Nieman Journalism Lab Editor’s Note: Each week, Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of news for the Lab. We could call this week a paid content free-for-all, but that’s self-contradictory. So let’s call it a pay-for-all, a fray of still-developing schemes that are certain to keep morphing as both competition and publishers’ heads spin ever more quickly. It’s a head-banging adventure to figure out what’s unfolded just this week. Apple offered a proclamation of policy, and given its aversion to talking with the press...

TeleRead, the oldest English-language site devoted to general e-book news and views, is now owned by the Gadgetell subsidiary of North American Publishing Company (NAPCO). We closed the deal today. I’m leaving as editor-publisher, but Co-Editor Paul Biba (left photo) will remain---as full editor. What’s more, Senior Writer Chris Meadows (right), the second most frequent contributor, will stay. Both Paul and Chris have been e-book-lovers for eons, and publications ranging from the New York Times to the Guardian have quoted Paul over the years. Under Paul, who has supplied most of TeleRead’s posts since September 2008 and managed it...

In 2008, we covered a story about the Associated Press claiming that bloggers needed to buy licenses to quote more than ten words, then hastily backpedalling into a murky area of refusing to say how much was all right to quote. It turns out that Canada has been going through something similar. TechDirt posts that last week, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) came out with a new set of rules intending to “bring some clarity and some consistency” and make the rules “as unambiguous as possible.” However, as TechDirt points out, the actual effect was to do exactly the opposite, because the...