A radical plan to save old media

[Commentary] Since the dawn of the Internet, news organizations have accepted the notion that the only way to survive the onslaught of the Web is to publish everything online, at no cost to readers, and let anyone in the world synopsize it, refer to it, and copy and link to it. You can't charge for your work—that's rule No. 1 on the Internet. And you can't block others from copying or linking to it—that's rule No. 2. But those rules are starting to look stupid. All the media companies that follow them are going broke, so now they're casting about for a new business model. Some are talking about making readers pay subscription fees. But the most radical idea, and the one I find most intriguing, is being advanced by Mark Cuban, a billionaire Internet entrepreneur. Cuban's advice: declare war on the "aggregator" Web sites that get a free ride on content. These aggregators—sites like Drudge Report, Newser, and countless others—don't create much original material. They mostly just synopsize stuff from mainstream newspapers and magazines, and provide a link to the original.