And *I* Wish Firefly Was Still On . . . You Idiots. | Main | Mr. Hall, Your Men... Are Already... Dead.

May 20, 2003

Spiders Don't Bite

Ed Felten points out that it's getting harder and harder to feel too bad for, say, The New York Times when it doesn't allow search engines to index it. Shame: PaidContent.org's NYT Online archive is a collection of testimony to just how stellar the NYT's online offerings are. While I'd shy away from the "open your archives up for free" line of reasoning without more information (I have no idea if the NYT's online division would stay stellar in its profits), I have to say it's a shame that the paper of record is practicing a sort of isolationism from the rest of the Web that not only locks away its offerings while they're still of immediate relevance, but sees to it that we have a harder time knowing they're there in the first place.

More of a shame, while we're on the NYT, is an LA Times item that reports victims of Jayson Blair's fairy-tale reporting didn't see the use of protesting, since "You expect people are going to get misquoted, or quoted out of context."