The move away from traditional, or mainstream media is currently accelerating as more and more people switch to the internet for their information and entertainment. Sales of newspapers are declining, radio advertising is down, and television viewers are switching off in record numbers.
It’s popular in the blogopshere to argue that newspapers will eventually fall, and radio is hardly popular. However, given the current marketplace, television will be the first traditional media medium to completely fail, where as radio has some life left in it yet. Newspapers will survive, but the newspaper of tomorrow will be markedly different.
The great Television switch off
The television switch off is real. In the United States, 2.5 million viewers switched off in the spring on 2008 compared to the same time in 2006. Statistically this is only a small percentage of the overall viewing audience, but among those still watching television, the amount of television they watch each day is declining.
The decline in television viewing is stronger among younger statistical groups. In Europe, a 2005 study from the European Interactive Advertising Association found almost half of 15- to 24-year-olds are watching less TV in favor of browsing the web. A study reported in The Guardian in 2007 headlined with “Young networkers turn off TV and log on to the web.” The television switch off in the United States among younger people has seen the average age of a TV viewer increase to 50.
Daily Archives: September 3, 2008
Open Records Guerrilla
But if you want to download and save those laws to your computer, forget it.
The state claims copyright to those laws. It dictates how you can access and distribute them — and therefore how much you’ll have to pay for print or digital copies.
It forbids people from storing or distributing its laws without consent.
That doesn’t sit well with Carl Malamud, a Sebastopol resident with an impressive track record of pushing for digital access to public information. He wants California — and every other federal, state and local agency — to drop their copyright claims on law, contending it will pave the way for innovators to create new ways of searching and presenting laws.
“When it comes to the law, the courts have always said there can be no copyright because people are obligated to know what it says,” Malamud said. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse in court.”
Malamud is spoiling for a major legal fight.