Shoreline Beacon: No News is Best
Just got off the phone from a lengthy and tense conversation with an editor at the Shoreline Beacon, and a stern, stern no if's cease and desist order condemning this site for copyright infringment bootlegging "complete stories" from their publication. Complete stories? Say it's not true. I know people have quoted them, but full posting plagerism? Can she give me an example?
"$5 parking at the hospitals"
... say what? We have no such story. Nothing in my log of posts ... What's going on here? So I ask Google and sure enough there be the culprit!
What was it she was so huffed in legal arms about? Google and Yahool Search Result RSS feeds! ... where their rebroadcast of this material includes cited passages that are all of the following length:
"Mike Angelidis scored twice as the Owen Sound Attack beat the Sarnia Sting 6-4 in Ontario Hockey League action Friday."
[ Shoreline Beacon via Google News via South Bruce Peninsular: news aggregator ]
She's going to sue me for copyright infringment because of my posting search results???? Yup, apparently so.
"I don't know of a single news agency that does not consider every word of their paper to be copyright and restricted from reproduction. Even links."
"It's the law"
Wow. That's subversive, practically draconian, indubitably net-hostile. Even links? Bad pirates. Pure evil. I'm so sorry Google is depriving them of hits by citing their content without permission. Bet that cuts into the old budget something fierce, eh? I can practically hear the deposed journalists pounding the dole now ...
But really, Plagerism? I'm no expert on copyright but to my mind, that's no intellectual property theft, it's just a link to a story giving you the reader enough context to make it sensible enough to make your click-through decision! Two dozen words is hardly the "whole story", and surely any fool can see that.
But no, by threat of swift strong-arm intimidation and reprisal, such information sharing is emphatically too rich for the Beacon's blood. Links, they say, are copyright too, not to be used without express permission. I hope Google knows that. I hope the great hoards of proxy servers know that too.
"You are the publisher, you are responsible for the content on your site. It's the law"
I didn't figure it would do much good to explain that it's not, especially after she'd already mentioned that I might want to put it to my lawyer, as if I actually had one, which I do, but he's for Family Law and that's another story.
Ok, diplomatic mode, because journalists tend to have their head in a bucket over internet things, I patiently explained how the internet works, how by reading a page you've already made a 'digital copy', and especially how Archive.org is routinely copying their entire website, how Google is sending out email story excerpts in their Google Alerts, how there are lots of people using these news search results for friendly local content
, and how here, in this case we see both Google and Yahoo! are sending out Shoreline Beacon peppered RSS feeds in a format expressly easy for incorporating into websites worldwide.
So ... are you only threatening me because I'm a little guy?
"Oh no .. we intend to stop all copyright infringment of our material"
Even from Google??
"Yes, and thank you for telling me about that!"
Hey, wow, cool, no problem, happy to help, and oh, please do let me know how it goes talking to Google and Yahoo! I'm very interested. Really.
Oh, and I did I mention that I tend to blog about almost every conversation I have? See, I don't get out much and ...
I might have forgot to say that last bit. My bad.
So what's our solution for our little forum? Is the Peninsular to drop all RSS feeds because Google might slip me their evil bootleg material? Certainly fellow SBP'ers, let this be known that I did my best by telling you all the new house-rules:
please do not cite the Shoreline Beacon, do not mention it's stories, do not link to its content, do not even acknowledge that the paper or any of it's writers, contributors or sponsors even exist. They are out of bounds, off-topic, excluded, untouchable, neo-netporn, not permissable, contraband, dare I say, to speak of them is to spam, they are the new lepers of the internet, leave them be, stay away.
There, I hope that's clear, and that takes care of all of you, but now, what on Earth are we going to do about Google injecting this evil material into our News Aggregator?
I respectfully suggested she contact Google.com and request to be removed from the news feeds; seems to me I read somewhere that Google is more than happy to do this for anyone who asks, just as they are willing to listen to anyone who, perish the thought, would actually want their authors freely advertised in context to billions of web users worldwide. I suggested contacting Yahoo! too, but added that I have never in my life received an answer from Yahoo! about anything. Still, if she's willing to sue over it, I'm sure they will listen to legal papers. Archive.org too. Sue 'em all I say, sue all the big guys sure and certain I say, but hey how's about sue them first and then go bloodhunting the little $24k/annum family guy with a teeny volunteer regional community BBS forum hobby site ...
Stay tuned for further developments, film at 11.
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Google's Terms of Use
Reprinted without any permission from the About Google News Feeds Page the bird's eye lowdown on the acceptable use caper, for the record and clearly, I'd say anyway, SBP is within these bounds very nearly 100% ...
Just for the record and some
Just for the record and some backgrounder to all this, when I told her I was interested in the topic and the outcome, I meant it. I've been writing about the legal quagmire of the no-mans-land of blogdom for years:
And I know somewhere I either got a comment or blogged a story where it was decided in a court of law that the bbs forum blog thing's owner was exempt from many of the hurdles and barriers ... and responsibilities which choke the post-handbills world of the mainstream media. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any of it (so much for blogs as Knowledge Management!). Maybe it was in that famous disucssion with Cory Doctorow over whether he should be careful about posting 'reviews' of products he's never used, or maybe it was in emails with David Weinberger about who pays if a multi-author Metafilter gets sued, I don't know, memory like a sieve. Couldn't find a shred of that, but I did find this:
Indeed. Or trying selling that idea of our generating qualified leads of pre-selected interested new readers and referring them in quantity to the rule-choked, content gagged and exemplary bad design of the Shoreline Beacon's web presence.
I did mention that, actually, on how the BBC and the CBC both encourage the sharing of their headlines because aggregators like this site (and personal readers) are hungry for news feeds and every last unsolicited referrer-page click-through is money in their pocket gained absolutely for free.
but all she could say was, "Yes, but they are publically funded ..."
(sigh) You can always tell a journalist.
You just can't tell 'em much.
All the news thats free news
That *other* news source will not be mentioned again, and in its place, the hard working friends and neighbours down the shore bring you an all new volunteer news page, with local talk, weather, and information. You can visit The SaugeenShorliner at http://saugeenshoreliner.blogspot.com
second thoughts
On reading this over and over again..I couldnt stop myself from laughing.Not only from her lack of knowledge,but also for most likely breaking her own rules.(and good luck at suing Google)
Lets take for example the story about Mike Angelidis and the owen sound attack.Does she have written signed permission to use his name? Does she have authorization to link to the owen sound attack?Does she have permission from the hockey league to print scores? I demand proof of such.Written authorized signed permission to name names, name teams, and to publish scores in leagues .
To me this once interesting read is now just a blotter of garbage on the landscape.I find better reading with no holds barred on the SaugeenShoreliner.
As for suing google..you leave your blinds open..dont sue the people looking in..Close your blinds.
Careful signage
I don't doubt for a moment that some lawyer made a few bucks brokering the deal between that unnameable newspaper and the Attack; that's what media people do, they broker deals to sweeten each other's "market share" and "points ratings" all of it quite irrelevent to anyone except the sponsors who pay by the eyeball served.
But what I rather doubt is whether they have secured similar rights for their weather feed and other common web widgets they seem to find no ethical qualms about folding into their website.
What's sad, though, is how much I really enjoyed the google feed actually speaking to me in local language; of all the independent news agencies in our area, Google could only recognize them as a news source and without them, once they opt out (assuming they stay bullheaded and take their bat and ball out of Google) we'll be left with only CanWest Osprey, Globemedia and CBC news, neither of which could even reliably put a finger on a map of Ontario to say where any of us live.