Wednesday 4/09/2002Our story about the Greeks banning video games is gaining ground. Lots of people just don't believe it, but it's true enough. There are even stories of the police going into retailers and ripping Sony Playstations off the shelves. One group says that no, nobody will ever be prosecuted for home gaming. another points out that in the 1970s, people's houses were raided and arrests made for playing card games. But then lots of things happened in Greece in the 1970s that, one hopes, will not happen again.

On another angle, it's interesting to see how the story spreads across the Net. News written in the ZDNet UK newsroom appears on our site first, then often gets picked up by our US and European ZDNet and CNET family. From there, it appears on newswires run by various other companies, so a few hours after a tasty story leaves the keyboard of Matt Loney, it can easily appear under ten different brands around the world.

Then there are the other news sites. Some are honourable, take the story, do some more research and publish their own take on it -- often mentioning us as the original source. That's cool. Some do additional research and present the story as their own: well, fair enough. And some rewrite the paragraphs to escape copyright and bung the mutated version up: tsh... But on a good day, it's nice to see something you started make it onto the BBC or nationals -- and if it's really good, into the big name newspapers.

But there's the danger that everyone who writes news will end up getting it from the Internet, and we'll end up like Shaw's old women, taking each other's washing to make ends meet. Someone somewhere has to get out of their office and into the real world to find out what's actually happening -- and with the current intense pressures on editorial budgets, there's a danger that this will just stop happening.