A Ban on Linking?
July 1, 2009 2 Comments
Richard Posner (via Matthew Yglesias) says new laws should ban linking to copyrighted content without some sort of permission.
Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.
Yglesias’ response is predictable given his status as a professional blogger and I don’t disagree with anything he says. What I will add though is that I understand the need Posner is trying to address. The internet is killing newspapers and they are scrambling to find a new pricing model that works. I continue to believe that the best solution is something like Google Reader with a per subscription fee. I would gladly pay for the professional sources I read daily if the pricing was reasonable (so far I think the price-point through Kindle sucks) and the access universal.
Another side-effect might be that many bloggers would begin to write more original material rather than engaging in what someone at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen called ‘one-off newsblogging’. Admittedly the daily news is a crutch I use as well as many, many other bloggers. We start each day browsing the headlines until something sparks the desire to write a post, we link to it, we quote it, we offer our own perspective and so on. Perhaps with a fee we would all stop piggy-backing on the news for easy blogging ideas.
With that said, obviously linkage is a huge part of blogging. It’s how we find others in the community, it’s how we help one another and it’s how we spread ideas. I couldn’t imagine doing away with the inter-blog linking or charging for it. But I DO think the right thing to do with regards to the news is to start looking for a way we can all compensate the professionals for their hard work.
That’s a good point about more original material. That said, there is something great about the daily news cycle. It can spur larger, deeper, more over-arching themes. One can use it as a leaping-off-point for more in-depth discussion of other topics, etc. Posner’s idea is just ludicrous.
I agree E.D. Perhaps paid linkage and more original blogging are not connected issues..but I guess I see it as a possible side-effect in a pay-to-read scenario. Maybe I’m just projecting here. I often feel like I’m cheating when I just throw up a paragraph from a news source and then write a couple of paragraphs of semi-original comments.