Tuesday, July 24, 2007 8:18 AM
Hat tip to Bob Ambrogi for pointing out the release of the ABA Journal new website, which includes a news features, a blawg directory, a topical information directory and legal search engine.
Apparently, the ABA is going to offer everything for free, while serve advertising against the content. Given the hue and cry that went up from the blawgosphere when others have contemplated serving content from their blawgs against advertising, it will be interesting to see if anyone raises this as an issue or whether it will simply be considered fair use. I wonder if it will be different this time since the entity behind the site is the ABA, not a private company?
As an aside, perhaps it is a good time for blawg authors to rethink fair use and find a standard (e.g., allow for headlines and first 30 words?) that is mutually beneficial? Maybe this will mean that new business models need to be developed and mutually agreed upon. Regardless, I see these agreements coming together in other business sectors and they seem to be working pretty well.
In any case, at first glimpse, it looks to me like the ABA has done a very nice job in putting together its new site. It has create another law portal, however, which makes this move pretty interesting. My initial reaction is that the ABA has moved into direct competition with Law.com and FindLaw (and maybe a Lexis web property like Lawyers.com). It also obviously offers some of the same features and functionality as Blawg.com and Justia, to name a couple more. I am not sure that Thomson-West, Lexis, Wolters and ALM have spent a lot of time focused on the ABA as a competitor, but if the ABA's new web portal starts to pull significant advertising dollars away from their web properties, that may well change.
The larger trendline I see is the continuing move of online legal information offerings towards "free." "Free" in the sense that content is delivered to users for free, with revenues coming from advertising and partnerships. I wonder how the other large, established companies will react to this move towards free. Especially those whose revenues in large part rely on paid subscriptions (to research and information).
Interesting times ahead I think.