Here’s an interesting development….
Steve Gibson has a plan to save the media world’s financial crisis — and it’s not the iPad.
Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he’s making money.
I, as a practice, do cut-and-paste a few lines from a piece as a teaser, and link back to the original so people can read the entire column if and when they wish.
I do understand Mr. Gibson’s frustration. Many blogs have cut-and-pasted some of my columns in their entirety so I would lose views here.
But I also hope Mr. Gibson understands that without the legitimate linking to his columns by sites like mine, many people may not know his columns even existed. Most of us see very little monetary reward for the free promotion our links provide to a Las Vegas Review-Journal or other publication. If he succeeds in cutting us off, even fewer people will read his publications.
Also something to watch: which blogs will he sue? Will he sue The Huffington Post or Free Republic? Will he go after conservative bloggers and spare liberal ones? Will this be an across-the-board purging or a political vendetta?
I hope Steve Gibson enjoys the temporary bump in cash and ego infusion he now enjoys.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
I’m mad that the MSM has the nerve to dump on FOX when they IGNORE the stories that FOX reports on and their ratings TANK!!!!! They think that if they DON’T report it, it DIDN’T happen, then when you have VETERAN journalists (Bob Schieffer/Charlie Gibson) playing DUMB, that’s a problem for me…..The American people are not STUPID—the net, talk radio, and Fox will get the stories out anyway and the big three will fade into irreverence…….
Just had to get that off my chest!!!!!
I love the market, where, in America alone, there is potentially in excess of 300 hundred million people standing in judgment of each other. Now if we could all just learn to respect each other and get along, then everyone could have their share of an oasis on Earth.
It could happen. It has largely happened in America.
Bob, I have to admit, as an occasional practice, I’ve copied and pasted a FEW of your entire colummns on my blog…HOWEVER I’ve ALWAYS linked to the original piece, via the title when I link to the piece I’ve otherwise posted on my blog.
is that ok? Again, it’s not a frequent practice. I do however frequently post your videos.
harleyquinn92, I hope they fade into irrelevance as well. They are already WAAAAY irreverent…
Bob, I copied that column you did on the muslim statistics and e-mailed it to several like-minded friends a week ago – should I attribute it to your site? I’m always cutting/pasting stuff from your site, and I usually attribute it to you or to the original source…
Igor
And that Kirsten Powers…..is she totally clueless or something?????
Posting entire articles without permission is always a baa idea, The Free Republic lost a case five or six years ago on this very issue.
Fair use says that parts of most content can be re-posted for purposes of discussion, etc. Not entire articles. The New York Times goes as far as saying anything beyond 30 words or so requires permission, a very narrow interpretation.
In any case, unless you’re sure there is no copyright involved such as the Declaration of Independence, attribution is always a good idea when quoting another source.
Some of those who argue about complete re-posting will say that sometimes the original online content will have changed. If this is a concern, print to pdf, save the webpage, or use the waybackmachine, which generates web archives. Google’s cached links also sometimes work.
@Nicholas
I guess it’s a common sense thing: what good is providing a link to a the original column when the whole thing is right there in front of you?
As Rich said, posting entire articles (period) without permission is always a bad idea.
Two things:
One…why all the “bruhaha” from the left about Fox News? Isn’t Fox, according to them, not a REAL news outlet? So, if they don’t report REAL news, why are they so upset about the “opinions” and “entertainment” Fox provides?
Two…I often link to articles on this site, Bob, but I do only give a “teaser”, then the link here for the whole story. After doing this a few times, I had people thanking me for leading them to a great site. I told them to register, and let you know what they thought. And to support you, if they could.
Please don’t think I was concerned about how people link here.
I was responding to that bully Gibson who believes he can sue his publications into prosperity.
There isn’t a single lawyer anywhere who produces wealth; most of them destroy some amount of wealth in the process of diverting part of the stream into their own pockets.
Even those lawyers who are not scum consume wealth but produce none.
Hmmmm, Ilion, you may be on to something there…. seems CONgress (the opposite of PROgress) is nothing but a black hole as far as taxpayer money is concerned.
(And a note to all the LLL’s that read this site, that’s black hole, not black ho, okay? Ya dipweeds.)
Igor
Bob – understood. I’m not great at taking a key part of one of your columns and posting just that, as I enjoy the entire piece.
I suppose in the future I’ll say “Bob has a great piece on (this topic) and he goes into detail…etc etc” and link to your piece
Getting late to this, Clayton Cramer’s blog was sued. You might recognize the name if you read the recent gun case in Chicago, the court cited him 4 times.
The thing is, there’s a federal minimum for suing, $75,000, so that’s what he’s suing people for, and of course, in the face of that, everyone caves and settles for a few thousand, (overly generous “Damages”, tripled).
But a few are starting to fight back.