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Sunday, July 27, 2008

THE 'NAPSTER' FOR MAGAZINES

A new site has been launched that allows users to upload pages from magazines and offer them to readers around the world for free. It's been dubbed as the 'Napster' for magazines.
Mygazines will be testing publishing copyright laws because what it's offering infringes the copyright of publishers globally. And worse still for publishers in what are increasingly difficult times is the prospect of losing important sales and revenue. It's the same scenario as Napster and the music publishers, although I personally believe that magazine publishers are working on such small margins that even the loss of a hundred sales could be damaging.
The small benefit for publishers is having their magazine read by a global readership, but there's no way a publisher could survive if their magazine was made available for free in the way that Mygazines is intending.
I know I would want to take action against any site that made content from my own magazine available for free. It's a flagrant copyright violation, and if allowed to continue would have serious ramifications.
What do you think about this new service? Will you use it? What if using it meant your favourite magazine disappeared entirely?

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