I remember the guy from Jewish World Review used to come here and PLEAD with us to not post full text. His operation was on the brink of insolvency, and he needed every hit to not only garner revenue, but retain his advertisers. Of course, some the selfish troglodytes here don't kowtow to no rules, so they continued to just cut and paste the material HE WAS PAYING the outlets to display. It was sad, and the boorish arrogance of the purists here and the dismissal of his really poignant and undestandable requests is just unfathomable to me. One fricking double click on a link. Not for the unappeasables. I emailed the site's owner and apologized on behalf of FR for some peoples attitude and sent him $25 that day.
The guy at JWR doesn't have the resources to take FR to court if we don't comply with his wishes. Worldnetdaily.com ... if I owned that site, I'd demand that we link to it. Some folks here affect this righteous boycott, but your boycotting ONE G.D. hit!!! Big loss for WND!
These sites have NOTHING to lose by demanding a link from FR. If something is worth sharing with the group, it's worth going to their site.
What is so DIFFICULT about this concept? Every one of us should want to support WND, JWR, National Review Online, the Washington Times, Insight Mag, etc. They're good guys tryng to spread the gospel and make a business work. They've got expenses. They carry debt that makes them stay awake nights. They pay for the food the put on their tables and the roof they put over the family through the proceeds of their enterprise. I know what it's like to start a business, it's tough. But if anybody knowingly stiffed me, I'd put a boot up their ass. Who's that crass and rude? Anyone here who won't respect ANY websites desire to derive REVENUE to offset their costs and make a profit so they can pay their bills and employees and keep the doors open another month is a world class d-head in my opinion. It's beyond my comprehension.
There is something being lost in the case of many of the papers - The loss of archiving. The information often leaves the site daily at some of these newspaper web sites. And when it is gone, there's no way to find it unless you go to the library and look it up (for free) or pay to access the information at the paper's web site at a future date. This makes discussion of these stories impossible. It also allows the paper to later contradict their own story with little chance of someone calling them on it publically.
Part of this fight is about the ability of people to discuss a news story without buying the paper. Does your library carry copies of major papers? Can you read them for free? Then why should you not be able to do the same on the internet and be able to discuss them with peers just as you might do at a library or with a neighbor.
Like I said on an earlier post; this fight will again be fought. It may not be FreeRepublic v. Whoever, but somebody will fight this thing up to a higher court. It just wasn't the right time to make the big effort. When that time comes, I hope that freepers respond by supporting the free speech angle. Even if it is (and I say this reluctantly) a liberal discussion group.