Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews
You’ll recall that earlier this year AP took a hardline stance on linking to their stories and including short excerpts, a practice generally accepted as “fair use.” On Monday, in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, GateHouse Media, which publishes 100+ local newspapers, sued the New York Times for copyright infringement, because its Boston.com online unit was linking to GateHouse Media stories, using a headline and one line of text.
Personally, I fail to see how that is anything but “fair use.” The headline and one line? That’s definitely going to drive traffice GateHouse Media’s way. So why the fuss?
In the lawsuit (.PDF), GateHouse specifically points to linking between the Boston.com’s local Newton section, and the Newton TAB. The Newton TAB is part of the Wicked Local website. And you can see from the image above just how much Boston.com uses: a headline, and a sentence at most. In some cases, just the headline. As I said, that’s bound to drive traffic to GateHouse.
Now, there was an earlier content theft complaint made about the Huffington Post. In that case, it was more like taking an entire piece, and linking. One sentence and linking? Big deal. Once again, I can’t see how that hurts GateHouse. And it’s not as though Boston.com is only taking content from GateHouse, and nowhere else.
Me? Link to me, please.
As far as this suit goes, if successful, it could prove to be the end of sites like Topix, Propeller, Digg, Techmeme — and I consider linking from there to my site a plus!
Anyway, rather than a lawsuit, here’s what GateHouse should do. Link to stories on Boston.com. That’ll show ‘em!
Hi Michael,
the issue really isn’t as simple as just linking to another site. This has to do with aggregation of content, and whether or not the aggregation is NOT generating traffic to the original site, but creating income from ads on the host site. This is a dilemma that lots of aggregation sites have when it comes to how they’re going to make money (disclosure: I work for Placeblogger.com, an aggregation site. we do not put ads next to aggregated content.)
Further, with the town of Newton, there’s a lot of content to draw from (other blogs, etc.) But there are other towns in Mass, such as Waltham and Needham, that do not have as much content. So, what ends up happening is that Gatehouse’s content is the only content on some of Boston’com’s pages. From a reader’s perspective–why bother with Boston.com? If they can’t find other stuff for me, their hyperlocal page is a waste of my time.
It’s not as simple as fair use, which was a common practice before 1996.
In 1996, president Bill Clinton signed the DMCA into law which makes it illegal to link to copyright material… Freezing the flow of news was an unexpected side effect. (or was that what Clinton had in mind all along?)
Without the “illegal links” part of the DMCA, they would never have been able to shut down any MP3 search sites or any torrent web sites!
Even though DMCA is an american law and does not apply to international copyright treaties, many countries often use DMCA as if it were their own law… (some with success, some without) It’s even been used to try to take down the pirate bay! (a non-american web site from sweden) Yet they are still online.
NOTE: This random blog comment is (c) 2008 by LZW and protected under DMCA from unauthorized linking. All violators will be prosecuted under the fullest extent of the law and forced to watch 24 hours of non stop clinton speeches!!!!
Tish, I appreciate your input. When I looked at the Newton page on Boston.com I saw plenty of non-GateHouse content. but perhaps I was just lucky!