By that logic, should the phonebook have to pay people to include them? Should the travel pamphlet pay the restaurants it sends people to? Using snippets of the content to send people to the source is essential for online dialogue, not just for Google. Should we all have to pay for referring to an article in a forum?
Mark my words: if this were enforced, people and most companies would simply stop linking these sites. What I think will happen instead is that many websites would not want this kind of situation, so we will add a new clause to the robots.txt permitting linking and small snippets, and most websites would enable it rather than lose the link and search traffic. Then we'd be back where we started.
By the way, what happens when an European newspaper is hosted in US? What laws apply?
Mark my words: if this were enforced, people and most companies would simply stop linking these sites. What I think will happen instead is that many websites would not want this kind of situation, so we will add a new clause to the robots.txt permitting linking and small snippets, and most websites would enable it rather than lose the link and search traffic. Then we'd be back where we started.
By the way, what happens when an European newspaper is hosted in US? What laws apply?