Well Hell!

It was nice while it lasted Drew.

Best wishes and take care.

ZAZ: This is RightHaven done right.

These are the guys who will sue Fark.

They're not after sites like Fark which just link to stories. In fact, news sources LOVE places like Fark because Fark brings hits which brings revenue. They're after sites which re-post wholesale large chunks of stories without paying for them.

meanmutton: ZAZ: This is RightHaven done right.

These are the guys who will sue Fark.

They're not after sites like Fark which just link to stories. In fact, news sources LOVE places like Fark because Fark brings hits which brings revenue. They're after sites which re-post wholesale large chunks of stories without paying for them.

That's what they want you to think.

Honestly, I wouldn't panic just yet... Links to other content usually aren't considered copyright infringement, and at worst could only be considered induced infringement - say, if Fark links to some site that obviously rips off the AP. But linking to the NYT, or a TV station's website, or any other number of places should be just fine.
This seems more targeted at news sites that actually reproduce the entire content without modification. Think Google Reader or the Daily.

The news sites are generally page-count driven. They sell ads on the pages, more page views means more ad revenue.
They would be foolish to go after Fark.

RIAA has made illogical decisions... but they are not in the ad-sales business like the news sites are.

A news agency declares that it owns the rights to tell whatever happened to you? You don't get any money out of the deal?

Sounds like someone just cut in front of the RIAA in the line into Hell.

1) Write haiku.
2) Give your child your haiku as their first name.
3) Copyright haiku.
4) Sue any and every commercial entity that puts your child's name into print, as they're obviously reproducing your haiku to generate a profit.
5) Profit!?

It's silly to think that someone won't come after Fark eventually; even IF Fark is generating revenue for a news agency by increased traffic, the news agency STILL sees Fark as making money on their back...

So Drew will be approached by a lawyer with a big stack of documents that will say something like "No problem Drew... you don't have to change a thing on your site. Just make sure that every time you post a link to an article held by one of our news outlets you send us $10,000!"

Let's be honest... Fark isn't about creating content; it's linking to other people's content... so the "other people" see Drew as making money off their hard work.

/of course, Drew is making money off of convincing submitters to do all the work for him for free...
//wait... you mean submitters don't get paid?!?!

First, it is wrong when someone reproduces a whole article without paying for the right to do so. I think it's entirely correct for these guys to ask for payment in those cases.

Second, they need to understand that part of their losses is that people are no longer willing to pay for advertisements and get the news as a side item. People are bombarded from every angle and direction nowadays with ads. When they buy a newspaper or a subscription to a news site they want news, not 3 paragraphs and 60 ads that interrupt the news story. This is part of the reason aggregaters are popular. That and being able to get the news they want, not news hidden around local society luncheon stories.

Finally, and this is the most hilarious thing I have seen about this sort of thing in a while, was this bit in my local newspaper about this

"NewsRight encodes original stories with hidden data that includes the writer's name and when it was published. The encoded stories send back reports to the registry that describe where a story is being used and who is reading it. The technology can locate stories that have been cut and pasted. "

Really? And what if someone cuts/pastes into plain text editor/cuts that/pastes onto blog? I bet your little web bug (almost certainly the same thing used in spam emails) doesn't work then.

Those aggregators are why a lot of them even get their articles seen at all. Apparently it's not enough waiting for the old readers to die; now they have to chase the young readers away with sticks.

ds394: So Drew will be approached by a lawyer with a big stack of documents that will say something like "No problem Drew... you don't have to change a thing on your site. Just make sure that every time you post a link to an article held by one of our news outlets you send us $10,000!"

Drew: "New policy on Fark; we don't accept links from (name) because they're a giant bag of dicks."

Everything old, is new again.



And even better, the translation (contains NSFW words in the image)

You can copyright news?
Who knew?

ZAZ: Gosling

Back around 2001 Fark banned Ananova links because they were stealing stories from Fark. That may seem silly now, getting annoyed over a standard practice in the link aggregation world, but it was a big deal to Farkers then.

I think Ananova's still banned. I think that was a straight-up plagiarism issue, which is cardinal-sin territory in the journalism industry. You get busted plagiarizing, they pretty much make you find another line of work.

Wait - how the fark does one "own" the rights to news? You don't own it. I can understand being mad about not receiving credit for news you reported but this is horseshiat.

/ laws have yet to catchup with common sense and technology

ZAZ: Factual statements are not copyrightable

That isn't a problem for many news organizations.

So, wait.. if you just *link* to an existing story in its original context (site), does that count as an actionable 'use' for these purposes? Because that would seem to me asinine and very hard to press.

I can't wait until the news companies declare they have the sole right to all the news and you can't share, save or tell someone else about it without paying them thousands per article.

At some point significant news becomes history and the news story is just a record that pins it to a place and time to prove it happened.