Dinosaur alert: Irish newspapers desperately trying to charge for links

There’s plenty of experimentation going on in the media business when it comes to finding new methods of monetizing content: leaky paywalls at the New York Times and others, API licensing at The Guardian, membership models like the one Andrew Sullivan just launched, and so on. Irish newspapers, however, would apparently prefer to just charge people for linking to their content — as much as 300 Euros for each link. In a statement released on Friday, the country’s newspaper industry also confirms that it is lobbying to have Irish copyright laws define links as copyright infringement.

This fight has been going on behind the scenes for some time, but recently came to light when Irish lawyer Simon McGarr wrote about attempts by the Irish newspaper industry’s licensing body to charge one of his clients (a charity called Women’s Aid) a fee for linking to newspaper content. According…