In his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, Alan Mutter chides the newspaper and publishing industries for devising plans to crack down on those unfairly/illegally using copyrighted material.
Mutter, a former print executive now in Silicon Valley, isn't one of those free-culture advocates who says anything goes.
Rather, he's making a practical observation: The time taken to crack down will not yield a decent return, largely because it's difficult to police and there are few who would be able to pay whatever you'd win in a legal action.
Those driving large traffic and revenue will be smart enough to stay within the U.S. fair use principles editorially --- using snippets of content and linking out to full sources, he predicts.
Here is one snippet as an example: "If the time, trouble and cost of policing content are likely to net only limited amounts of new revenue for print publishers, don’t they have more important things to do?"
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