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Cleveland partner David Marburger was quoted in the July 22, 2009, Cleveland Plain Dealer article, "Idea for Protecting Newspapers Draws National Spotlight, Bloggers' Ire."

The article focuses on the responses to the recent analyses by Marbruger and his brother Daniel Marburger, an economist at Arkansas State University, on how "to rescue a newspaper industry suffering from plummeting advertising dollars and a plundered work product." The three separate analyses concluded that unless Congress removes the copyright act's subsidy of those who rewrite daily news reports for profit, newspapers and other originators of daily news can't survive. To read the anlyses, please click here.

According to the article, their thesis recommends lifting the copyright law's ban on unfair competition rights and requiring that competitors—labeled as "parasitic aggregators"—either pay for the use of newspaper stories or link to the papers' own Web sites. Violators could then be sued. The Marburgers then "found themselves thrust into the national spotlight, and their ideas a flash point for cyberspace bloggers who screamed in protest."

"We're driven by the fun and intellectual stimulation of this work," Marburger said. "I've invested more than 300 hours in this project and haven't received a penny for it." Marburger said the germ of an idea came to him while listening to Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg speaking about the paltry revenues newspapers receive from online advertising, and the difficulty of recouping their investment in news production.

While no one from Congress has contacted the Marburgers about their proposals, they suspect it's only a matter of time, according to the article. "My brother and I came up with the ideas, that's all we can do," Marburger said. "We're not lobbyists. Someone else who sees the economic merit of our theories is going to have to take it from here."

To read the article from the Plain Dealer website, click here.