Dow Jones Files Idiotic 'Hot News' Lawsuit Against A Service That Sends News Alerts
from the opening-a-can-of-worms dept
For a few years now, we've been covering the troubling return of the "hot news" doctrine. This is a non-copyright concept that was mostly considered dead and buried, but was suddenly revived a few years ago. Technically, it's still considered "law" in New York, and it involves the idea that there's some sort of "protection" in news, such that others can't re-report the news that others have reported if it's "too soon." Under basic copyright, of course, facts are not copyrightable, so it's always been considered fair game to repeat factual news information (so long as you're not copying specific expression). The whole hot news concept had basically become defunct before the Associated Press brought it back up in a lawsuit about five years ago. Of course, there are all sorts of troubling implications of creating a new form of intellectual property such as "hot news" -- especially in an age of Twitter, Facebook and other methods of sharing news and information. Already, some have sought to stretch the definition of hot news. So far, thankfully, most recent hot news lawsuits have failed in court, though many seem to end in "settlements."One of the "settled" cases was brought by Dow Jones a few years ago, and apparently the company has decided to try again. It has filed a hot news lawsuit against a company almost no one has heard of (until Dow Jones just gave them a ton of free publicity), Ransquawk.
In Dow Jones' initial cease and desist letter, it claimed that Ransquawk violated its copyrights, but apparently the lawyers at Dow Jones finally figured out how copyright works and realized that wasn't true. The lawsuit only makes use of the hot news concept.
In its defense, Ransquawk explained to Dow Jones that it does not have an account from Dow Jones' DJX service, which Dow Jones says Ransquawk is illegally copying, but rather that it finds the information from Twitter, Dow Jones reporters themselves and various other services who often share the same headlines. Since Ransquawk is a UK company, it also rejects the copyright claims, pointing out that news reporting is considered fair dealing under UK law.
The actual lawsuit makes some brazen claims:
How does Ransquawk provide such a popular service? Its business model is as simple as it is illegal: Ransquawk's audio and text services are based on the systematic unauthorized reproduction and redistribution of news content published by Dow Jones, and undoubtedly other news content providers as well.But, again, repeating a news headline is not illegal. The complaint also insists that Ransquawk is lying in claiming that it's obtaining the news from other sources, noting that sometimes Ransquawk is repeating the DJX news within five seconds, which suggests it has access to a direct feed, despite denying it. It's entirely possible that someone is violating DJX's terms of service, to allow Ransquawk to have access to the feed, but that's a completely different matter than hot news.
While Ransquawk may follow in the footsteps of others and settle this case to be done with it, this remains a really stupid move by Dow Jones -- a company that quite frequently has its own staff repeating and sharing news first reported elsewhere. It's not difficult to see how any precedent Dow Jones might set with this lawsuit will almost certainly come back to bite them when others realize that Dow Jones does the same exact thing. News is news: it's factual and sharing the news is just a part of how the world works today. Rather than freaking out about it, Dow Jones should focus on adding the kind of additional value that it claims to add, such that mere headlines from Ransquawk won't make a difference. Seriously, if the only value that Dow Jones provides is somehow "misappropriated" by Ransquawk then it makes me think that Dow Jones really doesn't provide much value at all.
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: hot news, intellectual property, news alerts
Companies: dow jones, news corp., ransquawk
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
There isn't any other way to look at this than that the evil Dow Jones puts the money in to grab the facts first, and should be able to keep evil little grifters from using it. Just ain't right, even when both are evil.
As someone else wrote first, when your "business model" is simply stealing content that others put the effort in to make valuable, it's neither moral nor workable under the law.
Here's a more relevant week of March 23 case that I don't see in the links (Google it yourself for here):
) Meltwater loses against AP: scraping headlines is NOT "fair use": it gainsmost of the value of a work without returning any benefit to the creator.
Every "new business model" here requires first getting valuable products -- from money to movies -- for free.
04:11:24[f-122-6]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
Mike's notions are all get-rich-quick schemes by using products someone else made. His continued defense of Megaupload shows his ideal "business model": neither pay to produce nor royalties on any of the files hosted so costs are just above bandwidth, and able to avoid legal liability so long as pretend ignorance of infringed content.
Any damn fool can copy. Copyright was put in statute to prevent greedy damn fools from profiting off what others made.
04:18:54[f-325-0]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
Where was is demonstrated that they are doing this? Ransqwuak denies it, and a prudent person would want some sort of evidence before declaring a something is a fact.
Yes, we know how much you hate service providers.
Well, first, no, its' not what copyright is to protect. And also, this is not a copyright violation in the US or the UK, and nobody is alleging that it is, so this certainly won't be stifled under copyright law.
Not only that, but it barely exists as a matter of case law. Most judges rightfully see that it isn't their place to invent new laws wholesale.
It seems that your argument boils down to the idea that objective facts, rather than expression, should be copyrightable. I think this makes you be most maximalist of all the maximalists I've seen!
In your world, there would be no possibility of a free exchange of ideas at all, because it would be a copyright violation to actually report any facts, unless you were the very first person to come across it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
EXPRESSION OF THOSE FACTS IS
Which part of that do you not understand? Sheesh!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not anymore
That ended shortly after Murdock bought it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
BTW, there's 2 "Dow Jones" companies now
Then there's "S&P Dow Jones Indices", usually called DJI or Dow Jones Indexes, that operates as part of McGraw Hill Financial and is jointly owned by McGraw Hill, the CME group, and News Corporation. They produce the DJIA and a bazillion other financial indices as well.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]