as perhaps this shows, the concept of copyright is in its last stage of twitching unto death. there are of course problems, among them coming up with a new "biz model" for newspapers. the paper thing is very sad. the rocky mountain news is done. the  philadelphia inquirer, for which i wrote a lot for many years, is bankrupt. it was tremendously sad when the washington evening star went down, way back in 1981 (though it's worth pointing out that the decline of the daily started long before the internet): that's where my dad worked, and i was a copy boy there when it died. but whatever the biz model is, if any, it can't be cutting off quotations and links. there's no future in legally controlling all uses of content. it's too late for that, and if it could be accomplished, it would be incompatible with a free press and with the function of the press in a democracy, one portion of which is facilitating public dialogue. no doubt the blogosphere etc depends to a certain extent on the msm. but the msm depends, more and more, on the blogosphere. asserting ownership of content is likely to kill the msm entirely: just keep reducing its audience and making it irrelevant. i realize it's a rock and a hard place, but the information anarchy of the future is the best thing we've got going.