Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, August 4, 2009

All your words belong to the AP

By Fester:


The AP is being a bunch of short-sighted douchebags.  That is not news and not worthy of a blog-post, except the specific instance of douchebaggery is quite impressive.  The AP licensing engine just assumes that everything ever written is owned by the Associated Press. 


From the Labortorium:



The Associated Press has become so deranged, so disconnected from reality, that it will sell you a �license� to quote words it didn�t write and doesn�t own. Here, check it out:


AP License


I paid $12 for this �license.� Those words don�t even come from the article they charged me 46 cents a word to quote from (and that�s with the educational discount). No, they�re from Thomas Jefferson�s letter to Isaac McPherson, in which Jefferson argues that copyright has no basis in natural law.


The AP realized that they were going to lose the fight that the Labortorium was trying to pick with them and their lazy engine, so they refunded the license fee.  However this is a shakedown for the risk averse or the under-informed as the Associated Press does not check what they are licensing against what they actually own, much less what is actually fair use of what they hold copyrights on.  Wouldn't want anything to happen to that fine blog of yours --- pay us a little licensing fee and everything will be just fine....



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