So basically, he wants to ban the basic underlying concept behind the internet as it was conceived in the first place?<p>It is as if he said he wants to prosecute football players for battery when they tackle an opponent. By stepping on the field in a uniform you are agreeing to play inside the rules of the game. Linking is one of the rules of the game on the internet.<p>Couldn't we use the legal argument that posting something online without taking further steps to password protect it or what have you is implied consent for the content to be linked to?
I don't see the point in this. Any publisher or news site who wants people to sign up or pay (with a password) can do so already, without being affected by anyone linking to it. Those who choose to make it public, will want more people to see it I guess.<p>If copying content from a site is what he means, yes, it should be banned and that makes sense, but how can linking to a public URL be an issue? I just don't see how.
I hate to say that not even American legislative and judiciary branches could be stupid enough to outlaw the anchor tag, because they prove me wrong half the time I make that sort of assumption. But this is really another "series of tubes" moment; I don't think it'll go anywhere.
Ah, Richard Posner. I have <i>never</i> understood why he's so well thought-of among a lot of politically-inclined geeks. I can only guess it was the public hate-on he had for MS back during the anti-trust trial.<p>Anyone who'd suggest "Expanding copyright law to bar...linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent", especially to prop up <i>newspapers'</i> websites, should be reviled by geeks.
I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. In reality fair use has been wilfully abused by internet aggregators. At the moment we're in the absurd situation where the aggregators like google, youtube, etc. make money for serving other people's content for free.<p>And what's worse is that because they've got used to all content being stolen they value it so lowly that Amazon are prepared to offer the content providers just 30%!<p>Look it from a different perspective and bloggers aren't a news-source, they're ill-informed, amateur, unaccountable commentators. We need the papers. Sites like YouTube don't make quality content, they steal it and serve it for free. Google doesn't create any websites, it steals your money by advertising competitors products right next to yours.<p>I love the internet as it is, but I honestly believe it's not going to last.