How The Constraints Of 'Traditional Journalism' Sometimes Lead To A Missed Opportunity To Better Inform

from the experiments-in-breaking-out-of-the-box dept

Recently, a NY Times article about the giant patch of floating garbage in the ocean got some attention, not so much for the contents of the article, but because it was the first time the NY Times had worked with Spot.us to fund some journalism. If you're not familiar with Spot.us, it's an innovative non-profit startup, that helps "crowdfund" certain journalism projects. I'm not convinced it's a great business model, but it is one that's interesting to watch, and a partnership with the NY Times is definitely a big win for the organization.

However, I think Mathew Ingram really highlighted the most interesting thing about the whole project. While the NY Times article that came from Spot.us was somewhat mundane and didn't add much to the half a dozen or so other articles that have been written about the garbage patch, the blog written by the reporter who did this project, Lindsey Hoshaw, was a lot more interesting and compelling than the NY Times article itself. But the blog wasn't a part of the NY Times at all.

What Mathew was really showing was how some traditional publications get locked into a certain way of doing things because "this is how we do things." And in that world "the article" is the ultimate goal. It's a "deliverable." The process and the journey seem less important -- even though they're quite often the most interesting parts, to a wider community that wants to feel more and more a part of the journalism process itself. The NY Times is pretty good about doing certain topic blogs, and even brought in the Freakonomics blog under its own brand, a while back. But Mathew makes a really good point that this sort of thing probably would have worked better if the entire blog was seen as a part of the NY Times process. It could have ended with a big "story" -- or not. It's not even clear that's needed here. In the end, the real point is that the old structures don't always make sense. And while it was already a big step for the NY Times to create this story using such a new and different process as Spot.us, the end result might have been even better if they'd gone even further and highlighted the journey of the story, rather than just the endpoint.

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Could Artists Help Newspapers? (And Vice Versa)

from the symbiotic-content dept

Reid Rosefelt writes "I thought you might be interested as this is a good example of how someone can make money out of free (or close to it). ... Jeff Scher has had a long and successful career as a painter and an animator/experimental filmmaker.... Recently he was asked to make a short film [once] a month which would run in the Opinion Page of the New York Times. This has changed his life. It's not just that his worldwide audience has grown beyond his wildest dreams; he is reaching a completely different kind of audience -- people who would never have seen his movies in museums and festivals. And although he makes very little money doing them, it has been the best advertising in the world for his paid projects. ... He is getting jobs that he would never have gotten, including one from one of his musical heroes."

The details of this deal are a bit unclear to me, but it sounds like Scher gets free publicity for his work -- and the New York Times gets some interesting content that might help promote its own reputation (and reason to buy). Also, according to Rosefelt, Scher retains ownership of his artwork, but the NYT has an exclusive license to show his work for the first month that it's on the NYT site. While that detail may appear to be a shrewd clause for NYT to help it gain audience, it shouldn't rely too heavily on that exclusivity. The NYT needs to focus on providing interesting and unique content all the time -- and the month-long time limit suggests that someone in the deal might understand that fact. But in any case, this is yet another example of how providing digital content for free can create a viable business for an artist.

In the bigger picture, though, this promotion alone obviously won't budge the NYT's bottomline. However, this deal highlights one of the NYT's strengths: that it can help artists (not just journalists) to connect with a large community -- and an expanded business could be built around that strength. There's an opportunity here for newspapers to reach broader audiences with content (beyond news) that is not a commodity. Experiments like this could point to more newspapers turning to curating unique content and providing more useful services to readers -- services that can't easily be copied.

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Is The NY Times Looking To CwF + RtB?

from the sure-looks-that-way dept

One of my big complaints with all the stories from newspaper people about how they're suddenly going to put up paywalls and charge, was that they never actually talked about adding more value. They seemed to just assume people would pay, when the truth is that they've never really paid for the content. But, of course, if you can really connect with people, and give them a reason to buy, then that's something different. But "the news" alone is not a reason to buy, because it's not scarce. It's quite abundant, and if someone charges, then people will just go elsewhere. But there are plenty of scarcities that you can charge for if you're smart about it -- and it looks like the NY Times may actually be taking a more intelligent approach to its own business model.

Last week, as you hopefully know, we kicked off our latest business model experiment, by launching our CwF + RtB options, based on the formula that we've seen many musicians use successfully: Connect with Fans (CwF) + Reason to Buy (RtB) = Business Model. So it's fascinating to see some of what the NY Times is exploring for its own premium offers. While these are still apparently works in progress, some market research shows that the NYT is considering two separate added value tiers. These aren't about locking up the content, but providing additional (scarce!) value that people may find worth paying for.

For example, in the proposed silver level ($50/year) people would get early access to some stories (a la our Techdirt Crystal Ball), as well as some additional features on the site, a choice of a tote bag, baseball cap or some other products, and early access for tickets to NYT's events. Not bad. The proposed gold level ($150/year) also gives the person access to exclusive events, direct access to some of the reporters/writers/staff at the NY Times (even a newsroom tour) and some other features. This is still preliminary, but it seems like the NY Times is definitely thinking in the right direction. It's not about locking up the content that's already there. It's about providing a real reason to buy something additional that's scarce and valuable. And, certainly, given the NY Times' reputation, it has connected with many, many people. So, now let's see what happens when it gives them real reasons to buy. Who knows what model will eventually be launched or how successful it really is, but it's interesting to see the NY Times apparently stealing our idea (that's a joke, people). In all honesty, it's great to finally see a newspaper looking at adding value, not trying to take it away.

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By The AP's Own Logic, The AP Ripped Off Obama

from the creative-thinking... dept

Law professor Doug Lichtman has a monthly podcast (on an annoyingly flash-only website) called the Intellectual Property Colloquium. A few months back, we discussed the episode that looked at file sharing damages. I must admit that I tend to disagree with a significant percentage of Lichtman's conclusions on intellectual property, but unlike many copyright maximalists, I tend to believe he's much more intellectually honest on these issues. His positions don't seem to come from a "more is absolutely better because it makes me/my clients more money" position, but he honestly tends to believe that greater copyright leads to a greater net outcome, and tends to argue reasonably about it -- though, I believe some of that reasoning, and the assumptions that underpin it are faulty.

In the latest podcast, Lichtman and three guests discuss "fair use" with most of the focus being on the Shepard Fairey case. Lichtman talks with one of Fairey's lawyers (Mark Lemley), a lawyer for the AP (Dale Cendali) and finally the General Counsel of the NY Times, Ken Richieri. It won't surprise many, I'm sure to say, that I strongly agreed with the points Lemley made, in explaining (a) how Fairey's use is almost certainly fair use. But the debate between Lemley and Lichtman is still quite worthwhile.

The key point that Lichtman keeps jumping back to is an interesting attempt to justify blocking fair use on what (at first glance) appears to be free market principles. That is, Lichtman states, repeatedly, that because Fairey could have licensed an image of Obama prior to making his artwork, there shouldn't be fair use. His argument is that this is as free market approach, and that fair use might not even need to be considered. To Lichtman, if there is a "functioning" market that can be made, there's no fair use. At a first pass, this may sound quite appealing to free marketer/libertarian types. But it's wrong. That's because what he's talking about is not a true free market at all. It's an artificial market, based entirely on a gov't backed artificial scarcity. It's a market built on a monopoly, which is no free market at all.

It also seems to go against the very intent of copyright itself, in that it suggests that as long as there's a "reasonable" tollbooth that can be placed on things, there shouldn't be fair use. But if that tollbooth is actually creating friction and decreasing, limiting or hindering creative output, then it can and should be seen not as "promoting the progress," but the exact opposite. Lemley does a decent job on the spot to warn against the frictions caused by such a "permission" culture, in that it's quite unreasonable in many cases to have to get permission, but Lichtman dismisses this as a minor issue, or really one that can be worked out separately. To me, that suggests a rather distinctly poor assumption about creativity and creative culture these days. Requiring ad hoc permission on any potential use would create massive chilling effects on all sorts of creativity. Lichtman also suggests that a third party intermediary (perhaps YouTube) could serve as a clearinghouse for such rights, but that too creates all sorts of problems.

Overall though, this highlights the problem I have with those who continue to support strong copyrights under a "free market" perspective. A true free market for a good with infinite supply will price that good at zero. But copyright distorts that market to limit that possibilities. It's as if some believe that any market represents a free market, even if that market is massively inefficient. Back in the days of the sugar monopolies, there was "a market" for sugar, but it was not a fair market price, because of the gov't backed monopoly. Or, to make the point clearer, today there is no "market" for air, despite the fact that it's quite valuable to all of us mammals who like to breathe. We could, in theory, create a gov't backed market for air, recognizing its value, and forcing people to pay to breathe, but most people inherently recognize how inefficient and wasteful that would be. Yet, content has the same fundamental (effectively) limitless supply as air (if anything, air is more limited). And yet, some think it needs a similar artificial and inefficient market.

As for the rest of the podcast, Cendali's defense of the AP's position was an incredible stretch (and, it was disappointing that Lichtman softballed his responses to her, pretending to "channel" what Lemley might say). Her defense was effectively: "The AP relies on licensing to survive. We need to survive. If what Shepard Fairey did was fair use, then it would destroy the AP, thus it can't be fair use." That's wrong on a variety of levels, and Lichtman barely touched on any of them. The purpose of copyright isn't to protect the business model of a single company. I could create a company that is harmed by fair use of my works, but that doesn't mean they're not fair use. Cendali also induced a guffaw from me in response to Lichtman's question about why the AP didn't notice the fact that its image was being used. Her response was that since the AP has so many images, it would be impossible to track them all and see if they're being used. Indeed, but no one was asking that. What Lichtman asked (and failed to follow up on) was why the AP didn't notice that this image -- which was being used everywhere -- was based on an AP image. No one expected the AP to track all its images, but you would think with such an iconic image getting so much coverage, that the AP would notice.

Cendali, keeps trying to suggest that the Mannie Garcia photo was something special, but fails to explain (even Lichtman pushes back somewhat, and Cendali answers a different question) what parts of the photo are actually protectable under copyright. She basically just says that because Garcia was a professional photographer, that the work is clearly covered by copyright. That's not how copyright works, though. She also keeps saying that because Fairey picked this particular photo it proves that the photo had something special. But, if he'd picked a totally different photo, she'd say the same thing. The simple fact is that Fairey could only pick one photo to make this picture, and this is the one he chose:

"He could have selected any one of probably hundreds if not thousands of photographs, But he selected this particular photograph, and he selected it for a reason, as he's already stated in various interviews. He was looking for a particular photograph that presented Obama in a particular way, in a hopeful way, in a way looking forward to the future... This wasn't just any random photograph... He was looking for a particular photo... and for him to now minimize that is not fair."

No, what's not fair is claiming that any of that is the AP's to own. None of it. Not a single part of it was. All of that -- the hope, the way he was looking, was simply there. What made him choose it was the look on Obama's face -- which is not Garcia's creative output, and thus cannot be covered by copyright. In fact, the most frustrating thing of all is that Cendali repeatedly claims that Fairey was ripping off Garcia (and the AP), but misses the obvious problem with that argument: which is that if her argument is correct, then the AP and Garcia also ripped off Obama, since it was his creativity in looking the way he did and making the facial expression he did. Once again, such externalities are apparently only acceptable when the AP benefits. But, Cendali seems to ignore that, and Lichtman lets her get off, noting that he basically agrees with her.

The final guest was actually a pleasant surprise. Richieri notes that he's not a copyright lawyer, but a newspaper lawyer, and thus doesn't approach things from an "ownership" perspective, but a "fairness" perspective, and notes the importance of fair use in the news business. He doesn't add too much new to the conversation, but it is refreshing to hear someone who, unlike the AP, seems to recognize that trying to own every last word/phrase/headline doesn't really make much sense.

Overall, the podcast is worth listening to, but the Cendali section may involve a bit of headbanging for it being so blatantly mistaken on the very basics of copyright law.

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NY Times 'Corrects' False Article About Pirate Bay Appeal... Still Gets It Wrong

from the fact-checking? dept

It my seem like I'm pushing on this one a bit, but it's because I am honestly surprised that the NY Times got this one so badly wrong, and that they've been so slow to do anything about it. I actually think the NY Times is an excellent overall newspaper, and I'm as surprised as anyone that they'd muck up a story so much -- especially as its editors are hyping how good their "fact checking" is and how every day people just can't compare.

It started on Friday, when we noted that the NY Times was reporting that The Pirate Bay had lost its appeal in court. The only problem? It hadn't. Not even close. It may eventually lose the appeal, but that decision won't come for some time. It's true that other sources (including The Hollywood Reporter article that the NY Times reporter relied on) also got the story slightly screwed up, but that's no excuse for the NY Times to repeat blatantly incorrect information. The error appears to be caused by the confusion about the difference between a district (lower) court and the appeals (higher) court. The appeal is over whether or not the district court judge in the case was biased. So, as a part of that appeal, the district court told the appeals court that, no, its judge was not biased. This is to be expected. Did anyone think that the district court wouldn't defend its judge?

However, many people simply got confused, and when they read that a Stockholm district court said (in the appeals court) that the judge wasn't biased, they assumed that it was a court ruling, not just testimony/a filing from one of the participants. Still, you would think with a story that's received so much attention that the NY Times would check with someone first to make sure such a ruling actually came down.

On Monday, however, some of our readers noted that the NY Times had "updated" or "corrected" its story. However, the really amazing thing? Even after realizing that it got the story wrong, it still hasn't gotten the story right. Instead, they changed the first sentence from: "A Swedish court has denied the appeal of four men convicted of violating copyright law.... " into "A Swedish court has said that the judge who presided over the case of four men convicted of violating copyright law for their involvement in the Pirate Bay, an Internet file-sharing service, was not biased against them."

Okay, that's closer but still wrong. First, the NY Times left the headline as is, saying "Appeal Is Denied in Pirate Bay Case." Then, the current first sentence doesn't make any distinction at all between what the lower court said as a participant in the higher court case and what the higher court will ultimately pronounce as a ruling. In fact, given the headline, nearly everyone would still read that first sentence to say that the court has issued a ruling denying bias. The NY Times also added this correction line that would likely confuse most people, saying: "An earlier version of this report stated that the men's appeal had been denied." But reading the article, it still sounds like the appeal has been denied. Is it that difficult for a big journalistic endeavor like the NY Times to fact check a story? Even when told that the story is wrong, and then going and "correcting" it, they got the story wrong.

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Online Journalism vs. Print Journalism: Real Time vs. Batch Processing

from the think-about-it dept

Last week, there was a bit of a silly fight over the NY Times publishing an article noting that blogs sometimes publish rumors. I didn't find the story to be all that bad, actually, as it did a fair job explaining why those blogs publish rumors without confirmation, and how they do it in a reasonable way (i.e., saying it's a rumor and hasn't been confirmed). Some felt the article was a hit piece, but on the whole it actually seemed pretty reasonable and accurate. Still, in response to that, Cody Brown (via Jay Rosen) put up a fascinating and thought-provoking writeup comparing online to print journalism -- noting that print is "batch processing" while online is "real-time processing" and explaining why this makes it so difficult for print to either understand the value of online journalism, or to keep up with it. To be honest, I think the point was made even clearer in last week's hilarious Daily Show takedown of the NY Times, where Jason Jones refers to the newspaper as "aged news" and asks Rick Berke, the assistant managing editor to point out a single article in today's newspaper that "happened today" (at around 3 minutes):

Separately, I should point out that I find it amusing that around 1:45, the video quotes Kristin Mason, the NYT's communications coordinator, noting that "The NY Times really prides itself on making sure that the information we're putting out in the newspaper and online is factual. We have editors going through and checking on a variety of sources...."

Fair enough... But what happened on Friday? That's when the NY Times falsely reported that The Pirate Bay had lost its appeal... and that false story has remained uncorrected at least up until I published this story. It appears that the "pride" the NY Times takes in getting the story right doesn't necessarily extend to things like The Pirate Bay.

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Has The Pirate Bay Lost Its Appeal... Or Should We Not Trust The NY Times?

from the fact-checking? dept

Someone just alerted me to a NY Times story claiming that the guys behind The Pirate Bay have lost their appeal of the verdict that found them guilty. That would be big news (and it may very well happen). However, I can't find anything else to support it. The NY Times credits the Hollywood Reporter, whose only recent article I can find on the subject merely claims that the TPB guys failed to get the case thrown out. But digging deeper, the only information I can find is that the District Court, which made the original ruling has told the Appeals Court that there was no bias. That's not surprising -- of course the District Court is going to say it wasn't biased and that its judge wasn't biased. But I haven't seen anything that says the Appeals Court has ruled one way or the other on the issue. It looks like the reporters at The Hollywood Reporter and the NY Times may have gotten confused about the difference between the District Court and the Appeals Court -- and assumed that because the District Court claimed the judge wasn't biased, the Appeals Court had ruled that way. Now, it may well come to pass that the Appeals Court does rule that way, but I haven't seen any reports of that yet, and given how news has spread about this case, you would think such reports would have been out there.

But, you know, it's the professional reporters at the NY Times who fact check stuff. We bloggers just make up innuendo and rumor. Surely, they couldn't have gotten the story wrong, right?

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NY Times Says No To Useful App Rather Than Improving Memory

from the backwards-thinking dept

I have to admit that, while I became a fan of Twitter a while back, it jumped up to a new level when I started using a client-side app called Tweetdeck. While the app has many problems (it is still beta), it allows you to make use of Twitter in a very different way -- laying out a series of groups and searches in near real time, such that it turns the stream of information into a series of very useful flows. From the perspective of trying to stay up on certain types of news, it's become the most important app on my desktop. There are many, many things I wish they would improve upon, with a big one being memory management. It sucks up memory like crazy. However, my solution was to go out and buy some more memory for my laptop. Apparently, the NY Times has gone in the other direction. Mathew Ingram points to an internal memo at the NY Times where it says that due to Tweetdeck's memory issues, the paper is asking employees not to use it anymore -- though, to their credit, it doesn't appear to be a demand, but a request. On top of that, the NY Times suggests that other apps can do the job. That may be true, but I've tested a bunch of different competing apps (hoping they could get over Tweetdeck's other shortcomings) but I'm back on Tweetdeck because those other apps have even more problems, but Ingram again explains the better solution: "I agree that Tweetdeck can be a memory hog, and can sympathize with the NYT-- but the solution is buy more RAM, not exclude Tweetdeck."

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Did Google Really Seriously Consider Buying A Stake In The NY Times?

from the seems-doubtful dept

Fortune has a story that's getting plenty of attention claiming that Google "seriously considered" an opportunity to purchase 19% of the NY Times that is being held by hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners. Of course, no one seems to explain why Google would seriously consider such an investment. It seems like any analysis, whether serious or not, would suggest that such an investment would make almost no sense for Google, and almost certainly would cause more trouble than it was worth. It would, for example, freak out other newspapers, who despite their sudden desire to get Google to fund them, would claim that Google was unfairly favoring the NY Times at their expense. It would also raise all sorts of questions about how Google runs a content play. While Google has experimented with content plays with things like Knol, the company's focus has always been on enabling content creation -- not on funding content itself. In fact, it's this fundamental misunderstanding that has newspapers incorrectly thinking Google is trying to kill them, rather than recognizing it's actually helping them.

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Reporter Questions Why The NY Times Erased All His Work For The International Herald Tribune

from the this-is-a-good-question dept

Back at the end of March, we were surprised that the NY Times, in consolidating its regular site with the site of the International Herald Tribune (which it owned) had broken all the links to IHT.com. Rather than taking them to the article in question on the NY Times site, it simply took them to a landing page. This was just a bad idea all around. It appears that a former reporter for IHT, Thomas Crampton, discovered this over the weekend and has brought renewed attention to the issue by issuing an open letter to the NY Times asking why it "deleted" his career -- in that all of his early work that appeared in the IHT is now gone (some, but not all, of it remains in the NY Times). Additionally, he pointed out that this is also causing problems for Wikipedia, notably with any article that relied on evidence from an IHT article. While we've seen others erase old articles as well (and the Associated Press is famous for forcing all its partners to take down AP articles after just a short time period), it still is amazing in this day and age that anyone thinks it's a good idea to break links to news stories -- especially when the value of archives found via search engines is so high.

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Why Didn't The NY Times Properly Forward IHT Links?

from the not-the-most-intelligent-move... dept

At times, the tech geeks at the NY Times show that they understand what it takes to be a modern online newspaper. At other times... it makes you wonder. Valleywag notes that when the New York Times shut down the International Herald Tribune, which reprinted many nytimes.com stories at their IHT.com website, the NYT pointed every IHT link to a single landing page, rather than properly forwarding them to the proper stories at the NY Times -- effectively breaking tons of useful links online (including plenty right here on Techdirt). For a company that was just among those complaining that Google didn't rank its stories high enough, perhaps the powers that be at the NY Times should take a look at its own policies before whining to Google.

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Just Because You Can Do A DMCA Takedown Doesn't Mean You Should...

from the think-twice dept

Many lawyers are taught (or learn from experience) to approach any legal issue by going to an extreme position, on the assumption that eventually there will be a negotiation with opposing counsel and a settlement will get worked out somewhere in the middle. That often made the most sense in many cases, but it doesn't work very well in lots of situations online today. And that's part of the reason we see, time after time, companies reach for the legal nastygram solution when an open conversation would work just fine. The latest example of that: Boing Boing alerts us to news that the site Apartment Therapy was the recipient of a DMCA takedown notice (actually, to be accurate, the NYT's lawyers went over their head and straight to their hosting company). At issue were blog posts on the AT site, which linked to the NY Times articles, but also used images from the Times' site.

There may be a fair use claim that could be made, but even if we ignore that and assume that this is, absolutely, infringement, the entire approach by the NY Times doesn't make much sense, and is representative of that "attack" line of thinking. As AT notes, if the NY Times had just approached them and asked them to stop using its photos, it would have. But, instead, the lawyers had to send a DMCA legal nastygram. Even then, it's difficult to see how this makes sense. The AT posts were designed to get people more interested in the NY Times' articles, by giving them a taste and sending them to the site. Why would anyone at the NY Times want to stop that? And that's especially true after the NY Times was just on the opposite end of a recent lawsuit. If people had just looked at this reasonably, rather than taking the default legal position, the NY Times might have realized that this site benefits rather than harms them, and even if they had felt otherwise, realized there was a much friendlier way to approach the situation.

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The Guardian Follows The NY Times In Making News A Platform

from the good-job dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in the wonderful news that the Guardian, in the UK, has opened up an API and is sharing data in such a way that others can build programs on top of the news. This is fantastic -- and follows on a similar move last month by the NY Times. It appears that both the NY Times and the Guardian really are pushing the boundaries of recognizing that being an online newspaper these days needs to be about a lot more than delivering the news.

Perhaps even more interesting (though, getting much less attention) is the companion bit of news from some editors at the Guardian -- who are pointing out that they hope and pray each day that the NY Times gives into temptation and starts trying to charge for news... because it will create a huge opening for the Guardian to create a much larger online audience. This is what plenty of people have been pointing out for years: if clueless newspaper execs decide to start charging for news, it just opens the door wide for smarter news organizations to stay free and accumulate a much larger audience.

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Want To Know Why Newspapers Are Going Out Of Business? Because Adding Value Never Seems To Be An Option

from the massive-failure-in-action dept

Lots of folks in the newspaper business say that Howard Owens is a guy who really gets the online news business -- and recognizes the challenges and opportunities. I don't know much about him, but I hear such good things from people who I trust, that I have to admit that I'm perplexed by Owens' recent post where he defends GateHouse Media's lawsuit against the NY Times. As you may recall, GateHouse sued the NY Times for effectively aggregating local stories from GateHouse sites and putting them on its own page. These stories all included links back to the original, and didn't include the entire content, but did include the headline and the lede -- which most people (outside of newspaper people) consider to be perfectly reasonable fair use. The NY Times eventually settled in a way that seemed bad for everyone. Owens worked at GateHouse (and was quiet about the lawsuit at the time). He left soon after, and there was some talk that it may have been because he disagreed with the lawsuit -- but that appears to not be the case.

Instead, he has written this lengthy defense of the lawsuit. But rather than vindicate GateHouse, it seems to represent a lot of what's wrong in the online newspaper business these days. When someone who "gets it" like Howard Owens does, and then declares that "I don't know what more we could have done" after describing the various legal threats Gatehouse tossed up against the NY Times, it makes me shake my head.

What more could you have done? You could have competed more effectively. Owens complains about "substitute home pages," where the Boston.com was trying to take away GateHouse's readers. There's a pretty straightforward response to that: if that's all it takes to take away your community, you've failed your community. If the entire value of your site was in providing the headlines and ledes, and someone else copying those headlines and leads causes you to lose the community, you haven't been providing enough value to that community, and you deserve to lose it. Newspapers have neglected their biggest asset, their own communities, for way too long, and this is another example of that. If GateHouse provided a better service where the value went beyond the headline and the lede, there wouldn't be concerns about how such "copying" would take away from GateHouse.

As we've pointed out repeatedly, there are a bunch of sites out there that copy all our content. Not just the headlines and the ledes, but all of the content. Some are pure spam sites. Some are aggregation sites. Some are trying (and failing) to prove the point that we'd get upset if someone copied our stuff. But, that's not what happens -- because this site has much more than just the content. It has the community. It has the Insight Community, where we actually help the community make money. Some of our community members made five figures in 2008. What newspaper has done that for their community? Our community has great ongoing discussions all the time. These other sites can't replicate that. All they can do is end up sending us more traffic.

So, I'm sorry, but the idea that GateHouse Media couldn't do anything else is ridiculous. It's a sign of all that's wrong with online newspapers today. They don't look at all of the amazing things they can do. They just throw up their hands and wonder what they can do, beyond charging people or suing.

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Why Is The NY Times Threatening An Aggregator For Accurately Indicating NY Times Stories?

from the damned-if-you-do...-damned-if-you-don't... dept

The NY Times was just recently involved in a intellectual property fight with newspaper publisher Gatehouse Media, over the use of Gatehouse headlines and ledes as part of an aggregator it had set up. Apparently, part of what the NYTimes learned from this episode was that it should go after other aggregators using questionable claims. It's now threatening the site Newser for using a small version of its "T" logo to link to stories from the NY Times. It's pretty difficult to see how this is trademark infringement. Using a small logo hardly implies endorsement. It's just accurately labeling where the news is from. It's difficult to see how that's "confusing" at all. This reminds me of a point made recently by Eric Goldman concerning the AP's "hot news" lawsuit, where he notes that aggregators are put in a tricky position: if they don't properly attribute the content, they may face a copyright infringement lawsuit, but if they do properly attribute the content, they may face a trademark infringement lawsuit. Isn't intellectual property great?

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NY Times Turning News Into A Platform

from the smart dept

For years, we've been big fans of the concept of having newspapers start becoming platforms, rather than monolithic "news delivering" services. Over the past year or so, a group of digitally savvy folks at the NY Times have shown one way that can work. Their latest move? To turn the NY Times news articles into a true platform. They've released an API for news, allowing others to actually build useful tools on top of the NY Times' news articles. Contrast that to, say, GateHouse Media, which recently sued the NY Times for trying to build useful tools on top of GateHouse's content.

Of course, just because there are some folks on the digital side who "get it" at the NY Times, it doesn't mean management has quite figured things out yet. At the same time as releasing this API, the paper's Executive Editor, Bill Keller is talking about trying to lock up their content and charge people for it, again. Yes, the newspaper needs new and innovative business models, but by now it should know that trying to charge for such content simply isn't a sustainable model. There's too much competition out there (which the NY Times discovered already when it tried and failed to charge for content a few years back). There are things that the paper can charge for -- but basic online content isn't one that will be successful.

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Gatehouse And NY Times Settle Linking Dispute: Bad News For Everyone

from the this-isn't-good dept

It appears that GateHouse Media and the NY Times have settled their dispute over the NYT's Boston Globe linking to GateHouse's local events site with a snippet of the text (something GateHouse's own sites did as well). GateHouse had little to no chance of winning in court, but it looks like the NY Times totally caved in to avoid having to deal with a long and costly lawsuit. The result is pretty much bad for everyone.

It's bad for the NY Times, because in settling they've almost guaranteed that plenty of other companies will now come seeking similar "settlements." It's bad for GateHouse Media because in winning "the battle" they're losing the war. The NY Times/Boston Globe will no longer be sending them the traffic they were getting in the past. It's hard to describe the level of pure cluelessness that goes into actively turning away the kind of traffic a major media publication can provide. It's bad for readers of both sites, because it limits the usefulness of the content they get. And... most importantly, it's bad for everyone in failing to have a hard and fast precedent set that linking to such sites and including the headline and a snippet are clearly fair use. What a shame.

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If You Accuse The NYT Of Violating Your Copyright... You Probably Shouldn't Be Doing The Same Thing

from the oops dept

One of the more ridiculous lawsuits we saw last year was smaller newspaper chain GateHouse suing the NY Times for linking to its site with a headline and brief excerpt on the Boston Globe website. Romenesko points us to news of the NY Times response, which seems pretty damning for GateHouse. Specifically, they show emails from GateHouse officials pointing out that identical activities are clearly fair use, and another email where GateHouse tells one of its own sites to immediately stop doing the exact same thing that it's accusing the NYT of doing. In other words, GateHouse pretty clearly knows that an excerpt, a headline and a link are fair use -- but still went after the NY Times for doing the same thing it did.

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Website Sues NY Times For Linking To It

from the 1996-is-calling dept

Back in the mid-90s there were a series of lawsuits over "deep linking" practices, where people who didn't quite understand how the web worked would sue other sites for linking to them without permission. We still see this happen occasionally, such as with the Associated Press's ridiculous assertion that various other sites shouldn't link with a headline in a snippet from an article. However, it appears that some smaller news organizations are just as clueless about the internet as well. Reader Ben writes in to point out that GateHouse Media, a publisher of some local free news publications in Massachusetts is suing the NY Times for linking to them. The full complaint shows a near complete misunderstanding of how the internet works. You can read it here:

Basically, the big complaint is that Boston.com (which is owned by the NY Times) has a local section, where it links to GateHouse publications. It does so in ways that are clearly fair use. It includes the headline and the very first sentence of the GateHouse articles, with a link to the full version. This is driving traffic to GateHouse's publications and clearly not taking anything away from GateHouse. But GateHouse claims this is copyright infringement. Furthermore, GateHouse claims that there is trademark infringement because Boston.com accurately shows where the content originally is from and tells you what site the link goes to. In other words, it's helping to promote GateHouse's properties. GateHouse, instead, claims this is blatant trademark infringement. Even more ridiculously, GateHouse claims that this effort by Boston.com, which helps get it more attention and drive more traffic to its properties is somehow unfair competition. I only wish we had competition like that.

Perhaps most interesting of all, GateHouse is charging the NY Times with breach of contract, because (of all things) GateHouse uses a Creative Commons license on its content -- though it uses the Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives license -- and it claims that Boston.com's use is commercial, and thus a contractual violation. This highlights the problem Creative Commons has with its non-commercial licenses. It's pretty clear the intent of such licenses is to prevent a company from reselling the works. But when it's being used to directly drive more traffic to the original site, it's difficult to see how any sane person would see that as a violation of the intent.

Either way, the end-result of all of this is that other websites have already come to the conclusion that it's just not worth linking to GateHouse sites at all. Consider it a stupid lawyers tax. Suing people for sending you traffic has to be, perhaps, the most braindead business strategy around, these days.

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Digg And Others Sued For Infringing Infamous Computer Solitaire Patent

from the aren't-patents-great? dept

The Patent Troll Tracker is back from holiday vacation and he's got quite a post listing out a bunch of interesting (i.e., depressing) lawsuits involving questionable patents and even more questionable patent holders. In one case, the Troll Tracker even manages to track down a bizarre set of circumstances making it look like an associate at a well known IP law firm spent millions of dollars scooping up a bunch of patents for himself.

However, perhaps the most interesting is the third case discussed by the Troll Tracker. It involves the somewhat infamous patents of Sheldon Goldberg, which got plenty of attention back in 2004 when he started claiming that computer solitaire was covered by his patents. The two key patents are for a network gaming system and a method for playing games on a network.

It appears that after years of threats about these patents, Goldberg has now actually started filing lawsuits -- and some of the targets are a bit surprising. The one that stood out was Digg, as you don't often see companies like Digg involved in patent infringement suits (and, as far as I can tell, the news that Digg was being sued for patent infringement hasn't been mentioned anywhere else). Others sued over those same patents include some of the "usual targets" such as Google, AOL and Yahoo. However, it also includes a variety of media properties both big and small -- including the NY Times, The Washington Post, CNET, Tribune Interactive and (another slightly odd one) eBaum's World. While the patents themselves seem quite questionable, it's even harder to understand how these sites could possibly be violating those patents. Either way, perhaps the fact that Digg is now on the receiving end of a silly patent infringement lawsuit, it'll get more of the Digg crowd even more interested in the massive problems with the patent system. Update: Since a few people asked, the story is on Digg itself now.

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