Just How Stupid Is The NYTimes' Threat Letter To Quartz Over Copyright Infringement?

from the let's-count-the-ways dept

Wed, Dec 19th 2012 11:50am — Mike Masnick

Whoo boy. Back in 2009, we were somewhat pleasantly surprised to hear the general counsel for the NY Times, Ken Richieri, speak out on Doug Lichtman's IP Colloqium podcast (which, sadly, appears to have gone away), going somewhat against the grain of other news publishers on the issue of fair use. Lots of news companies were up in arms about "aggregation" by other providers, but Richieri noted that he was a much stronger believer in fair use than some of his colleagues, in part because he realized that newspapers often have to rely on fair use themselves. However, either he wasn't paying that much attention to the latest kerfuffle, or he's changed his stance. Earlier this week, the NY Times sent a copyright complaint to Quartz (the horribly designed, nearly unreadable spinoff from The Atlantic). The issue? A story on Quartz that highlighted their favorite charts of 2012. It's a nice bit of aggregation, with a small version of the graphics, some praise for the original publisher and a link back to the full thing. Here's what Quartz had to say (and show) about the NY Times graphic:

Obama’s chances, deconstructed

What an awesome utility. I spent all evening on the day of US election glued to this thing, answering my own what-if questions, watching different branches disappear as different states were projected. I love how the graphic takes a problem that’s way too crazy for mental math—the combinatorics of electoral outcomes in swing states—and makes it tractable, not by simplifying it, but by providing a way to explore the complexity. —Ritchie King

High praise. But, according to a lawyer from the NYT's... infringement:

While we are delighted that Mr. King found the graphic so admirable, I must point out that The Times owns the copyright in the graphic and the current posting infringes The Times’s rights under U.S. Copyright law. Accordingly, we hereby demand that you immediately remove the graphic from qz.com and cease and desist from any further use of any New York Times content in any manner whatsoever.

In response, Quartz is sticking to their guns. They did add the phrase "from the NY Times" after the link to the blurb, but they're arguing that it's clearly fair use. The NYTimes position here is really, really stupid, for many reasons. Here are just a few:

The NYT's original graphic was interactive. That's what made it so special. It was useful for those trying to figure out the probabilities and what needed to happen for either major party presidential candidate to win on election night.
In no way, shape or form, does this use take away from, compete with or diminish the NYT's successful graphic. It was a single screenshot of the original interactive graphic, not the full interactive thing.
That graphic, as amazing as it was, was really only "useful" leading up to the election as people were trying to understand the route to the Presidency. It might also be useful after the fact as a historical look at the situation, but, again, it can only be used in that way on the NYT's site. The screenshot isn't useful in that manner at all.
Quartz's use could only serve to drive more attention and traffic to the NYT's by highlighting what an awesome job they did with the graphic (which they did). In fact, other publications had no trouble recognizing the valuable publicity. Bloomberg publicly thanked Quartz for including one of its graphics.
The use was almost certainly fair use from almost any angle you look at it. It didn't harm the market for the NYT's original graphic. It didn't use the whole graphic. It was used for the sake of news reporting.
As noted at the beginning, the NYT itself relies heavily on fair use at times, and arguing against it can only come back to bite the company at some point in the future.
But, most of all, this makes the lawyers at the NYT's look petty and vindictive for no good reason.

If the NYT were smart, it would issue an apology, saying that they got a little jumpy on the legal cease-and-desist trigger, and that it appreciates the publicity.

Oh, and in case they decide to go in the other direction, our use of the same image above is doubly a case of fair use, because the NYT's actions have now made that blurb and screenshot a specific news item itself, and it would be impossible to discuss the copyright/fair use/stupidity issue without including the graphic to explain what was going on.

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Filed Under: copyright, fair use, interactive chart, quartz, reporting
Companies: ny times, quartz, the atlantic

13 Comments

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GonnaGitMeSome, 19 Dec 2012 @ 12:20pm

Quartz (the horribly designed, nearly unreadable

Holy crap is the design of that site awful. My first visit was a few weeks ago, and all I took away from it was that someone spent a lot of time designing a horribly unreadable website.

Thank you for pointing it out and please continue to do so.
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bob, 19 Dec 2012 @ 12:29pm

copyright on computer generated work?
is it possible to have copyright on the output of software manipulated by humans?
that's like programming a fractal image generator, and claiming copyright on anything it produces.

as I understand it, first this thing has to be manipulated by a person and then you see some results, which can change depending on live input from the net as well.

how can the results of information from the net + user manipulation to produce a graphical result copyrightable?
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John Fenderson (profile), 19 Dec 2012 @ 12:46pm

Re:
Wow, I thought you were exaggerating, but no. That is one of the worst site designs I've seen in a long time.
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Another AC, 19 Dec 2012 @ 12:47pm

Re: copyright on computer generated work?
*Jaw Dropped*
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John, 19 Dec 2012 @ 12:54pm

Uhh - interesting
So that would means that actually quartz might own the copyright to that produced instance of the output of the NY Time graph generator, as that particular output would only be created with the particular human input of the quartz editor?

Nice! That could generate some head-scratching with the laywers.
The general case: if I would build a machine that can combine atoms to something - I wouldn't directly own the copyright to the whole universe, because it's ultimately a combination of atoms that could be built with my machine?
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PlagueSD (profile), 19 Dec 2012 @ 2:19pm

and this is why the electoral college fails...
So if I'm reading the graphic correctly, only 9 of the 50 States matter?? I guess the other 41 can just pack up and go home during elections. Think of the money we'd save if we only held elections in 9 states!!!

Yet another thing wrong with the electoral college.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2012 @ 2:35pm

Re: Uhh - interesting
"The general case: if I would build a machine that can combine atoms to something - I wouldn't directly own the copyright to the whole universe, because it's ultimately a combination of atoms that could be built with my machine?"

No, because:

1) You can't claim copyright on everything. Perhaps your machine can create atoms that correspond to a DVD of "Star Wars", but that would just mean you produced an infringing copy. Perhaps it can create oxygen, but as useful as that might be, it's not a creative work and thus not copyrightable.

2) You can't claim copyright on things until you fix them in a medium. Photoshop might be capable of producing any picture not yet taken, but that doesn't give Photoshop copyright over them, unless and until an employee of Photoshop actually produces that picture.

This case is different because the creative design elements of the page are coded in. The user can only select a few predetermined things. They probably can't change the names of the candidates, the colors, the font, or pretty much anything beyond which states are indicated as won by which candidate. This is NOT the same as Photoshop (or your machine), where the user has full creative control.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2012 @ 3:10pm

Re: Re: Uhh - interesting
Oh, but don't take my comment the wrong way. I do think the case in this article is fair use. It's not like people will use the picture of the utility instead of the utility.
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OldGeezer (profile), 20 Dec 2012 @ 4:25am

I saw this article yesterday and I'm sure that it included the screen shot of the graphic. It even mentions that in the story. Where did it go? Is Techdirt running scared of what the article cited as "doubly a case of fair use"? I would think if any web site would stick to their guns it should be this one.
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Michael, 20 Dec 2012 @ 5:07am

Old Media
It is really a good thing that we have these legacy news outlets. Just think, if all newspapers were gone and we had to rely on the internet for news, we would never have anyone that understood things like Copyright and Fair Use reporting on it for us.

Just think about it. If we had to rely on all these bloggers for news, we would not have reliable media sources like the New York Times - that have an editorial process and researchers to fact-check things before they tell us about them. It would be total anarchy.

All of our news would be like poorly thought out cease and desist letters being sent out by companies that did not take the time to understand the law before sending them.
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Michael, 20 Dec 2012 @ 5:19am

Re: Re:
I just had the misfortune of clicking on a link that went there too.

You are right - it is "wow! who thought this was a good idea?" bad.
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halley (profile), 20 Dec 2012 @ 7:06am

Re: and this is why the electoral college fails...
This is only true while those states perceive themselves as a "foregone conclusion." As demographics or opinions shift, the red states may swing more blue and become swing states, and the blue states may swing more red (or even green/independent/martian). Until then, marketing is less effective if it's preaching to the choir, or pissing into the wind.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Dec 2012 @ 3:54pm

Re: copyright on computer generated work?
Given how artists are showing goldfish in a blender where the user can choose to turn it on makes for "performance art". Software patent is not in question here. It is merely the copyright of the work we are talking about and in Europe that is unchanged for the UI parts (not as much for the code. But that is another story). Therefore the interactive graphic is likely to be seen as a copyrightable product.

In terms of fractal image generator the problem is small since it takes quite a strong case to proove that your software was used since anyone can make a fractal image generator. I have found seen fractal image generators claiming copyright on the output graphics.

It is the same as cookbooks. You can copyright a specific way to write the ingrediences but anyone can use the ingrediences.

In this case NYT is being very vigilant and it is not really a question of fair use, as much as it seems to be a question of trying to avoid association.
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