Why Do Newspapers So Rarely Link Out?

from the good-questions dept

Bijan Sabet is asking a good question. It's one that's been asked plenty of times before, of course, but it remains relevant: why do so few newspapers ever link off of their site? He points to recent articles from the NY Times, the Boston Globe, the LA Times and the SF Chronicle, and notes that none of them have links to outbound sites. Some of this is due to a confused view of the web, that you never want to send people to another site, because (incorrectly) that means fewer page views on your own site. Of course, that ignores the fact that sites like Google have made quite a nice business out of sending people to other sites -- a business those very same newspapers are all quite jealous of. And, it also stems from the old line belief that the job of a newspaper is to tell you "everything you need to know," so why would you ever admit that there may be other sources of value? And, of course, that's why some people are getting sick of newspapers. Plenty of other online sources have learned that linking to others is an important part of the conversation, as is allowing readers/users/community members to explore the story themselves -- and to contribute to it. I still find it amusing when someone follows a link I've posted and then adds some interesting perspective/data point/fact and claims that they've somehow "caught" me making an error. That's part of why I post the links in the first place -- hoping that readers will continue to dig deeper and figure out more of the story and contribute and add to it. It's too bad so few newspapers feel the same way.

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Minnesota Gives In; Won't Block Gambling Sites

from the good-for-them dept

Back in April, the state of Minnesota tried to force ISPs to block certain gambling websites. Similar attempts had been tried in a few other states, and quickly shot down by the courts -- and it didn't take long for a lawsuit to emerge in Minnesota. However, the good news is that the state has apparently agreed to back down rather than trying to fight a bogus and costly lawsuit. Basically, it sounds like enough lawyers explained to state officials that their likelihood of winning was pretty slim -- so the state just folded. At least they didn't keep trying to waste taxpayer money trying to fight for such censorship.

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Egypt Bans Porn Websites: Good Luck With That

from the yeah,-that'll-work... dept

It appears that Egypt is the latest country to think that it can ban certain websites by court mandate. In this case, it's all pornographic websites, which have been deemed "venomous and vile" by the court. The lawyer who was arguing against those sites responded happily: "Thank God we won, now the government should stop these electronic dens of vice immediately." Of course, what's been left unstated is exactly how the government can stop pornographic websites? My guess is they'll demand ISPs do it for them. However, in the meantime, we're left wondering how these "venomous and vile" sites are forcing themselves on poor Egyptians. I do plenty of web surfing and have found that simply not surfing porn websites is a rather effective way to not have to deal with such "electronic dens of vice."

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Minnesota Is The Latest State To Try To Force ISPs To Block Gambling Sites

from the this-will-end-badly-too dept

There have been a few attempts by state governments to force ISPs to block certain sites, and such attempts almost always end badly. Recently, for example, the state of Kentucky has been not just trying to block access to gambling-related websites, but to seize the domains in question. That failed when the courts pointed out how ridiculous it was. Perhaps the most famous such attempt was Pennsylvania's law to try to force ISPs to block "undesirable" sites from a list the gov't would put together. A federal court tossed the law, saying that it was unreasonable. You would think that other states would take notice before trekking down a similar path. But, apparently the news hasn't reached Minnesota.

Slashdot points out that Minnesota is trying to twist a law from half a century ago to mean that ISPs need to block gambling websites. Basically, the law says that common carriers need to comply with government requests to block gambling services. Of course, that assumes that ISPs are, in fact, common carriers -- a point that many would dispute. Also, the law was clearly intended for a very different purpose than someone using a broadband connection to access a gambling site. Still, gambling is another topic that politicians love to grandstand about, so expect this to keep moving forward, even if it makes no sense and has little chance of surviving a legal challenge.

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Sports Leagues Figure Out Build It Online, And They Will Come

from the somebody's-paying-attention dept

We've mentioned several times about how sports leagues are trying to crack down on unauthorized web streams of their games. It's a misguided effort that fails to recognize the opportunity here: people watch these streams because they generally don't have other options. Largely, they're not cheapskate pirates, but underserved customers. With that in mind, it was nice to see a story in the WSJ a few days back talking about how some American leagues' subscription streaming services are enjoying success. They've figured out that by offering users a better service than the pirate streams, they can get them to pay subscription fees. This gets to the heart of so many different industries' battles against piracy: it's not a technological problem that exists because there are inadequate locks for content, it's a business problem that exists because many companies are too complacent to develop services that deliver consumers content they want in a format they desire.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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China Shuts Down 'Unregistered' Websites

from the the-great-firewall-needs-to-be-fed dept

You may recall a few years back that China started demanding that all websites register with the government for approval. We hadn't heard much about the program since then, but apparently the government has recently decided to shut down thousands of "unregistered" websites, mostly of small businesses. Considering the state of the economy these days (yes, in China as well), you would think that China would think twice before shutting down small business websites... but apparently the ability to control the internet trumps all economic concerns.

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Sports Leagues Missing The Point About Fans Streaming Live Games Online

from the foul-ball dept

Just a few weeks ago, we were talking about sports leagues freaking out over online streaming sites like Justin.tv destroying the value of their broadcast rights. However, in that discussion, we noted that these sports leagues seemed to be missing the point: the reason watching such streams online is popular is that the sports leagues have failed to adequately serve the needs of fans -- often falsely believing that online streams of games somehow take away from live attendance or TV viewing. Yet, now the NY Times is continuing this story, highlighting how various sports leagues are trying to crack down on such online streaming. About the only "good" thing in the story is that many of the leagues say they've learned from the RIAA not to sue people, but just to send cease and desist letters. That's a start, but it still misses the point -- which the NY Times contributes to by falsely claiming that anyone streaming a game live online is "stealing."

The only reason such streams are being placed online is because the leagues themselves have failed to adequately provide the video in a way that allows fans to conveniently watch the games. These unauthorized streams aren't "piracy" or "stealing." They're the market telling these leagues to shape up and improve their product. And, while the article incorrectly suggests that unauthorized streams have no ancillary product for people to buy (and thus are a true "loss"), that ignores pretty much all reality around sports fandom. If a sport or a team can build a strong fanbase, then there are tons of things that can be sold to that fan -- such as tickets to live events, uniforms, cards, memorabilia and much, much more. The real issue should be about trying to get and capture more fans -- because true fans will spend a ton on a sport or team that they love. It's disappointing that the various sports leagues mentioned in the article are too short-sighted to recognize this, but it's even more annoying that the NY Times reported their position as if it were factual, without any quotes from those who would point out how wrong the leagues are in their thinking.

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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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Can A Moron In A Hurry Explain To Jimmy Choo The Difference Between Shoes And Random Gifts?

from the fits-like-a-glove dept

Lawrence D'Oliveiro calls our attention to the news that high-end women's shoe company, Jimmy Choo, is forcing a small New Zealand gifts website to give up its name using trademark law. The name of the site is Kookychoo.com, though it may be gone soon, as it sounds like the owner of the site is going to give in rather than fight. This is, of course, ridiculous. It's highly unlikely that anyone, let alone our favorite moron in a hurry, would confuse Jimmy Choo shoes with a website selling random gifts like teddy bears, bean bags and candles, among other things. Originally, Choo's lawyers just wanted to prevent the owner from trademarking Kookychoo, but now is demanding she stop using the name entirely. Since it would cost at least $50,000 to go to court should Jimmy Choo sue, the woman is likely to just give up the name. This is corporate bullying at its finest -- abusing tradmark law for no reason other than to shut down a small website that isn't competing with the company at all.

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Court Ruling In Veoh Case Could Be A Big Boost To YouTube Over Viacom

from the a-good-decision dept

A judge has ruled that online video hosting site Veoh is not guilty of copyright infringement for videos uploaded by its users. The judge made the proper ruling here, noting that the DMCA's safe harbors protect Veoh. The lawsuit was brought by adult video entertainment firm Io, who was upset that Veoh's users kept uploading clips from its films. As the judge properly noted, Veoh follows all the rules necessary under the DMCA to avoid liability (this doesn't mean that the individuals doing the uploading aren't liable, however).

While this may seem like a small case, it is quite similar to Viacom's infamous lawsuit against YouTube/Google. Considering that YouTube follows the DMCA's rules in a similar manner to Veoh, this ruling suggests that YouTube is also protected by the DMCA safe harbors, just as many had stated from the beginning. The key issues raised by Io (and also raised by Viacom) is that these sites lose their DMCA safe harbors because they take action on the content, often transcoding the content from one format into flash. However, the judge in the Veoh case trashed that argument pretty easily:

Here, Veoh has simply established a system whereby software automatically processes user-submitted content and recasts it in a format that is readily accessible to its users. Veoh preselects the software parameters for the process from a range of default values set by the third party software... But Veoh does not itself actively participate or supervise the uploading of files. Nor does it preview or select the files before the upload is completed. Instead, video files are uploaded through an automated process which is initiated entirely at the volition of Veoh's users

The folks over at Google are, understandably, pretty happy about this ruling, which confirms their position that YouTube is protected: "It is great to see the Court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights."

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Readers Want Context and Organization, Not Just 'Content'

from the web-as-afterthought dept

I wrote last fall that the New York Times was finally starting to get the web, and I think the Washington Post is in the same category of taking the web a lot more seriously than it did a few years ago. But although the biggest newspapers are now taking the challenge seriously, they still have work to do. Case in point: the Washington, DC, area had a big storm a while back, and Scott Karp went to the Washington Post website expecting (reasonably enough) to find information about it. Unfortunately, despite being a DC-based publication, the Post's home page had very little information about the storm. Indeed, the home page wouldn't have mentioned it at all if there didn't happen to be a story on the most-read articles list. Unfortunately it was a formulaic story from the print edition that was great for a non-Washingtonian who doesn't know anything about the storm, but it's not terribly useful to a Washingtonian who can see the storm happening outside his window. What locals need is detailed, real-time information. After seeing nothing relevant on the WaPo's website, he went over to Google, typed in "power outages in northern virginia," and the first hit was a page from Dominion Electric showing power outages around its service region. Karp went back to the Post's website, and after more searching finally found a blog focusing on DC area weather—precisely the sort of thing that the Post ought to be making more prominently displayed during major weather events.

I think there are a couple of lessons to be learned from this. First, as Mike has said before, good content is often less important than useful services like organizing and filtering information. The Post had the content Karp wanted -- an up-to-date blog and links to useful resources -- but because its website was poorly organized, he wasn't able to find it easily. Some newspapers claim that Google lives parasitically off of other content producers, but I think this is a good illustration of why that's not true; there was plenty of content out there, but without Google, Karp might not have been able to find it. The other problem is that for all of the Post's progress it still seems to regard itself largely as a newspaper that happens to publish its articles on the web, rather than a general media company that happens to publish a paper edition. Sometimes a traditional newspaper article is the best way to cover a story, but often (as in this case) it's not. The Post, like a lot newspaper outlets, still seems to put too much emphasis on its print content, even in circumstances were a shorter, timelier, and more densely-linked story would be more useful to readers.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Yes, DMCA Safe Harbors Apply To Websites

from the not-this-again dept

Every once in a while, when discussing the DMCA's "safe harbors" someone shows up in the comments to insist that the safe harbors were never intended to apply to websites, but merely to ISPs. Tim Lee does a nice bit of work absolutely destroying that assertion, by pointing out how it doesn't make sense given the language of the law which clearly is designed to apply to websites as well as network providers (otherwise, as he notes, why would they ever suggest content would have to be "removed" rather than just "blocked").

But, more importantly, the focus should be on the overall intent of the law beyond just the specific scenarios on the mind of those who wrote it. Even if it's true that those who crafted the language weren't "thinking" about websites when they wrote it, the intent of the safe harbor is clear, and it should apply to websites as well as network providers. Why? Because the whole point of safe harbors was to make sure liability was properly applied to those who actually infringed, rather than an easy-to-target company. That it was the network providers who raised this concern in the first place doesn't mean that the same thinking wouldn't apply to websites as well. And, on top of that, while the safe harbors of the CDA (for things like defamation) haven't been harmonized with the DMCA's safe harbors -- the purposes are nearly identical, and the courts have granted extremely wide coverage of the CDA safe harbors, so there's no reason to think that they wouldn't apply the same broad interpretation to the DMCA as well.

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GoDaddy Shuts Down RateMyCop; Gives Conflicting Reasons Why

from the perhaps-because-there's-no-good-reason dept

On Monday, Tim wrote about the pointless controversy around the site RateMyCop.com, which would allow people to rate police officers they had dealings with. Considering how many similar sites there are for teachers, doctors, restaurants, etc. -- combined with the dangers that come with police abusing the power they are given -- a site to rate police officers seems quite reasonable. But, of course, many police officers didn't see it that way. However, what no one expected is that the site's registrar and host would step into the fight and take the site completely offline with no warning to its owner. Yesterday, GoDaddy pulled the entire site offline, and replaced it with a page telling the owner to call GoDaddy (even though they had his phone number). People at GoDaddy gave conflicting reports as to why the site was taken offline, first claiming it was taken offline for "suspicious activity" and later that he had surpassed a 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, which the owner of the site disputes, saying there weren't nearly enough page views for that to happen. Either way, he's now ditched GoDaddy and found a host that won't pull the site offline with no warning and no recourse.

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Not Only Does The Olympics Want Special IP Protections; It Wants To Ignore Everyone Else's

from the funny-how-that-works dept

The Olympic Committee is rather infamous for its ability to convince governments to pass special intellectual property laws just to protect the Olympics. However, it appears as though the folks involved with the Olympics don't take others' IP rights so seriously. Slashdot points out that it appears the Beijing Olympics website has copied a flash game designed by someone else. So, apparently, not only does the Olympics want extra special rights concerning its own efforts, it wants to ignore the already existing copyrights of others. While I find it silly to even try to protect copyright on a simple game like this, it does say something an organization like the Olympics is so keen on over-protecting its own rights while ignoring them for others.

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Why Did The US Gov't Take Down A British Travel Agent's Websites?

from the jurisdictional-questions dept

Over the years, we've seen a ton of jurisdictional questions raised by the internet. After all, since the internet is available just about anywhere, and content on it may break laws in some countries, but not others, how do you handle the jurisdiction question. Some courts have determined that it doesn't matter -- and they'll claim jurisdiction for whatever they want. Others suggest that evidence needs to be shown that the content is directed at and was seen by many people within the jurisdiction. Others have held that it needs to be created by a local resident or hosted on a local server. However, with all that said, it's not clear what jurisdiction the US government seems to be claiming over a bunch of websites created by a British travel agent. The websites all advertise trips to or information about Cuba. The websites were designed for European travelers to plan trips to the island nation. Now, it's well known that US citizens are not allowed to travel to Cuba, but that's not true of people from other countries. So, this guy clearly was not breaking any laws.

No matter, though. Since he had registered the domains for his various websites through eNom, an American company, the US Treasury Department had them pull down his sites and to refuse to release them to another registrar. There's no doubt that if the sites were targeting Americans or was run by an American travel agency, you could understand these actions. But to take down a UK-based website that was aimed at European travelers, offering them perfectly legitimate trips to Cuba, seems to go beyond any reasonable jurisdictional claim.

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Administration Shutting Down Economic Indicators Site

from the trending-downward... dept

While there was some decent news suggesting the economy might not be falling into a recession, there are still plenty of knowledgeable folks who think some sort of recession is likely. Last week, in New York, plenty of folks I spoke to seemed to believe we were already in one. Of course, to actually call a recession, the general consensus is that there would need to be two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. So how would you measure that growth? Well, apparently the White House would prefer to make it as difficult as possible. Reader Jon writes in to note the rather inconvenient timing of the Administration suddenly deciding to shut down its own website that aggregated economic indicators. The site, EconomicIndicators.gov had even won awards from Forbes as a great resource. The timing of the closure certainly raises some questions. It's not that difficult to manage a website (though, I recognize, in the government, all costs are multiplied by some insanity multiplier). If it's really so expensive to manage, why not throw it open and make it into a wiki? Hell, perhaps Jimbo Wales or somebody can build a WikinomicIndicators site instead.

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Latest Antivirus Error: McAfee Blocks A Bunch Of Popular Sites As Risky

from the sorry-about-that dept

A little over a week after Kaspersky's anti-virus software declared Windows Explorer was a virus, it appears that McAfee has had its own mistake, as an anti-virus update from the company started warning people to stay away from a bunch of popular sites, including ESPN, Friendster and Ars Technica. McAfee later admitted that it was a mistake on its end, but it seems that we're seeing these kinds of false positives on a fairly frequent basis these days. It's yet another sign that things need to change in how security software works -- but instead of real advances, it still seems like firms are bogged down with things like pointless patent battles.

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Canadian Passport Website Falls For Oldest Privacy Breach On The Web

from the that-one-again? dept

Back in the early days of the web, there were plenty of stories about a rather simple security breach on various sites. Basically, many sites would simply pass a user's account number through as a part of the URL. If a user simply changed the URL, her or she could see the account info of that other issue associated with the new number. After a few such cases came to light, most web app designers quickly realized to plug that hole, and it's been quite some time since we've heard of a site with such a security hole. However, it appears that there are still a few. The site for Passport Canada, where people can apply for a Canadian passport apparently had exactly that security vulnerability, allowing the guy who discovered it to see the passport application data of other applicants simply by adjusting the URL. It's never nice to hear about a security flaw (especially on a gov't website with all sorts of private info), but it actually induces a bit of nostalgia to hear of such a basic security flaw showing up in the wild yet again.

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The New York Times Finally Gets The Web

from the it's-about-time dept

Techdirt has beat up on the New York Times a lot over the years for its bone-headed use of the web. For years, it treated the website as an afterthought, serving up warmed-over versions of its print coverage and charging for the privilege. As we pointed out repeatedly, the web is different from older media. Success online requires that you be part of the conversation. Users expect a faster-paced, more connected experience from a website than you get from a newspaper. But in the last six months or so, the Times has made a series of decisions that suggests they're finally starting to understand that the web is its own medium with its own unique rules. They've dropped their paywall, launched a ton of great blogs, produced podcasts and videos, and added new personalization features. This summer, they unveiled Open, a blog by and for geeks about the use of open source technologies at the Times. And now they've launched Blogrunner, a news aggregator they snapped up last year and are integrated in various places around the site, starting with the technology section. Integrating links to other sites into their subject-specific pages makes it more likely that people will make that page their starting point for information on that subject. None of these developments are that Earthshaking by themselves, but when you add them all up it starts to look like the Grey Lady is finally taking the web seriously. Now if we can just get them to give us full-text RSS feeds of their blogs!

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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NHL Sued For Trying To Take Over Team's Website

from the fight!-fight!-fight! dept

A few years back, Major League Baseball demanded that all MLB baseball teams hand over their websites to the league as part of their effort to create MLB Advanced Media, a division devoted to managing the online presence of Major League Baseball. While MLB may go way overboard in claiming control over certain content, its online efforts have been quite a success. There was a rumored (and later scrapped) IPO plan -- but the company is apparently still doing amazingly well, with talk of it being valued somewhere around $5 billion. Already, MLBAM has tried to expand its coverage by running websites for other sports and even musicians.

All of that success apparently caught the attention of the National Hockey League, who had apparently let teams run their own damn sites for a while. However, it recently decided to bring them all in house -- but teams aren't thrilled with the idea. In fact, the NY Rangers are now suing the NHL for antitrust violations in trying to take over their site. The Rangers claim that the site is an important part of their team's marketing efforts and it acts as a competitive differentiator. They're also not happy that they've spent all this time building up traffic only to turn it over to the NHL. There are a few important differences with the NHL's plan compared to the MLB's. First, MLB took over all team sites years ago, before web sites were so important. These days, most teams recognize how valuable those sites are and have already built up a ton of traffic. Much more importantly, Major League Baseball has a special antitrust exemption that no other sports have. So, even if a baseball team had wanted to charge MLB with antitrust violations, it would have been difficult given the exemption. Since the NHL doesn't have that exemption, it's going to have to put up a fight to get the Rangers to hand over their website.

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