Apparently, Peter Scheer thinks he can be like Marty McFly - the news media can somehow take a quick trip to the past and fix everything:

What to do? Here's my proposal: Newspapers and wire services need to figure out a way, without running afoul of antitrust laws, to agree to embargo their news content from the free Internet for a brief period -- say, 24 hours -- after it is made available to paying customers. The point is not to remove content from the Internet, but to delay its free release in that venue.

A temporary embargo, by depriving the Internet of free, trustworthy news in real-time, would, I believe, quickly establish the true value of that information. Imagine the major Web portals -- Yahoo, Google, AOL and MSN -- with nothing to offer in the category of news except out of date articles from "mainstream" media and blogosphere musings on yesterday's news. Digital fish wrap. And the portals know from unhappy experience (most recently in the case of Yahoo) just how difficult it is to create original and timely news content themselves.

I don't know whether he's noticed, but this internet thing is global. Exactly how does he plan on getting every wire service and media outlet to agree to those terms? Heck, even if it were possible, he'd have a classic "prisoner's dilemma" on his hands.

It's time for people like Scheer to get beyond the old days. The net is here to stay, as is widely available free content. The RIAA and the MPAA demonstrate the futility of trying to fight the future; even as they get friendly legal regimes passed on their behalf, technology continues to outwit them. There's no re-entry to that mythical past where everyone picked up the evening newspaper for the latest news.

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