The Back Alley Archives

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.

Posner comes across as willfully blind to the ways in which bloggers and aggregators actually drive traffic to news sites, resulting in more readers seeing their content and, thus, their advertising. Yes, there are ways not to do it – the Boston Globe's wholesale, automated aggregation of a competitor's local content in a case settled out of court earlier this year comes to mind. But normal linking practices benefit everyone. The news business may be cratering, but it's not the fault of those who link to newspaper content.

Fortunately, Posner this time can't transform his desires into a judicial decree – his proposal would have to enacted in the form of an amendment to the copyright law. Unfortunately, such an idea is already making the rounds. Not to go all Kevin Bacon here, but Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz, who supports it, is married to Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, which led Jeff Jarvis to demand that Schultz register as a federal lobbyist.

The thing is, Congress has been known to act with great alacrity on copyright matters when they affect corporate interests. And newspaper owners have been remarkably successful in calling attention to their plight.

But though tax breaks, special non-profit status and other federal goodies will likely go nowhere, a law aimed squarely at the linking practices of sites such as Google News and the Huffington Post would probably prove popular, the facts be damned.

It's ominous that those would push for such a law now have an ally as brilliant and influential as Posner. Keep a close eye on this one.