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Judge Thinks Linking To Copyrighted Material Should Be Illegal
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."
...probably the death of Slashdot?
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
I have a confident answer: when in doubt, freedom should prevail. This especially applies to freedom of speech and of the press. The burden of proof is on anyone who thinks that freedom should not prevail. In other words, our fundamental inalienable rights are far more important than whether or not a newspaper goes out of business.
Let's soundly reject this concept, right now, that it is the role of government to determine who wins and who loses in the business world. Newspapers are struggling because they are old technology that is being replaced by a new technology. Even if that weren't the case, their perceived right to do business is absolutely nothing compared to our real rights.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The United States is fully capable of shooting off its own leg to save a toenail. There are men with real power in the country who would happily pull the plug on the entire Internet tomorrow if it would save their margins on Marley & Me 2.
Newspapers want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the traffic that comes from Google linking to them, but they want sole access to the internet advertising revenues associated with their content.
Also, how does the judge propose helping the newspapers fend off online classified services like craigslist, which are the real threat to newspapers.
With this judgment, one of two things will happen:
1) Google stops linking to them entirely and their online business dries up.
2) All or most newspapers grant Google the right to link to and show excerpts of their stories.
Either way, the newspapers won't see a revival. Their only hope is to set up some kind of common online newspaper portal to take the place of Google news. Except, this time, there isn't the equivalent of Apple's iTunes to save them from their own stupidity.
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I agree. The TechCrunch post is shrill and doesn't address the central issue that Posner presents: How do you maintain a free press when free-riders can inexpensively and quickly copy and redistribute your original content? He raises a valid point and the TechCrunch completely sidesteps it.
Let's take Slashdot as an example and the notorious Slashdot Effect. One of the most sure ways to really drive a ton of traffic to a Web site is to link an article to Slashdot. Those Web sites almost always have advertisements. How are those news sites not benefitting from this situation, and what part of this is depriving anyone of their fundamental rights so that it would be appropriate for the government to intervene?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Isn't the community consensus that every publicly accessible URL points to content that the community is free to link to and view at will?
That is: if you post a document on a web server, then you're granting the whole world the same rights to the material that you would be if you posted that material on a billboard sign next to the highway.
Why can't judges see that?
Why do some judges assume that the common understanding of a URL needs to change, rather than just having the newspapers stop supporting publicly accessible URLs to content they want protected???
How is this a new problem? Anyone can currently 'link to or paraphrase' print material. If I say 'an article in The Economist contained a detailed report on the harm done by Fairtrade Products' in a print magazine then I am linking to (although not in a clickable form) and paraphrasing an article. Both of these are usually seen as fair use. It is completely legal currently for me to produce a newspaper that does no original research and just writes articles based on the investigative journalism of other publications.
A more important question is how you maintain a free press when you aren't allowed to paraphrase or link to articles from other news outlets.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Why should we consider it? It is a laughable. He is suggesting we change the laws in ways that severely limit individual freedom in a way that is completely impossible to enforce unless we completely change some core fundamental aspects of participation on the Internet. This man could be God for all I care.. If he says something stupid, it is stupid no matter what. We should consider his stupid opinion because he's a great man? That's an error in reasoning. (false authority fallacy)
Think about this.. He is trying to preserve an industry that is changing because of technology. Just because news as we know it is going through 'evolution pains' does not mean we should stick our stupid laws all over it. Leave our laws be. First Amendment is a pretty damn important law in this country..
There will ALWAYS be demand for news - and there will always be a demand for truth. By adding new laws that limit the ability to satisfy that demand better, we are actually regressing. Just because the news will change does not mean it will not be better. In fact, I would like to argue that most of our news is completely useless anyway. Let it be free. Let honest people report what they see.. and a group of similar opinions will allow people reading it to distinguish the truth. Right now, if Fox News wants to put their own screwed up twist, they can legally do that.. and they do it all the time! Screw them..
The newspapers screw the news also.. IMO, right now, there seems to be no good way to get the truth unless you read the news and the bloggers and the comments, and form an opinion of what really happened. So, if you cannot link to an article, how do you comment about it? How do you tell people what you're talking about? Maybe there should not be money in the news.. Let the market figure out how to handle the news.
And, further, fuck copyright. The laws make the copyright holders so card-stacked against the individual that people care less and less about it and the laws governing it.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
I am. I think we can agree that "you can find X by going to example.com and clicking the link called foo" is protected speech, yes? If you want to argue that deep-linking is no covered by free speech, then you must show that either:
I reject #1 above because any linguistic transformation of protected speech is still protected speech, and can think of no contrary precedent. I reject #2 because I think of no situation in which a machine-readable form of speech is treated differently from the same speech in a different, non-machine-readable fixed medium.
Now, some very powerful people have argued that sentence #2 should be true, but perceived (or even actual) economic harm is not a justification for abridgment of free speech. The traditionally-recognized exceptions to free speech are:
Deep linking is not exempted from being free speech by falling into any of the above categories. Therefore, it is protected speech.
There is no category called "likely to cause economic harm to a corporation with lobbyists".
So you don't have any justification for your position other than "he's cool"?
You are willing to cast your own opinion aside in favor of one that clearly goes against the intent and the letter of the law, just because you like him?
Okay so I read his post. He is making economic arguments over whether or not we have a right.
Since when are judges supposed to use economic arguments to decide whether or not we have a right?
Whatever you are smoking, please share. This has NOTHING to do with the first amendment. The death of the Old Media business model is NOT a blow to the first amendment, it STRENGTHENS it, because broadcasted speech becomes less controlled and more democratic. When the cost of entry to the broadcast medium (the internet) is effectively zero, EVERYONE becomes a member of the press. The death of the Old Media business model is the best thing that could possibly happen for freedom of speech.