I Didn't Pay For This Link

In Who Will Write the Future? in the Denver Post, writer David Milofsky reports that Google and Yahoo are negotiating with newspaper publishers regarding paying for newspaper content that they link to on their own news pages. Milofsky than speculates about what this could mean for litblogs:

"More to the point, litblogs, like other Internet sites, pay nothing for the privilege of linking to the publications on their websites. If Google is thinking about paying for the news it reprints, why not what some have called a paywall for litblogs?"

Hmmm. I'm not sure how I feel about this. If a litblogger isn't making money from her blog, doesn't some fair use copyright thing apply?

Elsewhere in his article, Milofsky says, "...no one has demonstrated that litblog readers are a significant part of the book-buying public."

An interesting point.

Link from ArtsJournal.