Bookmarking Tools and Paid Archives Don't Mix

Erica M from Minneapolis Metroblogging raises an interesting point about the stupidity of offering social bookmarking options for readers on sites where bookmarked content will soon be hidden behind paid archives:

Not-So-Permalinks

Can somebody explain to me the point of having that "save to del.icio.us" option (and Digg, and Reddit, and Newsvine, and Google Bookmarks, and really any bookmarking tool) on Strib and PiPress articles if the articles are only available for a couple of weeks?

Related to this, I consciously seek out news sources that don't hide their archives from readers when picking sources for blog posts. I do this because linking to paid content sources - or sources requiring registration - is insulting to my future readers. People will continue to stumble upon articles I've written months or years go, and should be able to have the same experience with that article as someone reading it on the day it's published.

For articles that really interest me on sites known to bury their archives, I've found myself switching from bookmarking articles that interest me to PDFing the articles and storing them locally.

Another option would be to copy/paste the article into a Google Doc.

Erica, the irony here is that I cut-and-pasted your entire article. Of course, I did attribute it to you and I know you won't bury it behind a paid archive in the future.

Comments

1. Posted by: Erica M on September 12, 2007 2:27 PM:

It's generally not kosher to cut-and-paste the whole article, even with attribution and a link (which will break). Although I've done that when I feel strongly that reading the whole article is necessary to understand the point I'm making.

Hadn't even thought about the PDF option. I kinda like that.

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