i think dowd pretty severely misunderstands what google is doing. so on the intellectual-property-type model, the nyt owns dowd's column, let's say. now the picture you get is that google copies this column and a bunch of other stuff from newspapers, makes a new newspaper, and markets it in rivalry to the nyt. but of course that's not what they do at all: they search its content and post links to it. now say the nyt wanted to and was able to prevent google from linking to its content. would this help its situation because now people wouldn't see google ads on the link page, and the advertisers and readers would have to come directly to the nyt? not at all, obviously. they'd just dramatically reduce their own readership. the google news aggregator should be conceived as symbiotic with the nyt, not as a rival. if the nyt really wants to go broke, then sue google or pass a law against linking to copyrighted material etc. that's just suicide.