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points by ada-h00k 1 day ago | 0 comments

I think it's a shame that copyright laws don't allow us to host a non shady alternative to this. The only reason people use such dubious sites is that there's no other way to share a link to a news site without risking that the text will be altered later or hidden behind a paywall.

[–] keoneflick 1 day ago

NYT is $4 per month, and you can then share gift links.

Why should journalism be free? Is $4 not an appropriate price for real journalism? If not, then what?

Your library if it's in the US also likely maintains access to NYT archives.

[–] Dylan16807 1 day ago

How hard can you guarantee that $4?

Because that's not what NYT says the price is. They say it's over $30 after the intro period.

[–] ada-h00k 1 day ago

Not every newspaper offers the option to share gift links. Besides, it's unrealistic to subscribe to every single newspaper. I have 2 regular newspapers that I read every day, and other than that, I'm usually interested in just 2 or 3 articles from other papers. I can't subscribe to 50 different newspapers a month. Besides, the articles that could be archived using archive.today is all content that was once available online without a paywall. If a site posts an article that’s publicly accessible, people should be allowed to archive it. If they later add a paywall or use some weird cookie mechanisms to annoy people it's their problem. If they don’t want it to be archived, they have to put it behind a login wall.

[–] strenholme 1 day ago

One legal way to share news stories which generate controversy is to have an AI make a summary of the article, rewording it to remove any copyright from the article (this legal trick only works when the news site in question is reporting on factual events, since facts can’t be copied as per Feist vs. Rural 1991, and I make sure that the summary has “a different sequence, pace, and setting than the original article” as per legal judgments on whether an AI summary of factual events as reported by a news source is subject to copyright).

[–] consumer451 1 day ago

What about just a copy and paste into an HN post comment? What is the legality of that? What if someone who reads a share, and then pastes it as a comment?

Genuine question here.

[–] strenholme 19 hours ago

While Righthaven LLC v. Hoehn did rule that copying and pasting an entire newspaper article is fair use, this ruling was vacated on appeal and instead the lawsuit was nullified because they ruled Righthaven never had the right to bring the lawsuit in the first place. So, yes, one can be sued for copying and pasting a newspaper article verbatim.

[–] Brian_K_White 1 day ago

Then it's no longer a record.

It might be useful for your own memory since you can decide that you trust what was written. IE you trust that when it was written, you agreed at the time that it was an accurate summary, and later you only have to trust your earlier self.

But "My ai said that the site said ~essentially~ this on this date." is useless for anything else.

But it suggests an interesting idea. Maybe if we had some ai equivalent of trusted vetted accountable court reporters who write down notes and draw sketches in rooms where cameras aren't allowed.

That is purely second-hand reporting that we more or less trust, partly because there is usually more than one of them from competing venues reporting on the same event, partly because they are people with something to lose if they are unfaithful or even merely inept, partly because the facts are ultimately vettable with some effort for those who really need to.

There's no such ai yet. Even if one exists that could do the job, there is no consensus or basis for it, for everyone to recognize it as a trustworthy source of second hand reporting. But maybe if there were more than one and operated by different camps, they could grow to become recognized as a valid source of info.