The Marburger brothers, who first got some attention when a newspaper columnist in Cleveland misrepresented their “plan” to save newspapers, have been working hard to get their story straight. But a more detailed look at their plan shows that it’s quite lacking and nothing more than artificial protectionism for an obsolete business model. Furthermore, they seem to be fighting a phantom that isn’t there — claiming that piracy is some sort of problem when there’s no evidence that it’s a significant problem at all.
But they’re still at it — and it should come as no surprise that newspapers are more than willing to give them column space for it. The LA Times has allowed them to publish a condensed version of their plan as an op-ed, where they go on and on about free riders, but fail to show what the actual problem is. They name one (count ‘em) actual “free rider” in the site Newser, which takes popular stories and shrinks them down to a summary and a link. The thing is, Newser doesn’t get a huge amount of traffic — and it appears to be dropping. And, let’s see… compared to just LATimes.com, Newser.com is a tiny blip, and they’re moving in opposite directions. LATimes is increasing in traffic, and Newser is decreasing.
You want to know why?
Because what Newser provides isn’t particular worthwhile. If a “free rider” destroys your business by summarizing your news article in two paragraphs, you don’t have much of a business. Fortunately, most news sites do provide at least some more value than a two paragraph summary, which is why Newser doesn’t get much traffic. So, again, we have to ask David and Daniel Marburger to explain to us where is the actual harm here? Why should we change copyright law to deal with a problem that doesn’t seem to exist?
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