Lawsuit to Determine Fair Use for Blog Links, Headlines
By Susie Madrak Friday Jan 23, 2009 6:00pmThis could affect the blogosphere as we know it, most specifically news aggregators:
A copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit filed last month against The New York Times Co., owner of The Boston Globe and its Boston.com website, is being watched closely by news organizations, Internet researchers, independent bloggers, and companies that aggregate news online by linking to a variety of news sites.
At the heart of the complaint, lodged by GateHouse Media Inc., which publishes 125 community newspapers in Massachusetts, is the question of whether Internet news providers will be able to continue the practice of posting headlines and lead sentences from stories they link to on other sites.The case has been scheduled for trial in US District Court in Boston as early as Monday.
"This is the first case where these intellectual property issues have come to a head," said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society in Cambridge. "If the judge was to rule for GateHouse on every point, it would have far-reaching implications for the news and information ecosystem that underlies the Web as we know it."
Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., a school for professional journalists, said the case could result in new guidelines for how much, if any, content from one website can be used by another. "This is standard procedure across the Internet now," she said. "Newsrooms adopted the procedure from other practitioners."
Login or Register to post comments.
Raw Story is one of my favorites. Despite occaisional misleading headlines and mixups, they are my daily newspaper. No worse than any print papers, who have to print retractions almost every week.
also is one of my favorites, along with C&L. Mostly has very newsworthy stories you don't typically see a lot of reporting on.
Try Mother Jones, the Utne Reader and New Internationalist. They may be too left wing for your tastes (heck, they're too left wing for my tastes), but the intellectually honest are never afraid of hearing what the other side thinks. It's the intellectually weak (i.e. republicans) who won't listen to more than one opinion (i.e. FAUX Noise).
mind if i quote you susie?
.
Did you get express written consent to reprint that?
:P
This is borderline absurd.
If a blog is linking to a story referenced on another site and not claiming the report as their own, it's free advertising.
If, instead, the blogger is reposting a story verbatim without a referring link, it's plagiarism, and already recognized under the law as a crime.
I suspect some lawyer invented this case to hustle up some of that big corporate lawsuit money. :(
The Company is stuck with all those news rags they purchased for there previously comfy profit margin. They better get with the times,(No pun intended, OK, intended):-P
I say the lawsuit fails. (Drudge is pissed) :-)
GateHouse Media
Snip - On August 28, 2008, GateHouse sold two of those papers, The Grand Island Independent and the York News-Times, both in Nebraska, to the Omaha World-Herald Co.
The Company received notification from the NYSE on August 21, 2008, that the Company had fallen below the NYSE's continued listing standards for average global market capitalization over a consecutive 30 trading day period of not less than $75 million and $1.00 average closing price over a consecutive 30 trading day period and had submitted a business plan to the NYSE Regulation for coming back into compliance for continued listing. The Company has been in communication with the NYSE regarding the Company's non-compliance with continued listing standards but was unsuccessful in its efforts to avoid suspension and delisting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GateHouse_Media
The "York News-Times"? That sounds like a trademark name infringement case waiting to happen.
Oh well, it'll just mean more sites dedicated to monkey porn, and doggy leg humpers.
3 months ago Monty Python started giving away their content on YouTube. Now Amazon says that caused their DVD sales to skyrocket 23,000%.
http://i.gizmodo.com/5137827/monty-python-put...
You know his (Biggus Dickus), wife's name don't you?
Incontinentia Buttocks.
By by definition can a percent go over a 100?
I think you might be surprised at who owns Gatehouse
Who's that?
Is his first name Bill? :-P
Amended: Never mind, I see it's Gate and not Gates...
how stupid are those that try to americanize the internet?
next, our minds and thoughts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn85BeeiwZo
¡....!
Didn't really expect a response.
Checkmate! Texan.
This is funny...
Snip - Monitor blogs for sources of information.
Nothing can beat the idea of an aggregate source of information by combining the 'brain power' the web can provide. Any one person can easy use Google's blog search to get information about any particular keyword. A journalist writing an article has the power to do this efficiently and get reliable resources or they could always put inquiries onto Peter Shankman's HARO emails.
http://theworldisrising.blogspot.com/2009/01/...
Aren't they just the same thing in essence?
Actually, aren't newspapers more and more decreasing their own staffs, and taking news items from the Associated and United Press?
I suppose they do pay for them though.
However, if you consider the newspaper to be educational (or blogs), wouldn't that fall under Fair Use laws?
I wouldn't read a NY or Boston paper in any format unless it was on-line and only when one of my favorite blogs provides a link to an article from one of their papers.
Some people see new things as money making opportunities while others sue to keep things the way they have always have been. Even a rock band who once sued to prevent on-line file sharing of their music has now gotten on the on-line music bandwagon. Change or die.
This may be tangential, but just this afternoon I was kvetching with someone how certain classic movie titles have been recently been reused in new ofter inferior movies.
The classic horror movie that introduced Peter Lorre to America, with Francis Dade and Colin Clive "Mad Love" was taken by another movie in the 90's which almost went direct to video starring Christopher O'Donnell and Drew Barrymore. A movie came out in 1972 called The Other but in the 90's there was another called The Others starring Nicole Kidman, (which I rather liked). Another horror movie I consider a classic from the 80's, partially because it wasn't a mindless slasher flick, starred George C Scott in The Changling, but Clint Eastwood has just released a movie called the Changling. Now there's another typically idiotic horror movie coming out about an evil stepmother (of all things), called The Uninvited, which was the title of the classic ghost movie from 1944 starring Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp and Gail Russell.
Apparently you can't copyright a movie title, so why should you be able to copyright a headline?
.
I can't wait until I get my copyright on the word, "THE".
Then, I'll control the world!!!!!!!!!
.
If media owners are so concerned about copyright violations, then why don't they ask that current "fair use" laws for quotations and recorded samples apply to websites in the same way they do for TV, radio and print media?
Because these bastards want to silence bloggers, pure and simple. Of course, if they regurgitate the political line of the media they quote or pay money to use them, "that will be okay".
http://www.badattitudes.com/MT/archives/2007/...
well said...........
I have to wonder whether some news orgs actually WANT anyone to read their articles at all. Linking, snipping, passing it around the internet, is exactly how these things get known. I think this is purely targeted at bloggers
Login or Register to post comments.