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Bookmark.
Just as the printers had driven the scribes out of business, the printers were facing extreme competition by the 18th century. They sought protection from more efficient upstarts, often called pirates, who were making life hard for this very profitable industry. These pirate firms were publishing older works and distributing them very cheaply and widely. The dominant firms claimed that this practice was undermining their ability to fund new works and was thus inhibiting innovation. The established printers tapped into the mercantilist spirit, but with a special twist. They claimed that words on the page constituted a special form of property. When they were copied by a firm other than the current publisher, they claimed, their property rights were being invaded. Their "intellectual property" was being stolen. Now, on its face, this is a preposterous claim. Once ideas are known by others, they are copied. They cannot be owned in the conventional sense, or, another way of putting this is that the ownership of the ideas becomes multiplied without end. The only way to possess an idea as exclusive property is to never share it with another person. Once shared, the idea takes flight.
What's more, the entire industry had been born in the world of copying, not in making original work. Most famously, the most profitable text to publish was the Bible itself and its most ancient transcriptions and translations. In fact, this had been the driving motivation of the invention of the press in the beginning, just as it had been the driving motivation of the scribes.
Interesting challenge to the copyright laws. I think one has to be conflicted about copyright; on the one hand we want good writers to write, and we want them to be able to profit from their work so they will write more and better. And there is that whole Constitution thing:
Article 1 Section 8. The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries . . .
So that makes us proponents of intellectual property. OTOH, this article certainly makes its point. I guess the phrase, "for limited times" is the crucial point in that regard. And I think that the fact that "times" is plural is perhaps salient. I would argue that news articles have such short shelf lives that copyright is barely applicable at all, whereas an actual intellectual book merits a much longer protection. There is definitely something problematic about the use of copyright to suppress discussion of the work in question - as the suit FR had to settle was intended to do - especially since the dissemination of knowledge is actual motivation, not only for copyright but for governmental policy which has always promoted communications. The crucial point is that the Associated Press disseminated information rapidly and widely, and at the same time aggressively controlled the use of telegraphy for the transmission of news in order to restrict legitimate competition in that very business. Associated Press journalism's claim to unique objectivity is part and parcel of that all-too-effective effort on the part of the AP.

I took heart from a talk this week by Slate editor David Plotz, who suggested a viable revenue future for his online magazine lies not in its approximately seven million unique visitors but in about 500,000 loyal, engaged users who want quality, long form journalism.

From my POV that is what FR delivers. It is hardly the case that all comments, or even necessarily the typical comment, meets the criteria of quality and depth - but in aggregate the comments tend to function as an effective BS meter. Just one comment which comes as a bolt out of the blue and reminds us to be skeptical while resisting cynicism rewards the reader's time. Just as the fact that you can make a comment which will be read changes your relationship to the material you read here, even when you do not actually comment at all.
The Right to Know
Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate
The Market for Conservative-Based News
Why the Associated Press is Pernicious to the Public Interest

"If you leave the state and state-protected industries in charge long enough, they will strangle progress to the point that civilization completely stagnates."

*If*?
The man just defined the target.

"In the publishing industry, digital media couldn't have come at a better time. It is saving what the state and the dominant publishers are trying to kill."

It is trying, primarily the state.
They're calling the Herculean effort a "Fairness Doctrine". {or some such Orwellian claptrap but it is what it is, nonetheless}.

Interesting piece, I've often thought if the barbarians take over it won't be long before they'd be over their heads maintaining the system from which they suck everything they so enjoy, dead.
That's when the real fun begins.