Steal This Blog Post

Columnist Connie Schultz is trying to save newspapers by putting some Web sites out of business. Writing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, she advocates “saving” newspapers by expanding copyright law, so that “originators' stories would be available only on their Web sites for the first 24 hours.” Schultz’s commentary follows on the heels of similar commentary from the esteemed federal judge Richard Posner. Such a law would threaten a good part of the ecosystem of the Web, which has been built around the well-accepted principle that it is permissible to link to, and comment on, anything published on the Web.

When a newspaper breaks news, everyone else has to summarize that story in order to build upon it or present an alternative viewpoint. Giving one newspaper a 24-hour monopoly on the story, per the proposed law, sounds like a severe infringement on the First Amendment. Let’s say the Washington Post runs a shocking expose about the President, based on tips from Deep Throat Jr. I decide to write a blog post about it, explaining my skepticism about the charges; how can my counterpoint be useful to readers if I can’t link to, or even paraphrase, the article I’m criticizing? Not only would this law limit free speech, but it would cripple the creative possibilities of journalism – at the exact moment that the business most desperately needs innovation.

As Wendy Davis blogs, this isn’t in the readers’ interests, and would probably hurt newspapers, too, by cutting off the online traffic stream that aggregators send their way.

And yes, newspapers are in trouble, but as Mitch Kapor writes, “it would be a giant mistake to equate the death of newspaper with the death of journalism.” The old business model for breaking news, as Schultz admits, is itself broken. Journalists and publishers need to look to the internet for ideas, not for lawsuits. They can’t legislate their way back to the glory days of print media.

Still, some legislation could help without entombing journalism in a 1970s newsroom. What is needed is a tighter definition of Fair Use, greater penalties for violation of it, and a practical mechanism for copyright owners to pursue Fair Use claims and seize any advertising revenue generated from the guilty parties. That way, journalists could still build off of each other’s work and yet protect themselves from blatant abuse.

But the Schultz strategy reminds me of the music industry’s battle against piracy. Instead of embracing the possibilities opened up by the web, they stuck with the same business model and then sued the ripped jeans off of a bunch of download-happy college kids. Anyone know how that’s worked out for them?