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

from the oops dept

Fri, Jan 23rd 2009 5:21pm — Mike Masnick

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.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: copyright, linking, news
Companies: gatehouse media, ny times

8 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 23 Jan 2009 @ 7:36pm

I find this counterpoint interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/dec/30/new-york-times-gateho use-lawsuit
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike (profile), 23 Jan 2009 @ 10:23pm

Re:
I find this counterpoint interesting:

By "interesting" I am hoping you mean pretty close to ridiculous and hardly compelling.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
inc, 24 Jan 2009 @ 6:09am

Trying to leverage Streisand effect?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jan 2009 @ 10:38am

Re: Re:
By "interesting" I am hoping you mean pretty close to ridiculous and hardly compelling.

While I do not have an opinion on whether or not the position noted is compelling, I strongly disagree that it is "ridiculous". Quite the contrary, the article I noted lays out in fairly clear terms how linking can in some circumstances be used in an abusive manner.

I find the precarious financial positions of the two companies interesting, but such positions are not in my view relevant to the more important issue presented. Specifically, is there some point where linking, and particularly deep linking, can move business activity from fair to unfair competition? It is possible this may be one example of the transition from fair to unfair.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jan 2009 @ 4:48pm

Re: Re:
Aw, Mike, you're gonna make Dan cry. And here he came all this way to promote his own comment on Techdirt, too.

But yeah, I think Dan lost me at the part where he says a subset or portion of a linked article is better than the entire article itself -- it seems to support better editing than it supports a berlin wall on linking.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ToySouljah, 24 Jan 2009 @ 8:14pm

Re: Re: Re:
"If you're a GateHouse executive, what makes it even worse is that Your Town is better designed and thus easier to use than Wicked Local."

that's from the link that AnonCow posted. Seems like they are trying to stop the competition to me. Maybe if they designed an easier, more useful site they might get better traffic and decide to drop the lawsuit.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jan 2009 @ 9:28pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
The fact that one site appears to have a "better" interface is in some regards a red herring because it tends to lead one away from the pertinent issue. As was noted in the article I linked, the issue is much more subtle. More particularly, is there a line of demarcation delineating just how far a site can go via deep linking to another site before it is deemed to have crossed the line between fair and unfair competition? The author admitted he did not know the answer, and this is why he belives the lawsuit takes on added significance.

My sole purpose is highlighting the article is to point out that as with most issues there are competing interests, and a grasp of those competing interest provides a much better backdrop for working one's way through a matter in order to arrive at a more informed opinion having at least some measure of a substantive basis.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 25 Jan 2009 @ 12:53pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
But it's not a good point or thought out argument (that uses logic instead of wishful thinking)
[ link to this | view in thread ]