Alleged "public intellectual" Richard Posner has discovered a possible solution to the plight of dying newspapers -- more copyright law:

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.

Jeff Jarvis has an appropriate rebuttal:

Good God. Posner is not just trying to mold the new world to old laws - which is issue enough - but is trying to change the law to protect the old world and its incumbents from the new world and its innovators. He is willing to throw out fair comment and free speech for them. That is dangerous.

Bob Wyman, commenting on Jarvis' post, also raises an interesting comparison:

Legal briefs and judge's opinions are filled with "links" (i.e. citations) to other works. In many cases, those "links" are actually the primary value of the work produced, for pay, by those who write briefs. Lawyers provide "commercial services." Will lawyers and judges have to pay royalties when they cite cases, journal articles, and other data? Would some links be free and others not? How can you tell if a link produced by one commercial enterprise (such as a lawyer's office) is different from that produced by another? How can the technology used to produce the link impact whether it is subject to license when in fact the same link can be produced using other technologies that are not licensed?

Of course, by Posnerian logic I've now violated the copyrights of at least three people in writing this post. Maybe I should quit while I'm ahead.

Read the complete post at http://blog.mises.org/archives/010198.asp