The Future Of Newspapers – Should It Be Illegal To Link?

Over at the Becker-Posner blog, Judge Posner has an interesting take on the future of newspapers. On his blog he states that it may be necessary to expand copyrighted laws to prohibit linking without the content providers consent. In his own words he states that:

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.

I do not believe that this will save the newspaper industry. There is a natural progression of things that happen when technology changes occur. The newspapers made a conscience decision to enter into the World Wide Web and now blame the Internet for their dismal performance. As advertisement revenues continued to shrink for print newspapers and magazines, heading to the Internet with ‘free’ stuff was doomed to fail.

Who’s fault was this? Google? I think not. The newspaper moguls made a conscience decision to enter into the newest media. In their minds they thought they could compete with free content and their business model that has been in existence since Gutenberg invented the printing press, did not work the way they thought it would.

The American auto industry did the same thing. When they couldn’t compete with the imports they cried to Congress that the foreign companies used cheaper labor and they couldn’t compete. So Congress placed restrictions on the foreign car companies. The American auto industry convinced Congress that Americans wanted huge SUV’s with big V-8’s and Congress put off any increase in fuel economy standards for over 2 decades. The real problem was that the foreign car companies were building a better car. You can only bull shit your way with rhetoric for so long before you start to slip in your own crap.

One may recall when the TV took hold in the American living room. Both radio and the movie theaters were all doomed. Funny isn’t it that radio and the movies are still with us. The theaters changed their business model from local neighborhood shows with single theaters to multi-complex theaters with 8, 10, 12, or more movies running at the same time.

Twitter is the perfect example of why newspapers will have a hard time keeping up, no matter how many laws they try to get passed. Twitter kept up with the turmoil in Iran and the death of Michael Jackson faster than any news agency could. What the U.S. newspaper industry still doesn’t grasp is that the WORLD is connected by the Internet.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

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