Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Media / Phillips News Laundering
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 6:05 AM
"News laundering."
It just sounds like something you should be able to accuse the media of, even if you're not sure about what it is.
In this case, what Underwood means is that he thinks that The City Paper is using Kleinheider's blog as a way to bring in a story that is not theirs, attach a veneer of SouthCommie goodness to the story, and then move it back out to consumers as something The City Paper is bringing you, when it's a story from The Tennessean.
In this case, that seems to be a fair accusation.
But, as with most things still working themselves out on the Internet, it's hard to know if anything wrong actually happened.
Is it really that bad when other news organizations point people to your content? After all, it's not like the whole Tennessean story was available to SouthComm readers. You still had to click through (albeit quite a few clicks) to get to the story at The Tennessean.
It was the discussion of the day in many places around the blogosphere after Ryan Underwood's post appeared.
Kleinheider is upset at Underwood, "Yes, we actually credit and/or link to our source material over here unlike some folks we know."
Ryan Underwood is upset at Kleinheider. He says, "Are you kidding me? Ever heard of copyright law? Your habitual throwing out of somebody's last name--or not--does not a publication credit make. Not to mention running said credit-free item as a photo-centerpiece on your sister publication's website. You also seem to hint that this happens at In Session."
Okay, first of all, both men lose points for deliberately misunderstanding the other, though their deliberate misunderstanding is interesting. Kleinheider, an Internet man, rightly notes that nowhere in Underwood's post was there any link to the material he's talking about, no way for readers to go see for themselves if they agree with Underwood's interpretation.
Underwood, a print man, is arguing in this comment that The Tennessean writers are being improperly credited by Kleinheider, even though Kleinheider directly links to the pieces he notes. A name surely doesn't cut it in terms of attribution in print--but a name and a link to the primary source?
I don't see how it gets any better than that.
As Say Uncle notes, "Yes, a blog is complaining that someone dared to draw traffic to it. BTW, sparky, shouldn't your post there link to the offending piece?"
Online, linking is sourcing and citing. It says, "Here's where this came from" more clearly than anything outlined in the Chicago Manual of Style ever could.
Which brings us to Christian Grantham, who says, "Kleinheider did the right thing, but the editor of the Nashville City Paper online probably didn't." And I think this is right.
What's so interesting about this is that it is two worldviews in conflict. Repeatedly online, I've seen that people who come from a print-media background view the purpose of their website as bringing people in and keeping them there for as long as possible. I think that's why Underwood doesn't bother to link to any of the things he's talking about. He's brought eyes to his post and gives those eyes everything they need to understand what's happening right there.
This is completely antithetical to how power and authority are doled out online. When blogging works well, it's not because the blogger can bring people in and keep them there, it's because the blogger can direct traffic. "Go see this." "Don't miss that." "Is this guy as big a moron as I think he is? Here's a sample, but go read that and come back here and tell me."
The best newspapers view themselves as a final destination. Get everything you need right here.
The best blogs act more like travelogues, trying to bring you bits of all the places you might go and find interesting and trying to synthesize their importance for you. Done poorly, it seems a bit circular. Done well, and a reader feels like she has a wealth of information at her fingertips.
If the best newspapers are going to flourish online, they're going to need to take a little bit of that blogger ethos to heart. At the same time, they're also going to have to be careful about making sure they're not confusing folks about where their content comes from.
Grantham has a good guideline for how to prevent this kind of ridiculousness in the future. You should definitely go over there and check it out. (See how easy that was?)
Comments (32)
Showing 1-32 of 32
This is spot on. The issue about "credit" is contrived, as a link in the Internet world is currency -- gratuity in and of itself. Kleinheider is doing what he's supposed to be doing: aggregating content of note for readers, many of whom are daily newspaper reporters (most of whom are grateful for the linkage).
The real question here is whether The City Paper should have prominently teased something on its website that ultimately pointed to another news organization's work. I think the answer is pretty clearly no. It wasn't malicious or purposefully misleading. It just wasn't thoroughly considered. In that respect, Underwood makes a fair point.
like
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Liz et al: Should the City Paper prominently teased something on its website that ultimately pointed to another news organization's work? The Tennessean has been doing this for some time now, the articles containing some text and then providing a link to the full story, usually papers in Chattanooga, Knoxville, or Memphis. I don't know what relationship, if any, the Tennessean has with the news organizations it links to. Granted, the Tennessean does not publish it as part of a blog, but it serves the same purpose.
RIMBoy --
Just a point of clarity on the issue you raised: The Tennessean is part of a content-sharing agreement with several newspapers in the state, including Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Memphis. The arrangement is that we can run stories in full for print, but then online, we each offer a few paragraphs and a link back to the original publication's website.
RIMBoy, I saw that a couple of weeks ago when I was doing the Morning Roundup. The story was in the "Nashville" section of the website but it was about something happening in Memphis, which I thought was pretty hilarious.
I'm not completely ready to blame The Tennessean for that, though, because they are so poorly served by the inflexible design handed to them by Gannett. You can pretty much bet that every cool thing anyone at the Tennessean is doing will be impeded by their shitty web design.
Ryan, but don't you think that's exactly something that either doesn't translate online or translates strangely? In a physical newspaper, you need a certain amount of content to meet your page needs. But online, you don't have to pass off stuff from other papers as being your own. You can just point your readers to those other papers.
I'm with RIMBoy here in that it seems like a version of what you accuse SouthComm of doing that you can live with. It might be an obvious moral distinction from the inside, but from the outside, it looks pretty much the same.
Like I said in my post, I don't think it's the end of the world or anything. I think everyone's kind of floundering, trying to figure out how to best work this stuff.
But here's something I keep thinking about. I needed the physical Tennessean to run stories that might be of interest to me that came from Memphis or Knoxville or wherever, because I didn't have easy access to those papers.
Why do I need the online Tennessean to give me those stories like they're Tennessean stories?
Why not make it clear upfront that they're from other papers? I know you put "aggregator" in quotes like it's a dirty word, but collecting interesting stories from around the state and sharing them with your readers is aggregating and, when done well and clearly, is a real boon to your readers.
I don't know. I find the whole thing interesting, and I'm interested to see how it shakes out.
When I was at Nashvillepost.com in 2000-2001 and the Tennessean regularly swiped our stories without credit (along with every other news outlet in town), this was a day I could never have foreseen. I'm just sayin.
The ultimate issue here is that no one likes to see their work stolen or taken for granted, especially not by an organization that fashions itself as your competitor. I have no problem with anyone linking to my work. On our blog, I link daily to articles in the NYT, Washington Post, sometimes even The Scene.
Like Betsy did here, I try to write the item so the reader wants to wants to find out more about the original article. What annoys me about what Kleinheider does is that he takes so much of the story, often with no attribution, that there's no point to clicking through the link. Even after this kerfuffle started yesterday afternoon, he did it again with an item that I wrote in which Phil Bredesen talked about childhood obesity and health care. Twice the topic has come up on his site -- the initial posting yesterday and again this morning when he linked to a post on the topic by Betsy -- but Kleinheider is yet to say that the original reporting and writing was done (and paid for) by The Tennessean.
Here's the link to that item: http://politics.nashvillepost.com/2009/11/03/phil-bredesen-and-fatness/
This is a very good discussion. (Betsy's observation about the difference between the self-image of print reporters and bloggers is particularly interesting. And yes, it's also fun to recall the times The Tennessean took stories from other media, especially the Scene, without attribution.) But let's not lose sight of the original dispute nor conflate the ethical and legal issues that Ryan Underwood raised yesterday. Aunt B, Liz, and Grantham have pretty much nailed the ethical question: the City Paper made a mistake and I'll bet that Liz, the editor, won't let that happen again. But the accusation of copyright violation is a much harder and, of course, more sensitive topic. Underwood raised both issues; Liz has responded well to one but not, as yet, the other.
I often talk to MSM reporters who do not appreciate it---and think it a violation of copyright law-- when Post Politics copies several key paragraphs from their stories and posts them, without further comment, on this commercial site.( Read my lips: a copyright violation is not cured by attribution.) On the other hand,the posting of a summary of a story or the quotation of a sentence or two (as in the Morning Roundup) is clearly "fair use" and not illegal.
Unfortunately, there are no clear standards, just vague guidelines, to tell us the difference between fair use and infringement.For example, here is the explantion from the US Copyright Office: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
In the end, each publication talks (one hopes) to its lawyers and comes up with its own guidelines. So, where does SouthComm stand? What do you tell your reporters, aggregators, and bloggers, about the difference between fair use and infringement? More to the point, where, exactly, does Post Politics draw the line?
Henry, this is another area where I think the difference between bloggers and print-media folks comes out. I don't know any bloggers who get annoyed at Kleinheider for pointing out their stuff and driving readers to their ideas. If anything, I get annoyed when he takes only the thing he finds juiciest and posts it without context so that it seems like my post is just about that certain thing.
But it drives readers to my site. And I, when I read something that Kleinheider posts that looks interesting, follow his link. I wouldn't have noticed that Bredesen thing yesterday if Kleinheider hadn't posted about it because I can't find jack shit on the Tennessean website, because it is such a train wreck.
I get that print-media guys are annoyed by it, but I literally cannot understand it. Kleinheider sends you readers. He sends me readers. He moves eyes from his site to places within the Tennessean website that are otherwise impossible to find.
That anyone at the Tennessean is upset that someone is willing to make the effort to navigate their site and point people to the good things on it blows my mind. It makes NO sense to me.
Which brings us to the copyright issue. The Morning Roundup has nothing to do with the discussion. That's not even an issue of fair use. No one's actual words are being used; no one's intellectual property is at issue. So, let's not be distracted by that.
But whether what Kleinheider does is fair use? I think it is. Yes, it's commercial in nature, but it adds value to the original material. I don't know how the Tennessean could argue that being linked to by Kleinheider in any way hurts them. It obviously puts readers on their pages.
What would they argue? That having more readers and being held in higher regard by those readers is somehow an undue burden?
Anyway, I find it somewhat amusing that individual writers at the Tennessean are concerned about their copyright. Aren't they all work-for-hire? I'd be surprised if they even have a copyright claim on their own work.
I for one find it adorkable that Kleinheider refers to me (when he refers to me) by name and not newsroom affiliation. Makes me feel all bloggy.
But not linking to last week's sweet, sweet bestiality story? Ow, Kleinheider. Ow.
I burned out my retinas on skeevy police reports and horse sexytime videos on YouTube, and you gave credit to the City Paper instead?
I'd have wept large salty tears -- if researching that story hadn't reduced my eyeballs to smoldering blast craters.
I don't know if you can even consider the Kleinheider page a blog. There is virtually no original content whatsoever, so it strikes me as less a log than a collection.
There are plenty of other online tools to do that sort of thing without providing context.
This is getting even more interesting... and isn't it pleasant to have a serious discussion with thoughtful people who are using names instead of calling them.
At the end of the day, this is still a legal issue, and not an easy one to answer. My opinion, Betsy's, or the opinions of unhappy print reporters make for a lively discussion but do not answer the question that Ryan Underwood raised yesterday and that I posed at the end of my earlier comment: Where does SouthComm (or the Nashville Post) draw the line between fair use and copyright infringement?
Post Politics has been accused, more than once, of crossing that line. It is not a frivolous charge. I'd like to know where the editor or publisher of this column think the line is.
Postscript: ((sigh)) let me add yet again that I read and enjoy Post Politics daily and am not accusing anyone of wrongdoing. I'm only saying that the Tennessean staffers and others before them have raised a valid point about the copyright issue (which has nothing to do with the ethical issue of attribution) and it's something SouthComm's management needs to address.
But Henry, the way the copyright law is set up, it also doesn't matter what SouthComm's policy is. It's not up to individual companies to decide what's fair use and what's not.
The law is set up to let the courts decide. You think your copyright has been violated by a fair use claim that goes too far? Your only recourse is to take it to court.
Any media company would be stupid, extremely stupid, to have a set policy about what constitutes fair use and what doesn't (general guidance, sure. A set policy? No.). If such a policy existed--and I am really hoping none of the media companies in Nashville are stupid enough to have one--you would have to be suicidal as a company to articulate it in public.
When something, in the case fair use, is up to the courts to decide, you don't leave a trail that you had given some thought to what was acceptable and what wasn't, in terms of number of words.
You stick with the criteria set forth in the code and you argue that you are adding value not taking it.
And I stand by what I said, if the Tennessean writers don't hold their own copyright, then all they're doing is finding something about Kleinheider to grouch about; they're not actually making a complaint.
If they don't own their intellectual property, no one can steal it from them.
So, until someone from Gannett is willing to come forward and clarify who owns the copyright on the intellectual property that appears in The Tennessean, writers' complaints about copyright don't mean much and I don't think we should get too hung up on it.
BP: OK then, let's ask what "general guidance" SouthComm or the Post has given Mr. Kleinheiter about what is or is not fair use? Has anyone provided you such guidelines now that you have started writing regularly for Pith?
A media company that has an aggregator column like Post Politics obviously should have, for its own protection, strict guidelines for reporters to follow to avoid a copyright violation. Since "intent" is irrelevant to an infringement claim, there is no reason for those guidelines to be secret.
You apparently don't take entertain the possibility that Post Politics may, on occoasion, be violating federal copyright laws. I do. No one, of course, can predict how a court would rule but it would be a close call, especially when Kleinheiter copies long sections of protected content without any editorial comment other than a headline. Liz, the new editor, comes from a strong print background where copyright issues are taken very seriously, as the comments from the Tennessean staffers indicate.(And continuing to attack them will not make the Post's problem go away.) It will be interesting to see if she takes a closer look at this lawsuit in the making.
Off to Brandon's.
The issue initially raised by Underwood seems more like a case of poor journalistic form (headlines that links to an aggregator post that links to content from a competing publication) than of copyright malfeasance.
I disagree with B's comment that "it's not up to individual companies to decide what's fair use and what's not." The thing about fair use is that it's not a legal boundary so much as a claim or an argument. Fair use is something that a user of intellectual property asserts, leaving it up to someone who thinks their copyright has been violated to challenge it. Accordingly, it does behoove individual publishers of content to make anticipatory judgments about what is and isn't fair use.
Henry asks what guidance SouthComm or its publication editors have given writers or bloggers. It's a fair question, in light of the fact that there are live controversies out there about appropriations of content from news-generating outlets (the Associated Press, in particular, has been aggressive on this issue). But let's not confuse negligence in giving credit -- a breach of manners or ethics more than of copyright -- with a violation of intellectual property law.
BB, you know as well as I do that the AP's shooting itself in the foot over this--trying to force a print model on an internet world. They will fail. Even if they succeed, they will wall themselves off from relevance.
Here's the real question. Would Gannett take on Drudge? Or Instapundit?
Of course not. So, unless individual writers at Gannett hold their own copyright, it doesn't matter what they think of what Kleinheider does. The question is whether Gannett wants to take on news aggregators.
I would be hard pressed to believe that Gannett doesn't see the value in having news aggregators point people to their content.
And BB, I disagree that a company needs to have a policy other than what the law says. The law provides the guidelines; a company doesn't need to have anything beyond that, unless their opponents in court want to be able to say "Well, look, they said only 250 words and this post was 251."
I know when talking to you guys there's always a tendency to pull out dicks and discuss who's got the biggest one. "Oh, I've been thinking about this since 1965." "Oh, we print people take this more seriously than you mere internet upstarts."
But I am just as concerned about issues of fair use and intellectual property rights as you guys are. Those are issues that I wrestle with every day and that put food on my table.
And I am telling you that the problem Gannett has, at the least, is that they'd have to show "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
So, we return back to my original point. In what way could you demonstrate that Kleinheider's use of a portion of your work and a link that demonstrably sends readers who otherwise wouldn't read you to your piece negatively affects the potential market for or value of your work?
That's not an intellectual question. That's the question at the heart of the statute.
Could Gannett demonstrate that what Kleinheider's doing (or what any aggregator run by a person does) is having a negative effect on the value of their product?
I don't think they can. But maybe you see something I don't.
The question is whether Gannett wants to take on news aggregators.
I think this is a case of missing the tree for the forest. The spark that ignited this discussion was not the act of an aggregator (Kleinheider's post about and linking to the Tennessean piece about Corker was a completely legitimate aggregator post), but rather the way the CP presented it as featured content on its home page. Does Gannett want to take on the CP? It already did, in the form of a post by a Gannett writer (Underwood) that led to a statement in this thread by SouthComm's executive editor (Garrigan) conceding that the CP's editorial action was ill-advised.
Does Post Politics come close at times to crossing a fair use line when quoting at length? Underwood seems to think so but doesn't make a persuasive case. Kleinheider and SouthComm presumably think otherwise since the act of publishing quoted material is implicitly an assertion of fair use. I agree with B that Gannett is unlikely to make a federal (legal) case out of this sort of thing because, as she notes, one would have to show that the use negatively affects the market for or value of the quoted work--a difficult thing to prove.
All kinds of publishers have guidelines regarding how they assess and cope with fair use issues (see, for instance, the University of Chicago Press guidelines: http://tr.im/E8n4). We'll have to agree to disagree on whether it's a good idea for publishers in the news media to develop those kinds of guidelines.
Along with all the careful thought about gray-area issues that is evident in this thread, I would welcome any ideas for how to deal with more flagrant appropriation of content. I see that happening quite frequently.
Here's an example from just this morning -- a usually thoughtful real estate blog appropriates the very first NP story by my new colleague J.R. Lind. It's not copyright infringement, but it's not very good manners either.
Elsewhere, I see obvious infringement fairly often. The Oak Hill Gazette, for instance, regularly reprints entire news stories without linking to them.
Even in a case like that, I don't think threats would accomplish anything. I wonder what the right approach would be, assuming one had the time to try to police these things -- moral suasion? passive aggression? name-and-shame?
Apologies; the link fails because the Scene's blog platform -- MT -- inappropriately includes the adjacent punctuation (close parens and period) in the hyperlink that it automatically creates. My bad for not coding the html myself or putting a space after the URL. Here it is unadorned by corrupting punctuation.
http://tr.im/E8n4
I should add that the guidelines in the document at the above link convey what they think is fair use for authors who use U. Chicago Press content. They convey to their own authors their definition of fair use and associated guidelines in a different document:
http://tr.im/E9aM
BB, now I can't tell if we're having an argument or agreeing, because I think what Chicago says is exactly what I've been saying this whole time. They reproduce the guidelines from the statute, remark that there's no hard and fast rule of thumb, and give some ideas about their ways of thinking.
Making sure writers are familiar with the relevant portions of the statute and reiterating that that's what they use to guide them is exactly what I think a publisher should do.
But those aren't Chicago's guidelines. That's the Federal Code. Am I misunderstanding you?
Tom, I don't know what you do in those cases. The first one happens pretty regularly to bloggers, so I feel like all you can do is point and laugh.
But the second?
That seems so clearly outside of the realm of fair use that, if it were my material, hell yes, I'd be sending them a letter threatening legal action.
I think what Chicago says is exactly what I've been saying this whole time. They reproduce the guidelines from the statute, remark that there's no hard and fast rule of thumb, and give some ideas about their ways of thinking.
Earlier in the thread you also wrote,
Any media company would be stupid, extremely stupid, to have a set policy about what constitutes fair use and what doesn't (general guidance, sure. A set policy? No.).
Maybe we just have different views of what qualifies as "guidelines" and "policy." It seems apparent to me that U. of Chicago Press does much more than just reproduce the generalities of the statute; they go well beyond the specificity of copyright law covering fair use ( http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html especially Chapter 1, Section 107). You say Chicago is just giving "some ideas about their way of thinking" but I'd call these pretty concrete guidelines:
A new work will be considered to be within the bounds of fair use if: It reproduces not more than 5,000 words, in the aggregate, from a given Source Work; It reproduces not more than 5 percent, in the aggregate, of the Source Work, and no complete poems or other self-contained literary works; It reproduces, in one place, not more than 300 consecutive words from the Source Work; and Material reproduced from the Source Work makes up not more than 5 percent of the new work.
By the way there is an excellent web site on fair use at Stanford: http://tr.im/E9G6
Ha, I was trying to ignore that part because it was so stupid. You know once the word "aggregate" is involved, that's lawyers not editors talking. And, frankly, those guidelines stifle academic freedom.
And what, in the end, does that have to do with newspapers? Are we claiming that the circumstances of fair use for a scholar are the same as the circumstances of fair use for a for-profit media corporation?
I don't believe that for a second. I can think of many circumstances in which a scholar would need to reproduce a whole poem "in the aggregate" in order to successfully talk about it (I mean, seriously, you're going to tell me that Chicago wouldn't let an author reproduce "The Red Wheelbarrow" in its entirety if an author needed to in order to comment on it? That's laughable. Of course they would.), but few circumstances in which a reporter would (unless maybe it were a clue in a murder or something).
Anyway, the underlying question remains unanswered? Does Gannett feel that Kleinheider's quoting style goes beyond fair use? If so, what would possibly be their argument?
He's allowed to reproduce things under that very statute for purposes of the news, so they'd have to clear that hurdle, and then they'd have to clear the hurdle of whether he's somehow affected the value of their property.
So, even if SouthComm had an articulated fair use policy, I'd think it should be broad enough to accommodate what Kleinheider does.
Fair use doesn't mean anything if people are going to be cowardly about it.
Ha, shoot, "The Red Wheelbarrow" was published in '23, so it's a lousy example. I can reproduce it right here!
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
And I could do it again! But I won't because that would be obnoxious. Oh, public domain, I remember when things used to be added to you.
Perhaps this discussion has already had some impact. I just finished reading all of today's items in Post Politics and, based on my quick review, it seems that Mr. Kleinheiter did not copy more than two short paragraphs from any news story that is protected by a copyright. In the past, he has on occasion copied much longer portions of MSM stories. This may just be a coincidence or it may indicate that that Mr. Kleinheiter (or someone else at SouthComm) has wisely decided to take the copyright issue more seriously now that a Tennessean editor has raised it.
BB. Ryan Underwood first mentioned copyright infringement not in his initial blog but in a comment he wrote replying to Mr. Kleinheiter.(And this is not the first time Ive heard similar complaints from MSM reporters.) Anyway, limiting the copying to two short paragraphs---if that is now what ie is doing-- is a smart move.
Henry, really, though?
When I was doing my stuff on Bell's Bend, I certainly shared more than two paragraphs of Zada Law's material over time, which is her intellectual property. And I'm sure the same is true of other materials. But I wasn't sure how readers could understand what was at stake if they didn't have the relevant wording from her report.
How could I show that the May Town Center people knew that Law's report wasn't the archaeological survey they were claiming it was without directly quoting her saying that it wasn't an archaeological survey?
And I reproduced maps, whole maps, she created, because I wanted to show that the May Town Center people were a.) going to give at least three huge sites to TSU (and the headache that goes with them) and b.) that they had no idea what kinds of things might be under the proposed May Town site.
How could my readers have judged the validity of my analysis without the materials I provided? And I'm sure it was much more shocking and distressing to her to discover her words on this blog than it is for Tennessean writers to see their words on Kleinheider's site.
I feel very certain that the fair use statute allows me to do that.
Could Kleinheider reproduce the same materials in his fashion and have it covered by fair use?
I'm honestly not sure. But I would hate for my writing to be curtailed by guidelines that have to also account for Kleinheider and I'm sure he would agree in reverse.
Anyway, until a MSM reporter is willing to come forward and address whether she actually even holds copyright on her stories at Gannett, I stand by my belief that this is just folks grouching about a communication form they don't understand.
And even if they do hold copyright, I really am sincerely curious how they experience being sent more readers as something they should be angry about.
They can talk all they want about copyright violation, but those words mean something and the statute provides some clear guidelines for when something is fair use and when something violates copyright, and there's a difference between being angry and having your copyright violated.
I am sincerely curious to hear their arguments for why it's the latter and not the former.
You all should really take tis entire execise somewhere else. There must be a place where you can do these blogs away from the public.
Betsy, I can't tell if you are really concerned about how this issue might affect your own articles in the Scene or if you are just enjoying the discussion. (If the latter, I am too.) If the former, you really don't have anything to worry about.
In a nutshell.
1. You use excerpts from protected material in order to make a point in the context of writing a long(er) article. That is very different from just copying and posting the protected work without adding anything to it. That goes to statutory factor number (1) "the purpose and character of the use." See 47 USC Section 104(1).
2. You use quotes that are only a small fraction of the original source. AK sometimes quotes most of the protected article or, more typically, the important parts of the article. This goes to factor (3) "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copy-righted work as a whole."
3. AK daily copies material from newspapers which compete directly with SouthComm for advertisers and readers. You generally do not. Under factor (4), courts will examine "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copy-righted work."
Some of your other questions: Do the Tennessean reporters own the copyright to their stories? No;Gannett does. Would Gannett ever sue a large aggregator like Google? Perhaps, but probably not without other MSM allies. Would Gannett sue SouthComm for what occurs in Post Politics? In a heartbeat. What harm does it do if Post Politics refers readers to The Tennessean's site? If AK copies so much from the original article that there's little reason for the reader to go anywhere else, that argument will lose. Beyond that, you are talking about damages, not liability. Gannett could enjoin SouthComm from violating copyright law whether or not the provable damages are significant. Gannett doesn't need the money but might like a test case.
You say the statutory guidelines on fair use are "clear" and keep asking for someone to explain to you the argument Gannett might make. The law in this area is anything but clear and the burden of proving fair use would be on SouthComm, not Gannett. But if you are really concerned about how the issues of copyright infringement might affect you and would like to have someone explain why this issue is a serious one, you should ask your editor if you can talk to one of SouthComm's lawyers. That's what they are there for. (To save legal fees, perhaps you and AK could talk to the lawyer together.:-)
John, sorry you are not interested, but this is where the battle lines are being drawn between old and new media. The courts have yet to resolve these issues. God knows how many dollars--not to mention the future of content providers--hinge on the outcome.
Off to Brandon's.
Well Henry if this is where the battle lines are drawn....
Here's what I think it boils down to: Up until this little discussion began, Post Politics was filled with very long sections of articles lifted from the MSM -- long enough in this short-attention-span world to get the gist of the article without actually clicking on the link to it. And since Kleinheider rarely, if ever, said where he lifted it from in his introduction to the several paragraphs he posted, there was no effective credit (that is, no need to click on the hidden link he'd give and no visible credit).
What made it more irksome is that when he posts long parts of a fellow blogger's work, he'd more often than not introduce it with credit (ie, "Aunt B is reporting today....."
To the casual reader skimming Post Politics, it appeared ACK was doing all that reporting himself (although a casual glance at the time stamps would show that he couldn't possibly be doing that, since his posts would be 10-20 minutes apart).
How much does ACK actually leave his cube and gather news on his own?
When the MSM is gone, who's actually going to gather the information that bloggers pontificate over?
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