[10128] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: NY Times story
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (BRP Publications)
Tue Feb 8 14:35:14 1994
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 14:08:03 -0500 (EST)
From: BRP Publications <brpinc@access.digex.net>
To: Christopher Locke <clocke@panix.com>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <199402081449.AA07289@panix.com>
On Tue, 8 Feb 1994, Christopher Locke wrote:
> John quoted my own elliptical slur on the non-Internet players
> as: "Companies in the electronic publishing market are
> beginning to see they want the largest possible market... They
> don't want to be trapped in markets that are Balkanized or
> private."
>
> But it gets much better. Toward the end of the piece, EB
> president Joseph Esposito says: "If you do believe that content
> is king, it's rather unfortunate that so many of the content
> providers have put themselves in a position where they're held
> hostage to the online services."
>
> The final graph quotes Larry Smarr, director of NCSA, saying:
> "We're creating a new market for content providers... Here is a
> whole world of people who are using cyberspace as their
> information stream. They are all potential customers for
> commercial information providers." Given NCSA's development of
> Mosaic -- which is mentioned in the story along with WAIS, as
> tools EB will use for delivery -- it's plain he's not referring
> to the AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy constituencies.
>
> Kudos, once again, to Markoff and the NY Times for elevating an
> important trend -- to publishing on the Internet -- into high
> visibility within mainstream business circles.
>
Highly ironic, too, considering that the NYT is the only content provider
I know of that balkanized itself out of the market. Mead Data Central
owns the exclusive electronic repro rights to the NYT IN PERPETUITY.
That's why it can only appear for 24 hours on the Dow Jones service. The
other content providers that are going with the commercial online services
have not signed exclusive licenses with anyone--for instance, Ziff Davis
holds electronic publishing rights to almost 2,000 publications, but not a
single one of those is an exclusive license.
Nate Zelnick, Associate Editor, Information and Interactive Services Report
