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 As newspapers struggle to re-invent themselves in the 21st century, a lot of ideas have been bandied about. The most recent proposal, first raised at the recent Congressional hearings on the Future of Journalsm and later on the blog of an influential federal judge, is the most radical yet and is aimed squarely at bloggers. In short, the industry is floating the idea of seeking a change to American copyright law that would forbid Internet linking to anyone else’s copyrighted content without the copyright-holder’s express permission.
Although this proposal seems counterproductive to the newspapers themselves (unless their goal is to reduce their audience share), let’s take them at their word just for the sake of argument. What if we were to proactively give the newspapers what they say they want, and stop linking to them?
Of course, that might not be enough. If you read Judge Posner’s blog entry (delicious irony there) you’ll see that he goes even further than linking. He suggests a change to the definition of fair use to block bloggers from using even short quotations or paraphrases of copyrighted content, whether or not that content is then used as a springboard for the blogger’s own commentary. See for yourself:
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.
- Judge Richard Posner, June 23, 2009
Here’s another take from the testimony of James M. Moroney at the recent Future of Journalism hearings before Congress:
Aggregators, search engines, and other online news forums routinely receive a free ride on the investments that newspapers are making in local journalism. Newspaper publishers should be able to obtain reasonable compensation from Internet companies that reproduce newspaper content for a commercial purpose. Many of these operators copy or summarize a link to newspaper content in order to drive search or audience to Web sites, then sell advertising wrapped around this newspaper content. The concern here is not the personal use of newspaper-generated content, which the majority of newspaper publishers willingly offer for free to individual Internet users, but the use of newspaper generated content for someone else's commercial gain.
-James M. Moroney, May 6, 2009
Our question as moderators is this: Should iBrattleboro.com — which is, after all, an ad-bearing online news site — change its policies to forbid all reference to newspaper articles, including quotation, paraphrase, and link? Would this be good for the newspapers? Would this be good for iBrattleboro readers and contributors?
It’s worthwhile to mention that since iBrattleboro is a hyperlocal, citizen journalism site in which the vast majority of the content is original, we would be little affected by such a change. My feeling is that should we institute such a policy, the Brattleboro Reformer and Rutland Herald would probably grant us blanket permission to link to their stories — provided they haven’t gone to a pay-to-view system as so many newspapers are now (again) considering.
Although we feel sure we’re not the freeloaders the newspapers are after, we do think newspapers are important and would like to be part of the solution, not the problem. To that end, we’re asking the question here on iBrattleboro in an effort to get the discussion going in a positive direction.
To link or not to link — what do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
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