That means in the future, your children will only get their news from the outlets of The New York Times Company and other such private interests. "We can not be a nation of bloggers". Saint Steve Jobs
And the email exchange with a Gawker reporter cited in the Guardian article. http://gawker.com/5539717/
edit: Of course, any entity that produces original content is fully entitled to protect their product. The solution is pay-for-content model, and that is well within the technical reach of these corporations. The New York Times Company, for example, has as of now deployed the infrastructure for this very purpose. It is called Sartre (an ecommerce platform). They have no valid reason whatsoever to overreach and lobby to curtail our civil rights.
My thoughts too. The hard part, the money part is putting people on the ground, in Iraq, in Syria. The thing about news outlets is the problem with a business model highly widespread around the internet right now: advertising. It's problematic, I feel, because as soon as the company decides your content doesn't suit their interests or they don't want to be associated with you, they'll cut your income. That model stops innovation and encourages sameness, uniformity and mediocrity. As Chomsky says, the NYT is interested in seeling a product, the product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm Maybe that could change a little with the pay-for-model a0 proposed. Right now they charge $3,75 per month, which is more or less $45 per year. It's seems a reasonable price.
But what happens if users suddenly stop visiting the Guardian? Suppose the company were involved in a scandal, its reputation tarnished and the traffic slows down. Some of the advertisers might pull the ads and maybe some of those international reporters might have to come home. So what's basically happening is big media is telling advertisers we have this huge number of people who are looking at us. If you give us money, you can stand besides us and be seen too.