Company Fined For Passing News Clips Around Internally
from the there's-this-thing-called-the-world-wide-web... dept
It may be time to add the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) to the list of ridiculous industry associations who are excessively focused on copyright to the detriment of their own businesses. The group, which includes a number of newspaper publishers as members, began an "anti-piracy" program recently and have announced its first "win." An analyst firm has agreed to pay up a $300,000 settlement after an "insider" informed the SIIA that the firm passed around news clips to employees. This is very typical. Many companies employ news clipping services and receive copies of relevant news articles -- and often they pass those around to the appropriate people. However, it appears that various news publishers think that any company that does this should purchase a separate license. The reporter points out that many, many companies pass around news clips internally all the time, and an SIIA representative insists that's not true -- suggesting he has no idea what goes on in many companies. However, the key point is that this clearly does nothing to benefit these publishers. There are very few companies that will go through the trouble of actually licensing the individual news for the sake of passing them around. Instead, they'll either stop reading the clips altogether, or they'll simply go to the web, where it's free. Now, of course, it's worth pointing out that we at Techdirt provide original news analysis (not clips) to plenty of companies all the time -- and part of our contract is that we encourage the companies to pass our content around to as many people internally as possible. We know that the more people who see our analysis, the more useful and valuable it becomes. So, for firms worried about the SIIA suing you because you pass around news clips, feel free to give us a call.
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Filed Under: copyright, news clips, piracy, siia
Companies: knowledge networks, siia
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Is a lawyer human? Is there some kind of 'I no nothing if it benefits my bank account' gene?
Maybe we need to look for the missing link among the ranks of lawyers. Seems like somewhere between animal and human lies the creature we all call lawyer.
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Re: Company Fined For Passing News Clips Around In
SIIA is a group of software publishers, not a group of lawyers. The companies decide on policies that are sometimes absurd and reprehensible, but that might have legal justifiability. The policy choice -- absurd and reprehensible -- is the publisher's.
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re Swiss Cheese
That's an insult to animals everywhere!
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In Defense of Lawyers ...
Not that I don't appreciate the joke, but it blames the wrong party here.
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SH*T
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antinewspapersharing groups
the mighty dollar rules and whats really scary is with all the problems we face in the world today, this is news (ut oh, did i share that!!??)
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Questions
1. I subscribe to a news clipping service and I choose the option that allows one person to see/use the articles and no re-distribution. I redistribute the articles. I assume I am liable for damages. I violated the contract I signed.
2. I see an interesting article in a magazine and I bring it to work to show others. Is this a violation of copyright?
I find 1 to be reasonable but 2 shocking.
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Re: Questions
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More irony
So, if I understand this correctly, if we send a PR to a publication associated with SIIA and then make copies of it to celebrate the placement SIIA could sue us. This seems to be one of those cases where the upholding the (copyright) law has the side effect of making everybody involved look stupid.
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It is illegal to fail to give credit or pay for ne
If you use a news clipping service, you are bound by the terms of that service. However, no news clipping service was used in this case. In addition, the article states that the SIAA says that it is rare for companies to do this in the way that is illegal, and then lists ways to do it legally You think your company is giving you copies of articles cut out of magazines? They may have LICENSED them.
This is just as illegal as making 10 xeroxed copies of a book (minus all pages that list the publisher) and handing a copy to all of your friends. You bought one copy, you get to own or pass around one copy.
Newspapers pay Associated Press to publish AP articles. Why should a corporation be able to publish AP articles without paying the AP? This attitude about the issue is simply ridiculous.
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News Clips being passed around (maybe yes maybe no
YMMV and I am not a lawyer..
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Blame lawmakers - hate the game not the player
Perhaps it makes more sense to vote for the lawmakers that are the smartest and most qualified instead of voting for those with affirmative-action titles like "the first disabled-gay-black-Chilean-female" (fill in the blank or chose any combination). Crappy lawmakers that go around punching capitol police instead of doing their job, and the voters who elect them are the ones who are to blame.
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Company Fined For Passing News Clips
In this case companies should stop reading the news clips and just get them from the internet. It is even better getting it that way.
Maychic
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Too Bad
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/primary_materials/cases/texaco/settlement.html
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Greed
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its clear
the age of ignorance is opun us fear not as the war is only beggining
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