Fox News Caught Aggregating Others Copyrighted Photographs... Something Murdoch Insists Is Illegal

from the well-how-about-that dept

Wed, May 5th 2010 3:18pm — Mike Masnick

Rupert Murdoch and the top execs at News Corp. keep insisting that sites that aggregate content from elsewhere on the internet are "stealing." Of course, as we've noted, News Corp. has an awful lot of sites that rely on aggregating content from elsewhere -- so apparently it's only legit when Murdoch does it himself. Murdoch, of course, has also famously claimed that fair use is a doctrine that courts would "bar altogether" if challenged in the courts -- but at the same time, his own company regularly claims "fair use" to defend its own actions.

That's generally called hypocrisy.

And it keeps getting worse. The latest is that TorrentFreak has noticed that Fox News recently put together a photo gallery of the Icelandic volcano eruption, and used some photos from Flickr -- even though the photos were limited were covered by copyright and not free for others to use without permission and/or license. The photographer in question has tried contacting Fox News and has so far been totally ignored. And yet Murdoch just mentions in passing -- incorrectly -- that he thinks Google News "steals" his content by sending him traffic and its front page news...

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Filed Under: aggregating, fox news, murdoch, photographs
Companies: news corp.

14 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 5 May 2010 @ 3:37pm

Fair Use
IANAL but a straight up photo gallery on Fox News without any commentary that uses someone else's photos does not seem like an example of fair use.
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trilobug, 5 May 2010 @ 4:17pm

Psychic
Ha ha. This is the first time I correctly guessed what dept. this story came from.
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bob, 5 May 2010 @ 5:00pm

I think
Rupert needs to give Roger a spanking, because I don't think Ailes is towing the Murdoch News Corp Line.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 May 2010 @ 6:02pm

Like most hypocrites, he will never admit it.
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Mr Big Content, 5 May 2010 @ 6:13pm

The Question Is...
...are these people “objecting” to the “use” of their “photographs” loyal viewers of Fox News, or not? If they’re haters of the network’s legendary Fair and Balanced coverage, which seems likely, then they deserve to be ignored.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 May 2010 @ 10:32pm

"Fox News Caught Aggregating Others Copyrighted Photographs... Something Murdoch Insists Is Illegal"

Silly Mike, it's only illegal when it happens to you, but when you do it it's perfectly fine.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 May 2010 @ 10:34pm

"That's generally called hypocrisy. "

No it's not. If you merely assume that he is simply acting in his own best interest then all the hypocrisy quickly disappears. It's not hypocrisy, it's selfishness, see the difference.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 May 2010 @ 10:35pm

Re: The Question Is...
"then they deserve to be ignored."

They deserve to be punished.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 May 2010 @ 12:34am

Re:
Is there a reason it can't be both?
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Niall (profile), 6 May 2010 @ 4:49am

Re:
Mike isn't the one calling it 'illegal', that's Rupert Murdoch with the insane double standards and no concept of 'illegality'. Mike is just using his own words.

As for 'silly Mike', that is exactly Mike's point. Murdoch only screams when it's him being 'affected'.

Better 'silly' than 'shilly' anyways ;)
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Niall (profile), 6 May 2010 @ 4:53am

Re:
If it was simply a 'mistake' based on 'greed' then the selfishness argument might work. We expect the dear RM to try and profit off us as much as possible. What makes this definitely hypocrisy is all the active shouting *against* this kind of behaviour that RM has done. He can't publicly have it both ways without leaving himself wide open to claims of hypocrisy, along with the potential 'stupidity' of not implementing a tougher robots file (which just adds to the hypocrisy).
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anon, 6 May 2010 @ 12:10pm

it's just the screaming of control freak nazi's in the mainstream media who monitor comments containing certain viewpoints and are just using this as a means to go after the ones who would comment on their articles anyway on their own sites. viewpoints like if keynesian econcomics says that only cash flow matters then why is it that government is the only institution that tries to solve debt with more debt which logically is just not going to work unless extremely lucky (however keynesianism is one of the major supported economics schools of thought by the government and so comments of this nature by me anyway are not posted ever).

the photographer in question should sue imo.
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anon, 6 May 2010 @ 2:06pm

Re:
on the self same mainstream media sites.
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Duncan, 6 May 2010 @ 8:46pm

Take a look at News.com.au, News Corps main Australian site. The use of Flickr photos in particular is a regular, both with stories and in aggregated pic galleries
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