Judge Thinks Linking To Copyrighted Material Should Be Illegal 390
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by
Soulskill
from the don't-you-point-at-me dept.
from the don't-you-point-at-me dept.
An article at TechCrunch discusses a blog post from Richard Posner, a US Court of Appeals judge, about the struggling newspaper industry. Posner explains why he thinks the newspapers will continue to struggle, and then comes to a rather unusual conclusion: "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."
Thats unpossible (Score:3, Informative)
- without destroying the net
a) everything written essentially has creator copyright
b) making a link to anything else would then be violation
- internet assumption
a) if it is on the net you can link to it
this follows from the basic structure of the net as addressable content
If someone does not want a link made they had better not put it on the internet. Putting it on the internet essentially means permission to link.
Re:If I didn't respect Posner... (Score:2, Informative)
Being a prominent figure in a large institution impresses men.
That gives him a leg up on the rest of us in lobbying his legislators to pass the laws that he 'thinks' are needed. Other than that, he's just like any other Joe Citizen as far as the legislative process is concerned.
Judges have no role whatsoever in enacting laws.
The better question is... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:He's wrong (Score:3, Informative)
It's important to remember that news sources don't consciously censor information. The establishment (I much prefer that word to "statist", because I'm a statist) bias in reporting is a structural issue. It's not a conspiracy or propaganda in the traditional meaning of these words.
Noam Chomsky examined these structural issues in his Propaganda Model [wikipedia.org] of news reporting.
Re:Posner (Score:3, Informative)
Allow me to try to answer those questions.
(1)-As the rigged election in Iran showed us the folks on the ground were willing to risk their own asses to get the word out while the foreign press stayed locked up in their safe hotel rooms. Local folks are more likely to know about the corruption and goings on that any guy just dropped in there. Will they be as pretty with their prose? Nope, but somebody else can come along later and gussy it up. if it is about getting the word out i think the Internet does it better.
(2)-Those "reputable sources" like the NYTimes or The Washington Post are being bought up by mega conglomerates. Do you honestly think they will bite the hand that feeds? Nope, which is why more and more sites and stories run by these reputable new orgs have the taste of spin on them. Will the locals reporting have their own spin? Yep, because folks have their own biases. But since they are not "professionals" their biases are easier to spot and come off as more ham handed than the pros. I'd certainly trust them more than someone getting a check from Rupert Murdoch.
I think the print media corps are just gonna have to accept the free ride is over, and yes they have had a free ride. They had a free ride thanks to a captive audience and easy to peddle AP stories making their job easy. Now they have to actually give value and make their stuff worth reading. I quit subscribing to both my local and state papers because all it was was a combination of regurgitated Ap stories mixed with huge doses of right wing spin. If I wanted that I would watch Fox News. If they make their sites easy to navigate and read without totally burying them with ads (you sites that spread a story across fifteen pages to crank up page views, I'm talking to you) then folks will stay and look at their information. If not folks will just move on. Welcome to the 21st century, adapt or die.
Re:So this implies... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:So this implies... (Score:3, Informative)
Except, you know, the same (or similar) corporate forces behind the intellectual property push in the US are hard at work in the EU and in international organizations such as WIPO and WTO.
ACTA is being worked on by the US, EU, Japan, Australia, NZ, Korea, Mexico, Canada and Germany, among others.
Re:Posner (Score:3, Informative)
Making it illegal to redistribute copyrighted content as in making verbatim copies of a text might make sense...
That's already illegal. It has been for a very long time.
Re:So this implies... (Score:5, Informative)
We already have that! The Google News bot will only link to the news page if it isn't in the robots.txt file. The problem is that Newspapers don't want Google news to link to specific pages, but the want the "normal" Google to link to their main page, and Google said they can't have both.
Re:So this implies... (Score:2, Informative)
"Except you forget that this sort of asshattery (love that word) will not persist due to the internet friendly US Supreme Court.
Linking is not a copyright violation because it does not contain any part the content. A brief summary is specifically allowed by US Copyright law."
That's just it. The guy wrote that the law SHOULD be changed to explicitly deny this usage, without the copyright holders permission.
Re:So this implies... (Score:5, Informative)
Just to point out for those who don't know, Judge Posner [wikipedia.org] is probably the single most influential living jurist not on the Supreme Court (and will likely end up being more influential long-term than many on the Supreme Court; certainly more influential than Clarence Thomas). He teaches at one of the top six law schools in the country (Chicago), serves in one of the most important circuits in the country (Seventh, which includes Chicago--other important circuits are DC, 2d, and 9th), and is so ridiculously prolific. He's a pioneer of the currently en vogue jurisprudential theory of law and economics [wikipedia.org]. He frequently feeds clerks from his chambers to the Supreme Court as well
My point is that this man has tremendous influence in the US. He's not an intellectual lightweight. Unfortunately, I can't read what he wrote since the blog entry seems to be down now.