TIMES ARCHIVES
Glenn Reynolds is promulgating blogosphere conspiracy theories about the alleged new archiving policy of The New York Times. They supposedly make you pay for old articles, even when you have the URL.
If such a policy exists, I'm sure it's driven by profit-seeking, not paranoia. After all, most people seriously investigating the Times would have access to Nexis, which has NYT archives going back much longer than the Web. Mickey Kaus, for instance, routinely uses Nexis to check the NYT record. (D Magazine adopted a similar policy a while back, making all my links to old columns bad. Nobody is muck-raking about D. Since I own the rights, I've since moved the columns onto this site.)
I'm as baffled by these claims of new policies as I am concerned. (The Times owns electronic rights to my articles and all rights in the universe for all time. For that contract, we can thank the folks who sued it over Nexis rights.) When I check links in my column archives, they all go to full columns. But Glenn claims they go to abstracts. Readers?