Friday, December 26, 2008

Lawsuit may change news on the web

A company you've never heard of, Gatehouse Media, which operates a string of small newspapers in New England, has launched a lawsuit that, if Gatehouse wins, could have major repercussions. Gatehouse has sued the New York Times Company over links to Gatehouse stories on the Times' Boston Globe website.

It's probably going to lose, but what if Gatehouse wins? The Internet is built today on a framework of linking. Virtually every site -- including this blog -- is little more than news aggregators with links to the actual news sources. What if a judge were to rule those links were illegal? Seems to me that Drudge, the Huffington Post, JSonline, etc. would have to dramatically change their ways of doing business.

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