Washington Post: The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition)
Cleveland partner David Marburger was quoted in the August 2, 2009, Washington Post article, "The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition)."
The focus of the article was the "pirating" of a Washington Post columnist's article by Gawker, the New York culture and media website. The author referenced Marburger's recent analyses, produced with his brother Daniel Marburger, an economist at Arkansas State University, which concluded that the redistribution of news on thousands of websites across the Internet is hurting newspapers financially and that the fault lies with the Copyright Act.
According to the article, the Marburgers stirred a minor controversy in the blogosphere with the proposal that could empower newspapers, or any news organization that spends the bulk of its budget on original reporting. The Marburgers propose to amend the copyright law so that it restores "unfair competition rights." That change would give news organizations rights that they could enforce in court if "parasitic" free-rider websites (the heavy excerpters) refused to bargain with them for a fee or a contract, according to the article.
Marburger said media outlets could seek an order requiring the free-rider to postpone its commercial use or even hand over some advertising revenue linked to the free-riding. News organizations once had such protections against the replication and resale of their work because of a wire service showdown in the early 20th century. In 1918, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Associated Press in a complaint against a rival wire service that had been ripping off its stories, Marburger said.
Marburger compared the Post article and the Gawker posting and concluded: "This is what in our opinion is a huge contributor to the demise of those who are originating news reports. If you don't change the law to stop this, originators of news reports cannot survive."
Click here to read the full article from the Washington Post website.