> They systematically took these audiences away from the content providers
Let's not get carried away here. These newspaper businesses choose to upload their content to the open web. By making and distributing public links, they are accepting the fact that others will do the same. They didn't take anything that wasn't on the table.
Come on, when you say "lift your content" you mean show a headline, a picture and maybe the top line of the story with a huge link back to the original website?
90% of the time that data is published as "Open graph" format by the website so it looks nice. The website is going out of it's way to make links to it on facebook look pretty.
Let's not get carried away here. These newspaper businesses choose to upload their content to the open web. By making and distributing public links, they are accepting the fact that others will do the same. They didn't take anything that wasn't on the table.