Is Daniel Lyons a Parasite?

Not language that I would normally use about an otherwise inoffensive tech columnist, but it's his choice of words, not mine. He didn't apply it to himself directly of course, but it's pretty clear from the context. What he did do is write a column (Exterminate the Parasites) based on a blog posting by Mark Cuban, the billionaire basketball/internet dancing star. Cuban's alleged theme (I didn't read his site, just Lyons parasite), heartily endorsed by Lyons, is that traditional media's only hope of forging a workable business plan in the internet age is to conspire in restraint of trade - more specifically, to get together to agree to blockade the news aggregator sites - Drudge, Newser, Huffington Post, etc. Only if they do that, says Cuban/Lyons, can they force people to pay for their content. Those sites, says Lyons, are "parasites," since they generate little content of their own, but mainly just summarize stories from other media - very much the way Lyons is summarizing Cuban's idea.

Newspapers, of course, are aggregators too, but they traditionally paid the authors of their stories. I don't think a conspiracy is going to do the trick here, but some changes in the laws might be appropriate. In particular, any site that receives advertising revenue - Drudge, etc., - ought to have to forward some of it to the originators of the stories it presents. This doesn't solve the fundamental problem of pay for content, but it at least diverts some of the revenu to the originators. Should be a good deal for lawyers and accountants too.