Denseness in the copyright sphere is too common a phenomenon, but it's bizarre and not a little scary when the offender is a newspaper. After all, newspapers rely in part on the notion of "fair use" -- using short quotes from others' work -- to create their daily report.
Now we have the Tulsa World, an Oklahoma paper, launching legal threats against a blogger who's been quoting from and linking to its stories. It's demanding that the site take down "any articles and/or editorials (in whole or in part)" as well as unauthorized links.
If the blog has been republishing stories in full or using substantial portions of them, that's a no-no. But short quotes plainly fall under fair use -- and links, for heaven's sake, are just links to publicly available Web content.
Earth to Tulsa World: Stop being so arrogant, and get a clue. Sheesh.
You sound surprised. I thought it was pretty much a given that "fair use" only applied when a corporate entity was using someone else's material. When a corporate entity (and you can include universities in that definition) starts _providing_ the material, that's something entirely different. Which, you might note, ties back in to the MSM's dislike of blogs. Citizen-journalism is an evil thing, 'cause it doesn't have those corporate ties.
Posted by: Charlie Prael | February 15, 2005 at 04:05 PM
In skimming, it looks to me like some of those quotes are rather long. Even when one is quoting for comment and criticism, all four fair use factors still apply. If the court concludes that the weblog author has quoted beyond the scope necessary to effectively comment upon or criticize the newspaper reporting, the weblogger could lose.
Larry Lessig's right, in a very practical sense, when he says fair use is no more than the right to hire a lawyer to defend one's use of material. It's very wishy-washy, though part of that is because it's hard to draw bright lines in this territory.
I don't see where the paper gets off complaining about linking, though, since that sends people to their website (which they should consider a good thing). I suppose their website TOS might prohibit "deep linking." That's foolish on their part, but might give them a leg to stand on legally.
(Note: No one should rely on this rambling comment to help resolve any particular legal problem. This is not legal advice.)
Posted by: Tim Hadley | February 15, 2005 at 04:27 PM
Tim, some of the quotes are rather long. But when the paper says no quoting even "in part" that's just nutty, in addition to the linking foolishness.
Posted by: Dan Gillmor | February 15, 2005 at 05:01 PM
So they're turning down free advertising?
Posted by: Alison | February 15, 2005 at 05:45 PM
They're turning down freedom of speech.
Posted by: Anna | February 15, 2005 at 05:53 PM
I don't get this, and I don't care how long the quotes are. Newspapers routinely do tihs to each other. I can't tell you the number of stories I have read in Newspaper A which was simply a bad rewrite of a story in Newspaper B, and usually with attribution.
I've read entire stories that are little more than paragraph after paragraph of "The New York Times reported today that ..."
Hell, the major networks simply rip off and readaloud the major stories of the day, almost always without any sort of attribution.
The only difference between a blogger going beyond fair use and ABC going beyond fair use is the size of their law team.
Posted by: Brian Carnell | February 15, 2005 at 06:04 PM
Sites like common dreams and truth out both reproduce entire articles from a variety of media sources on a daily basis claiming fair use for educational purposes ... Is it your opinion that they are violating copyright law and if so how is it that we hear nothing of suits preventing them from continuing the practice.
Posted by: Norm Jenson | February 15, 2005 at 07:10 PM
I agree that trying to limit quoting even "in part" is ridiculous. I had missed that part of the paper's attempt to claw for absurd levels of control.
Posted by: Tim Hadley | February 15, 2005 at 07:13 PM
I think most senior newspaper people would find Tulsa's position ridiculous. The general rule of thumb is 1. cite us; 2. don't sell our stuff; 3. have a nice day.
Posted by: Daniel Conover | February 16, 2005 at 07:32 AM
"Sites like common dreams and truth out both reproduce entire articles from a variety of media sources on a daily basis claiming fair use for educational purposes ... Is it your opinion that they are violating copyright law and if so how is it that we hear nothing of suits preventing them from continuing the practice."
I've often wondered about Common Dreams. Back in the late 1990s, someone posted the full text of an AP story, and I got a nasty e-mail from AP about copyright. I'm surprised someone hasn't gone after CD, especially given how newspapers reacted to the Free Republic doing basically the same thing.
Posted by: Brian Carnell | February 16, 2005 at 11:35 AM
Um, I've been quoting my local newspaper (a Gannett-owned cookie cutter) using the quotes as the basis for ridicule/criticism on the community website I created. Should I be worried about getting sued?
One of my articles uses a large part of an Op-Ed, broken down sentence by sentence, allowing me to respond to each point the editor tried to make. I feel quoting as much as I did was absolutely necessary to the submission, but are they going to drop the hammer on me? I also linked directly to their Op-Ed piece.
I am so screwed. Here is the article:
http://www.iburlington.com/article.php/ymca_free_press
Posted by: Brian Brown | February 17, 2005 at 03:36 PM