Author:

Some media executives are growing concerned that web curators like the Huffington Post are taking away potential readers and profiting from content paid for by others. The New York Times reports that lawsuits in this area are on the rise, and interested parties say the government hasn't clearly delineated how copyright law applies. "New modes of creation, reuse, mixing and mash-ups made possible by digital technologies and the internet have made it even more clear that Congress's attempt to define fair use is woefully inadequate," the director of the Citizen Media Law Project tells the Times.

David Westphal checks in with eight local news websites across the country to see how they're doing financially. "So far they're hanging tough. Business hasn't fallen much, if at all, and most are instituting expansion plans," he writes. "If they're a barometer, community news sites have some resiliency to them."

The research group IDC has reversed its online advertising growth estimates from 10 percent growth in 2009 to a 5 percent drop in revenues in the first quarter that could get worse in the second. It would be the first contraction in online ad spending since the dot-com bubble burst in 2001. TechCrunch's Sarah Lacy says that the online ad industry needs to come up with innovative products to thrive. "There's too much outsourcing to the ad networks and too much of an assumption by the portals and other large properties that gaudy eyeballs will be enough," she writes. "That's old media thinking. It's enough to get ads when times are good, but not necessarily to keep them when times get bad."