European publishers want a law to control online news access
Posted in: Government & Policy at 12/07/2009 01:19
The desertion of advertising dollars from the ailing print media industry has left publishers searching for more of the one thing that the Internet seems intent on denying them: paying customers. Print publications in the US and Europe are scrambling to find ways to charge somebody -- readers, link aggregators, blogs, competitors -- for deriving any sort of benefit from the reporting they're doing.
A group of European publishers has recently released a declaration of principles, the "Hamburg Declaration," that amounts to a long-winded rant against the Internet for stealing their news. They want the government to step in and fix the situation by force of law.
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/07/european-publishers-want-news-access-controls-legislated.ars
