|
EDITOR’S NOTE: -- For years now I have been known as an excellent analyst of how the mainstream media operates. In recent years, we have identified and trained a great many writers and researchers in this craft. Some of the best and brightest in the world write for FTW. Other groups and individuals have developed these skills in their own right. Information is shared. Energy is shared.
These are proving to be some of the most important and demanded skills as Peak Oil makes itself known, both through declining energy supplies and world events.
Because of the overwhelmingly positive response received from readers, and, as evidenced by our web traffic (which now frequently exceeds 30,000 distinct visitors per day), our program to perform this service has been hugely successful.
I have received many emails thanking FTW for research and reprints. (We call the stories T17s, after Title 17, Section 107 of the US Code which provides for this expression of free speech sharing other people’s published works.) These emails have said that the “Key Stories From Around the World” Section was so useful to them – and free – that they no longer felt it necessary to subscribe.
The good news is that our great work at teaching people how to think has been so successful that they have begun to read the map for themselves. The bad news is that FTW cannot sustain the financial drain.
FTW respects the need to protect intellectual property rights in this world, as it is now. This is how activists and journalists otherwise at risk can maintain the right to comment publicly on important issues. Title 17 is protecting us and you. Title 17 also stipulates that it is legal to reprint another entity’s copyrighted material only if it is done for free.
In moving this service to our paid subscriber’s only section, FTW is not charging for the right to read another person’s copyrighted material. What we are charging for is the enormous expense that providing this service has become. We are charging for our expertise and our time. Each day, four members of the FTW staff spend in excess of ten man hours in the process of reading/scanning hundreds of stories, selecting the ones to post and – in most cases – writing our own special analyses of them.
This service is needed.
This service must be sustainable and encouraged to expand by anyone attempting to provide the genesis for a new and useful wire service: KeyWire©.
As the world moves faster and closer to the point where there is the need to understand and implement sustainability or perish, the concept of sustainability itself needs to be understood on the economic level just as much as it needs to be understood on the agricultural and commodity level. These lessons will show us how to survive the challenges that lay immediately ahead.
To continue receiving the benefits of FTW research, subscribe here for this service.
Michael C. Ruppert
6 May, 2005
Please Note
This function has been disabled.
|
|
|
|
