Is blogging fair use?
I was reading PoliticsVT the other day and I noticed this:
We would also like to note that we will no longer be displaying material from the Burlington Free Press. The editors there, despite our citation, links and references did not appreciate our re-printing of material. We eventually realized that this was a copyright infraction and the two groups came to a decision that it would be best not to print any material from the Free Press, in the future. Which is totally fine, and we understand their concern. We will provide links to articles from the Free Press, however, we will not post any material. This will be our strategy for all our news stories for the future. It will save room and also headaches.What do you think about that?
I am not sure if it really is a copyright violation because of the fair use doctrine, but I doubt there are too many bloggers that would dare risk the legal mess that could result if a media giant like Gannett, owner of the Free Press, decided to pursue that avenue. I, for one, could not afford to fight it out in court, even if it is fair use.
I hate to sound like a liberal, but this is the problem with corporate controlled media. They can just bully people around, knowing that small non-profit blog owners do not have the resources to compete with their legal teams. Don’t get me wrong; I do not want the government to control the media, but there is a downside to corporate media.
It is good for our democracy to have blogs where the news can be debated freely. They add a value that most newspapers do not provide. The newspapers should be the ones to profit from their hard work in reporting, but they should not stand in the way of bloggers referencing their material for comment, criticism, discussion, and debate.
9 comments:
It's hard to see a substantive difference between citing a story and linking to it. Either is fair in my opinion. I wonder how they would bully an anonymously written blog.
iburlington had a story the other day about an ad for a Gannett product that the free press ran as if it were a news story.
Seems like the 'ol BFP is just getting suckier and suckier.
I just looked at the iBurlington thing you were taking about and I noticed that they also have a post about this thing on PoliticsVT. It's funny, he said, "They also announced they will not reprint anymore Free Press articles because the Evil Empire (my nickname, not theirs) threatened to pull a Death Star on them." (from iburlington.com)
That's funny.
As I understand it, fair use allows us to reprint portions of copyrighted material for purposes of commentary and reference. Where PoliticsVT crossed the line is that they were just copy and pasting entire articles from the Free Press. That is clearly prohibited under the fair use link you provided at the third bullet which states, "amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;". In other words, you can reprint parts of an article, as long as it's not a substantial portion of the article. What constitutes "substantial" is up to the copyright courts, but I think it's safe to say the entire article would qualify.
The other issue at hand is the fact that the Free Press took some sort of action against PoliticsVT. I'm curious if it were a friendly email or an actual cease and desist order? I quote the Freeps all the time, but I'm careful to quote small portions of the articles and I always provide a link to the originating article, though that link is often broken after a week because the Free Press makes you pay for their archives.
You can read my Evil Empire post here.
I've just added another article describing how the Free Press is now looking to eliminate Seven Days.
Thanks for your comments, Brian.
"What constitutes "substantial" is up to the copyright courts, but I think it's safe to say the entire article would qualify."
I thought the same thing, but then I did some digging around. I found that sometimes copying the whole thing is still allowed under fair use. I do not know if it would be covered in this case, but I think it is scary that they are going after blogs now.
Interesting piece about the Seven Days thing. I didn't know they (Gannett) offered to buy it before. That's a scary thought. I am not always the biggest fan of Seven Days, but I do not like the Free Press. I certainly would not want them to be the only paper in town.
"I didn't know they (Gannett) offered to buy it before."
I think that was speculation on his part. I highly doubt that that has happened.
The Free Press may have crunched some numbers on 7D's revenues and decided that some of that money was ripe for them to pluck with a free entertainment section. That's just good business sense. I doubt they're bothered by the existence of a mediocre free alternative weekly paper.
Oops, you are right.
He said, "I'll bet the Freeps have already offered Seven Days a buyout and they refused."
I guess I was reading too fast.
"I doubt they're bothered by the existence of a mediocre free alternative weekly paper."
If that's true, why did they bother with Buyer's Digest?
There's very little advertising overlap between the BFP and the Buyer's Digest, so I'm sure it was not a matter of putting a competitor out of business. It was probably just an opportunity to add a revenue stream, leveraging existing production, distribution and possibly sales capabilities to increase the preexisting BD margins.
The Free Press is a pretty lame-o newspaper if you ask me. Don't get me wrong, I love reading up on all the big stories like "Little Sally Smith of Essex lost her first tooth" and "Look how evil the republicans are today," but I think they frequently fall short on what some might call...news. This is a totally typical move.
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