How’s that pay for content model working out James Dolan?
In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?
So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?
The answer: 35 people.
The article goes on to point out that newspaper subscribers and people with Optimum cable get a free account so it’s not as if only 35 people visit the website. It’s just that only 35 people are willing to pay to do so. That’s less people that subscribe by email to Red Alerts. The quote that makes the piece:
“We’re the freebie newsletter that comes with your HBO,” sniffed one Newsday reporter.
Don’t flatter yourself.
Could it be that websites are best utilized as ways to advertise goods and products and not as products in their own right? Nah. That’s too simple an explanation.
That kind of tough sentencing will definitely keep him from downloading more child rape videos and bringing them into America. Thanks for dispensing justice Vermont:
BURLINGTON, Vt. – A child pornography suspect who initially refused to give up his computer password so police could search his laptop was sentenced Friday to three years in prison and deported.
Sebastien D. Boucher, 33, was also ordered to submit to five years of supervised release for his conviction on one count of possession of child pornography transported in interstate or foreign commerce.
Entering the United States from Canada in 2006, Boucher — a Canadian citizen with U.S. residency — was stopped Dec. 17, 2006, at the Derby Line, Vt., checkpoint and asked to show his laptop to an agent.
He waived his Miranda rights and told agents he downloads pornography from news groups and that he sometimes unknowingly acquires images that contain child pornography. But he said he deletes the images when he realizes it.
The border agent saw files “Two year old being raped during diaper change” and “pre teen bondage,” and the computer was seized. But when an when an investigator later tried to access a particular drive, he couldn’t because of password-protected encryption software.
But here’s where it gets even more maddening:
A grand jury subpoenaed Boucher to reveal the password, but a magistrate later said he didn’t have to, since it would have the effect of giving prosecutors the key to get evidence against him.
On Sept. 25, Boucher pleaded guilty and agreed to surrender the password, on condition that what investigators found couldn’t be used against him at sentencing.
According to U.S. Attorney Tristram Coffin, Boucher had a constitutional right not to surrender the password.
Prosecutors already had enough evidence to convict Boucher, but they wanted to examine the contents of the computer’s “Z drive” to see if other crimes had been committed, according to Coffin.
Under the plea, if the government found evidence that he’d produced child pornography, that evidence could be used against him.
So Canadians have the same Constitutional rights as Americans? Then why aren’t we allowing them to buy firearms here as guaranteed by the Second Amendment? It’s interesting how lefties always think foreign nationals have “Constitutional rights” when it would mean protecting a pervert or Al-Qaeda operative but not Canadians or Mexicans who want to protect their family or go hunting. Weird.
But there was a happy ending here. Boucher rolled on some other people and finally gave up the password. Guess what was on his laptop:
When Boucher finally gave up the password Oct. 19, investigators found 2,000 still images and 118 video files depicting prepubescent children being sexually assaulted by adults, according to Michael Touchette, a computer forensics analyst for the Vermont Department of Corrections who testified Friday at the sentencing.
Unfortunately they couldn’t find evidence of who produced the porn or if even that particular computer was involved. So Boucher gets out on good behavior within a year and returns to Canada to partake in more child pornography. But we can rest easy knowing the Constitutional rights afforded Americans extend to Canadians as long as they aren’t buying a gun.
Because Glenn Beck is a strident anti-Communist I watch his program and tolerate his pretentious “Republicans are just like Democrats” nonsense which is frankly designed to make him king of some illusionary third party that believes in Liberty, Free Markets and a total ban on implied male nudity. I actually like the Beck show and think he’s done great work exposing the Marxism that infests the Democrats (though his analysis that leftists aren’t really Progressives is laughable) but like Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs Beck’s good works are overshadowed by his sanctimony and unseemly cattiness.
Via Gateway Pundit here’s Beck from yesterday bashing Scott Brown:
First let me deal with the nudity issue. I’m going to go out on a limb here because as a straight man I haven’t bothered to check out Scott Brown’s “sexiest bachelor” pictorial, but I guarantee you Scott Brown was not “nude” in Cosmopolitan. Maybe there was what we call an “implied” nude shot but I will eat my lucky hat if Scott Brown’s junk was dangling in the wind for all to see. But even if he did so what?
Sorry kids, but men who have it, they flaunt it. I tired of doughy, testosteroneless, male haus-fraus telling everyone else how to dress and act. I’ve got good genes so in college when I hit the weight bench I became quite hulking which I showed off by buying mostly sleeveless shirt for two years since my arms then were bigger than most men’s legs now. Being a longtime hiker I have huge legs, my calves are so big I have trouble finding boots that will fit me. I’m proud of being a big guy (except for the middle which is expanding these days at an alarming rate) and though all this rugged eye candy is reserved for the wife (sorry ladies) I would strip down in a hot minute for a couple of grand. Am I not to the right of Pinochet anymore because of that? Silly me, I thought freedom meant being free to make your own decisions.
I thought Beck was a “free market, free people” kind of guy but he seems to be saying that men shouldn’t be free to look like they might be naked in a magazine made for middle aged women who get so few thrills in life that an old Scott Brown pictorial is all that stands between them and a lethal dose of cooking sherry. Brown was proud of his body, which is good, so he went out and showed it off. Also good. Even better is that he made some money doing it. I like Brown more knowing he’s got hustle and he’s not afraid to live his life as he, not finger wagging god-botherers, sees fit.
I’d also point out that since Sarah Palin posed in a swimsuit for a pageant 20 or so years ago Beck is being a little hypocritical here, since he orgasms whenever he interviews her.
Then we come to the daughter comments. Oh the horror of a father wanting his adult daughters to meet nice guys, get married, and get the hell out of his house. The deranged Beck, channeling his inner Charles Johnson, even went so far as to smear Brown with a “dead intern” joke. Brown’s daughters didn’t seem to mind his joking plea for suitors, however. Ayla Brown came out in support of her father. But Beck is hellbent on making something sordid out of a joke between a loving father and his daughters. Why? Just to smear another Republican?
In an odd coincidence, while Beck was implying Scott Brown had a strange sexual relationship with his daughters American Pravda Huffington Post ran this picture:
Why did they take this photo from Ayla’s MySpace, of the family at a Hawaii themed birthday party, and post it? To imply Scott brown was a bad father of course. The left is remarkably prudish when it comes to conservatives. If I were more given to Beckism I’d point out that this seems to be a coordinated attack on Brown from different fronts designed to “neutralize” a threat. Then I’d look weepy for a second while I said to known kook (but excellent author) Andrew Napolitano “circles within circles, man.”
But there’s really no conspiracy here, just a petty little man who doesn’t like Republicans. His attacks on Brown are beyond tasteless. So awful are they in fact that you can find similar attacks coming from the same leftists Beck claims are a danger to the Republic. That makes you think doesn’t it?
Men don’t read Cosmo, Glenn, and they damn sure don’t want their adult daughters single forever while living at home. They do want to think about what they say. Beck has made a living attacking leftists, until now when he’s in essence siding with them against Scott Brown. But I guess Republicans are the real enemy, right Glenn?
So I was watching the O’Reilly Factor when Kimberly Guilfoyle and Lis Wiehl (author of Face of Betrayal) discussed Jennifer Moss in the “Is it Legal” segment. Jen (or sometimes Gennifer) Moss is a plain, nondescript hippy promoting some nebulous cause no one seems sure about who has discovered how to make news. She runs around nude or semi-nude.
She’s apparently been doing this for some time. Threats of arrests in several different states have done nothing to to deter her exhibitionism which is to draw attention to either hemp thongs or the healing power of water according to her. I assume it’s actually to draw attention away from her average looks and dull personality. But a semi-nude 5 or 6 is still a traffic getter so enjoy:
I was going to make a point about our culture producing narcissists who can’t deal with not being constantly stroked and paid attention to, but frankly this is just hippy slutdom, amusing in its inability to be considered sexually arousing by anyone but the most desperate. It’s not so much titillating as sad, an unintended performance art piece designed to be a metaphor for the callowness and self-indulgence of a civilization in decline. Call me jaded but I just don’t find this chick at all alluring or interesting. But I’m sure someone will be willing to tell me I’m wrong in the comments just as Fox and dozens of newspapers have seen fit to give her the attention she wants and doesn’t deserve. But listen to her tripe first then tell me how “hot” she is:
Christopher Hitchens has never done a greater service to mankind than when he coined the phrase sinister piffle. He used it to describe the loathsome anti-Semitism of Cindy Sheehan back when the media gave her a platform for her “anti-war” protests but I have always thought that it was a turn of phrase that deserves to be added to the lexicon of punditry. Sheehan’s sinister piffle was nonsense that could have (and I would argue did) have serious consequences for millions of people when taken seriously. Her efforts to mainstream anti-Semitism (going so far as to have White nationalists involved in her protest, a fact the complicit media ignored) have helped foster the environment of Jew hatred we have today.
Similarly, the recent report released by what we could be excused to have assumed to be the freshman social studies class from Howard Zinn high school (located in central Berkeley between the John Philips father/daughter play center and the Jerry Garcia memorial medical marijuana dispensary) but was in actuality the product of a joint venture between what are believed to be professional researchers from Duke University and U.N.C. is sinister piffle. Anti-Terror Lessons of American Muslims is a poorly researched piece of Jihadist apologia which makes a number of spurious claims and concludes that the threat of terrorism is overblown. It implicitly recommends Americans simply stop worrying about Militant Islam, because Militant Islam is not a threat to Americans.
Piffle! And sinister piffle at that, because unless we believe that the authors of this dull and hamfisted regurgitation of the great Progressive Articles of Faith (The West is always wrong, the “other” is always right, violence is always a reaction to Western aggression) are simply so immersed in the raw post-modernist sewage of academic Marxism the only explanation for a report that so plainly distorts the facts about radicalization and the threat of terror by American Muslims is that it’s propaganda designed to cover for those same terrorists.
One of the most extraordinary claims made by the authors (David Schanzer, Charles Kurzman and Ebrahim Moosa) is that homegrown extremism is an exaggerated threat. They can make that claim because by their own admission they do not count fund-raising or Jihad enabling activities as terrorism and they don’t term any person or group radicalized until they’ve been proven to have participated in violence. They also seem to think the 13 dead and 30 wounded soldiers at Ft. Hood is no big deal.
Understand that this report is claiming that Muslims who call for the death of gays are not radicals until they actually kill one. Rifqa Berry’s parents are not radicals until she’s dead. Those that support the aims and efforts of Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah or any other militant Islamist group aren’t radicals even if they are financially supporting those groups’ murderous efforts. No one’s a radical until the blood flows and the bullets fly. No one is a threat until they have already made good on one.
The three authors’ agenda is as transparent as their attempts to rewrite history with their talk of all the efforts Muslims have been making to de-radicalize young men. This is radical politics disguised as shoddy academics and Duke and U.N.C. should be absolutely ashamed to have their names attached to such sinister piffle.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism has a in-depth debunking of the more outrageous claims, and points out that the paper credits known radical organizations as sources including the Islamic Circle of North America which is the group from which the American Muslims caught in Pakistan were spawned.
