Michelle Malkin has the story of what Tulsa World is doing to Oklahoma blogger Michael Bates for "unauthorized links to our website", and "dissemination of our copyrighted content". This will no doubt be the first of many attempts by 'old' media to fight 'new' media head-on. But this seems pretty lame and ill-informed. If they want to keep their web readership (I'm assuming Tulsa World has some), then digital rights management (DRM) isn't going to be all that helpful either vis a vis the blogosphere.
UPDATE 2/18: The legal defense of Michael Bates is being taken up by the Media Bloggers Association: "...while Mr. Bates's links may be 'inappropriate' in the view of your newspaper, Mr. Bair, there is no legal basis whatsoever on which the World may prevent it... [while] Mr. Bates's use of excerpted material from the World is obviously fair use and constitutionally protected speech."
Too much of anything is often a bad idea. Like Art, I'm a strong believer in the value of choice and of markets. Choosing to blog is choosing to make one's content available without DRM rules and apart from systems that enforce them. But the blogosphere is not an existance proof regarding anything about DRM since the means of protection are not yet available to most individual and small business producers of digital information.
Posted by: Bob Weber | 16 February 2005 at 05:29 AM