Wpost Opinion on Bailing Out Newspapers

<i>"Publishers should not have to choose between protecting their copyrights and shunning the search-engine databases that map the Internet. Journalism therefore needs a bright line imposed by statute: that the taking of entire Web pages by search engines, which is what powers their search functions, is not fair use but infringement. "</i><p>Reading this, the term "spoiled sport" comes to mind...

"Publishers should not have to choose between protecting their copyrights and shunning the search-engine databases that map the Internet."<p>Then put it behind a paywall. Or at least put a small, indexable summary page in front of an unindexed article (using robots.txt). Or invent your own search engine/news aggregator.

See, the strategy here is to conglomerate <i>everything</i> into one giant too-big-to-fail media monopoly, then get a never-ending stream of taxpayer handouts to keep the tipsy inverted pyramid of bad journalism and political spin from meeting it's final and spectacular demise by ten million otherwise-unemployed FOIA-armed citizen journalist bloggers.

Dupe: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=613221" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=613221</a>

It seems funny, to me, that they would talk about making Google do the legwork. If this took effect, Google could simply do nothing -- and watch as the people who forced them to 'come negotiate' crumble. Google is the gateway to the internet for a lot of people. If you aren't in Google, you don't exist. This seems like the exact opposite of what these companies want. Also, the claim that "[newspapers] don't have the tools [to build a new model]" is utter crap. The newspapers have neglected the internet, and it's coming back now to bite them in the ass.

Search engines aren't a public service. The article half-way acknowledges the robots.txt solution, and quickly dismisses it as unworkable. It's clear, however, that publishers have a recourse if they feel the search engines are doing them more harm than good. If they want finer granularity than is currently available, they need to talk to Google, not the government.

I don't understand, are they upset that you can view cached versions of them?<p>Or are they upset other people are selling information for cheaper?