largest stash of knowledge without needing the internet. It’s pretty awesome.

Robert,

The two sides of the story are discussed in an earlier news piece here: http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/sites-go-offline-in-protest-at-us-anti-piracy-legislation-330596-Jan2012/ as well as a piece my colleague Susan Ryan wrote earlier in the week: http://www.thejournal.ie/reddit-boing-boing-plan-website-blackout-over-sopa-but-what-is-it-329012-Jan2012/

Both pieces are linked to at the bottom of this story so really your argument isn’t based on a fair and full examination of this article at all.

Also, my morning was spent writing a number of more important stories than this. The sum total of time devoted to this was no more than half-an-hour and judging by the amount of people who have looked at it it was worth informing them of the various ways around the blackout, which some people – quite rightly – are opposed to.

As I’ve alluded to in other responses here, it’s our responsibility as a news website to be open and honest about what’s happening as opposed to coming down on one side of the argument.

Thanks for your comment and have a great day.

Hugh

Hi C Murray,

Are you not automatically breaking your pledge not to read us by commenting on this piece? Also we do have a culture section, it’s here: http://www.thejournal.ie/category/culture/

And as for respect for innovators, we have plenty. I think we’d consider ourselves to be innovators in Irish news who have enormous respect for others who are innovating in Ireland online, and offline.

Thanks,

Hugh

Why do you think we don’t care about internet censorship? Or that we don’t have respect for innovators?

This is a news website; we pay for the use of an AP commercial news feed, and for photo feeds from four different agencies. We pay our way and acknowledge the copyright and intellectual property of any content that we cover. (And, in fact, around 50% of the content on the site nowadays doesn’t aggregate from another news source – it is fully digested and written in-house, just as it would be anywhere else).

Yes, the website is based on advertising. it’s either that, or we charge you to use it. We’d rather have the service free, and expose it to as broad a readership as possible, than charge someone to view a service they could later decide they simply don’t like. We know we can’t cater to everyone’s tastes – but we’d rather give ourselves the opportunity to win new readers than to dissuade them by charging to read us.

Sorry that you’re disappointed with our cultural coverage – that’s noted and taken on board.

No one cares what you think C Murray.

C Murray,

I do actually read Kernel Mag and am a fan of the work it does and its writing but we are, first and foremost, a news website whose job it is to report the news, fairly, accurately and honestly – giving both sides of the story. And in this arguement there are, as ever, two sides to the story. There are people who are well within their rights to access Wikipedia today and we’re just pointing out how it can be done.

We have a piece outlining SOPA and the arguments here: http://www.thejournal.ie/reddit-boing-boing-plan-website-blackout-over-sopa-but-what-is-it-329012-Jan2012/

Sorry you don’t like our culture section. Not much we can do about that.

Hugh