O’Reilly has raised the possibility of the European Newspaper Publishers Association bringing a "Napster-style" action against those who breach newspaper copyright. He said that he raised the issue with other publishers and believed that the print media would have a strong case.

"I can see the newspaper industry getting together the same way as the recording industry got together, except in a more effective way," said O’Reilly. "A journalist’s work is valuable, it needs to be protected."

That's actually quite innocuous and could be aimed at anyone. But I think it's aimed at bloggers. He's clearly got a problem with blogs (join the club Tony, join the club), he says "You can trust newspaper writers. Can you trust a blogger?" But even in spite of recent comments I've made on the subject, I still had an "Ouch!" moment when I read that.

So. Is Sir Anthony's proposed Nasptering going to be targetted at bloggers? Bloggers do have a tendency to lift stories wholsale from news sites, not just choice snippets linked back to the article itself. Some might consider that copying of content to be a breach of copyright - it does tend to exceed 'fair use'. Unison.ie may not be
the most popular Irish newspaper site, but atleast it is more useful than the likes of the Cork Examiner, the Sunday Turnine and the Business Post. And bloggers do have occasion to cite stories on it. So maybe Indo Newspapers is worried about the amount of web-traffic bloggers are taking away from it?

Links are also valuable, the more inbound links pointing to your content the more strenght it will have, the more you can leverage it and monetize it, without screwing over people. It makes me think though does Sir Tony figure he can make money from micropayments and microcontent?

The EFF are an NGO who work to protect the established rights and liberties of the ordinary Joe Soap public in this age of computers. Their campaigns tend to cover such areas as patent law, copyright, DRM, file-sharing, the broadcasting flag and e-voting. A small staff (funded by donations) and a network of volunteer supporters form the backbone of the EFF, backed by pro-bono legal work from people like Eben Moglen.

1) Fair dealing with a work for the purposes of criticism or review of that or another work or of a performance of a work shall not infringe any copyright in the work where the criticism or review is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement.

(2) Fair dealing with a work (other than a photograph) for the purpose of reporting current events shall not infringe copyright in that work, where the report is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement.

(3) In this Part, "sufficient acknowledgement" means an acknowledgement identifying the work concerned by its title or other description and identifying the author unless—

(a) in the case of a work which has been lawfully made available to the public, it was so made available anonymously, or

(b) in the case of a work which has not been made available to the public, it is not possible for a person without previous knowledge of the facts to ascertain the identity of the author of the work by reasonable enquiry.