let’s hope that German media will be able to successfully embrace online media and be more of a leader then the current community of mere followers (although jeff writes that derwesten.com is innovative…)

The old media business model basically consists of renting the readers/viewers to the advertisers. Did the readers/viewers ever get a share of the advertising revenues? Of course not. Would there have been any advertising revenues without readers/viewers? Of course not. One more reason why it is rather hypocritical to ask for a share of search engines revenues.

P.S.
Ulrike Langer points to some changes and omissions at
http://medialdigital.de/2009/11/13/was-jeff-jarvis-schreibt-und-was-die-welt-daraus-macht/

that’s all nice to read – “Embrace the future”, “Go with the flow”, etc. But preaching is one thing, acting according to the gospel is another. Be an example yourself, show those dimwitted publishers the light! Well, you are a professor at CUNY, right? Instead of getting paid by the university, put all your lectures online (shouldn’t be that hard). Your friends at Google will link to it, so that everybody will find your content and see it. Google will put some ads around the links to your content, so they do not starve (they know how to monetize links). Now, you will be paid royally by, oh well, the viewers of your free content, I suppose. OK, false start. Take your excellent book (that one with the old technology, ink on paper, I bought; brrr, I still feel good old Gutenberg breathing at my neck). Where is that site http://www.whatwouldgoogledo.com, where Jeff Jarvis puts his content up for free? Again, Google will certainly link to it, combined with lot’s of ads. And you will probably become rich beyond imagination by donations, Google Ads revenue or whatever splendid business model for the link economy you choose. See, it’s that easy. Never understood why Murdoch doesn’t get it. Don’t be afraid, it’s the future. If your family will be upset about daddy loosing all his income, let them read “What would Google do?”.

Disclosure: I am a publisher myself (not a newspaper publisher, though). But you figured that out already, I guess ).

To offer readers a more complete perspective on this issue, you should really point out that Springer, Holtzbrinck, _and_ Burda are all petitioning the German government for stronger copyright protections. Why don’t you include this information?

Excellent post. Very relevant and very well argued. As a copywriter and essayist, I appreciate your prose and the organization of your argument.

While it would appear that Google is gaining more and more control of the Web, it is increasing its offering of tools to surfers and business solutions for businesses. Fighting giants is a bad idea, especially when they’re trying to help you.

Thanks for the informative read,
Amber