Legal Commentary

Let's Ban Footnotes Too!

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

Judge Posner has proposed that we ban hyperlinking in order to save newspapers.

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

Copyfight says that this is Proof That Even Very Smart People Can Say Very Stupid Things. Brilliant as Judge Posner most undoubtedly is, and will full respect for his many true contributions to legal thinking, this is far from the first such example he has provided us. (Recall Posner on rape, or on baby-selling.) Which, along with a certain degree of unpredictability, is why he’s not on the Supreme Court, even though most lawyers would rank him as at least one of the most brilliant legal scholars of his generation.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on June 29, 2009 (boomark / email).