There's money in dusty archives

Google has announced that their online newspaper archives will no longer be updated. More recent scans are will no longer appear on the news archive section of their search website. The files that are currently available on the site remain accessible as usual. This is of course good news for fans of historical newspapers.

Google will probably continue working on their newsrecords, but the files will now be passed on to the newspapers. The newspapers thus have the opportunity to publish it themselves and as they wish, charge users for viewing the archives. This decision by Google could allow the company and the said publishers a possibility to generate some extra income from the archive scanning and copyrights respectively

Some years ago, adult magazine Playboy already had a digital version of its archives in place. Similar to Google’s news files, this free online archive was put on hold. Playboy removed it from their site completely. Playboy is now introducing a new archive service wich is only available for paying customers.

Starting this week the full archives of Playboy will be made available online. In combination with an iPad application that was released earlier, this is an interesting media product. The subscription fee is set a 5,50 euros per month. For 42 euros, customers can serve the archives for a full year.

The iPad application has been in the news earlier, because Apple took offense of its content. Now the pictures can finally be seen on the tablet, albeit via a detour. The pictures are not included in the application, but are only on the servers of Playboy.

These two developments seem to indicate that the entertainment industry could earn some pocket money by reusing their own work more often. Many broadcasters in fact already do so, by offering TV on demand online, through which customer scan tune in to an episode of their favourite show they’ve missed. Customer demand for scroll-back and  "missed broadcast" services has been created by these attractive and often free features. Perhaps because now people are finally willing to pay a few cents for browsing an online archive?

Source: De Morgen