According to , the European Court of Justice (ECJ) – the European Union’s highest court - has that the copying and reproduction of just 11 words of a news article could be considered copyright infringement. Of course, copyright infringement can only occur if newspaper articles are deserving of copyright protection. This issue, the ECJ said, is something that would be up to a national court to decide. Supposing that newspaper articles do qualify as literary works and thus are protected by copyright law, what Infopaq is doing would be considered to be unlawful.

On one hand, Infopaq argued that while acts of copying and reproduction were used in their monitoring service, what they were doing was ‘transient’ copying and that such copying is legal because of exceptions in the Transient copying can be explained as copying of material that is later deleted from computer memory. However, the ECJ held that while some parts of Infopaq’s processing could be called transient, as soon as it had printed out the 11 words on to paper, the copying became too permanent to be considered as transient.

Is this ruling taking copyright too far? Have we approached the edge of the slippery slope? If the copying of 11 words may be considered to be copyright infringement, who is to say that the same would not apply to 5 words, or even 3 words? How would this ruling also apply to other types of companies that perform similar functions? Too many questions, and too few answers. Let us take a look at the popular search engine Google, for instance. When Google displays search results, it not only displays the title of the website itself, but also snippets of text from that website. In many cases, these snippets consist of more than 11 words. In many cases, these snippets are from original literary works that are deserving of copyright protection, whether they are poems or song lyrics, etc. Would this be considered copyright infringement by Google? If the answer is no, then why are Infopaq’s actions wrong? Infopaq is doing what many other news clipping services have been . In fact, it can be argued that the 11 word snippet itself is commercially useless unless the article is read in its entirety.

On the other hand, perhaps the fact that someone is paying for such a service means that there is commercial value to the snippets. While Infopaq is making a profit from their search services, the underlying information that they are searching comes from newspaper articles. Thus, if the newspaper articles did not exist, then Infopaq would not have articles to analyze, and they would not be in business. In addition, the ECJ states that some snippets are so pithy and original that they are not commercially useless on their own:

The possibility may not be ruled out that certain isolated sentences, or even certain parts of sentences in the text in question, may be suitable for conveying to the reader the originality of a publication such as a newspaper article, by communicating to that reader an element which is, in itself, the expression of the intellectual creation of the author of that article. Such sentences or parts of sentences are, therefore, liable to come within the scope of the protection provided for in Article 2(a) of that directive.

In the end, this ECJ ruling is precarious. It seems that we are heading towards the era where we must ask ourselves “what CAN I do?” instead of “what CAN’T I do?” Is this where we want to be?

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One of the main reasons behind the current state of newspapers can be attributed to the prevalence and availability of free content, including news, online, and that too in a form of minute by minute updates. In addition to the Internet, the availability of 24-hour news channels on television and radio also can not be overlooked. Another conceivable cause behind the plummet in the newspaper revenue is the decreasing number of advertisers opting for print media. This trend has primarily been sparked by the availability and popularity of alternatives, provided by internet companies such as Google Inc.

In their attempt to rectify the decreasing readership and diminishing revenue, the newspapers have started hiking the online access prices to their news articles in the hopes that the readers will continue buying the papers. What makes this difficult is the fact that whether or not the newspapers charge for news online, free news is always going to be available on websites like Yahoo, MSN and AOL who pay for the rights to post stories from Associated Press and other sources. In addition, a lot of websites and bloggers provide summarized versions of the recent developments in the world, which is sufficient for a lot of readers.  

Some publishers also argue that by charging for the news online, they will generate revenue which will facilitate them to continue with supplying newspapers. This contention overlooks certain risks. A  rejects the scope of deriving any benefits from the online newspaper fees. Instead, it proposes that such tactics will probably just drive away the majority of the Internet readers. The study further concludes that typically the newspapers with circulations of about 50,000 will not be able to earn much more than $1-million in annual revenue from online subscriptions. Since the advertiser influx to online websites is directly proportional to the online readership, only a few publishers can benefit from such a strategy of erecting a 'toll booth'.  

An alternative to this approach is the practise of specialization and unique journalism. The Wall Street Journal is one success story of online subscriptions primarily because of its special practices and focuses. . In order to maintain such an online following, it focuses on financial news. The benefit is that the targeted niche has the resources as well the interest to retrieve insightful information about the business front. Another trend in response to the sagging state of newspaper industry includes the creation of such start-ups as  that act as a database of news from different newspapers, delivering services in exchange for a monthly subscription.

While there looms uncertainty regarding the future of this age old medium of journalism, it is nevertheless fair to assume that there are still patrons of newspapers who look forward to holding the paper in their hands every morning, who like clipping articles from the papers for their record, or who just prefer reading information in a print medium rather than surfing and reading news online. A few newspaper executives have also collaborated to launch a website called  which provides a platform "to support a constructive exchange of information and ideas about the future of newspapers." No matter what the solution, it is evident that newspapers all across the United States are fighting back to ensure that they escape extinction. While some might favour the shift to online media on the grounds that the information is readily and inexpensively available, and no longer involves the handling of bulky and costly newspapers, I would personally hate to live in a world where newspapers can only be witnessed in old movies or in museums.

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