There ought to be a law …
A few days ago I wrote on my business blog about embracing Web 2.0 as a publisher. Today I read this op-ed from the Washington Post, in which Bruce Sanford and Bruce Brown think there ought to be a law–or bunches of them, to protect print journalists from the pernicious arrival of the future.
His article includes such gems as:
But Google’s products (and profit) would look a lot different if, for example, the law said it had to obtain copyright permissions in order to copy and index Web sites.
Wow! Amazing.
Of course, his argument is that it is only through special laws that sites like Google have done so well. I would argue that those laws are absolutely necessary to meet the needs of the information technology involved.
What journalists and other writers and artists need to do is learn to work effectively with new technology. Information will flow more freely; that ship has sailed. Learn to live with it.
(HT: The Agitator.)