QotD: Expanding online copyright rules

I'm with Jeff Jarvis: Good God. The scary thing here is not necessarily that we will see some new federal law requiring that the L.A. Times give expressed written consent every time I link to one of its pieces, but rather that some damn fool freedom-reducing scheme like this is likely to be introduced at the federal level in the not-too-distant future, given the economic and political clout of these very large, very troubled, and very connected organizations. And the fact that a respected judge is so breezy about jigging the nation's laws to prop up a single struggling industry reminds us afresh how ingrained is the bias toward seeing the government as a cost-and consquence-free solution to anything perceived as a problem.

Matt Welch, "Richard Posner: Expand Copyright Protections to Save Newspapers!", Hit and Run, 2009-06-26