By: Mark Fitzgerald In the days since Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz in Cleveland reported on changes to copyright law that she believes can protect newspapers from free-riding aggregators, the proposal has been hailed and criticized with equal passion -- and often misunderstood.
In particular, media bloggers have attacked Schultz and the authors of the white paper proposing copyright law changes for supposedly advocating that newspapers get a monopoly on news they originate for a certain time period.
"We would actually oppose that," David Marburger, a lawyer in the Cleveland office of the national firm Baker and Hostetler, told E&P.
He and his co-author and brother, Daniel Marburger, an economist at Arizona State University, also say they are not trying to eliminate what they call "pure" aggregators such as Google News that include a headline and link to the originating newspaper.
What they do favor is restoring the common law right to sue for unfair competition that they say newspapers and other news content originators have lost over time.
"If newspapers do not start restoring their unfair competition rights under common law at least, then every other business model they try ultimately isn't going to work," David Marburger said.
On Wednesday, the Marburger brothers talked with E&P for this week's edition of the "Fitz & Jen Give You the Business" podcast. Listen now to the full discussion,
here.
In addition, a four-page summary of their proposal -- plus a response to critics -- is posted at E&P's business-oriented
Fitz & Jen blog.
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