Friday, July 23, 2010

Warning For Bloggers And Message Board Users

Be careful of what you print on your blogs, there are people from news agencies who are now looking to go after anyone posting content from news articles without the permission of the copyright owner(s).

Source:  http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/copyright-trolling-for-dollars/

2 comments:

Jackilope said...

Couple issues I have with the article that is posted and the fellow, who is basically now the equivalent of an internet ambulance chaser:
Is the Internet going to outlaw RSS feeders?

Another thing - if a Blogger is posting an article and it's linking back to the source -- how can that prove financial loss? It can't -- esp. if people are clicking the link to the original article.

Most blogs I read bring up situation or topic to bring it to attention with a link to the original source. The topic is up for commentary, critique, and discussion. The blog authors are not claiming it as their own.

If it's a recreational blog, and you don't even have Google AdSense, you aren't profiting by adding the link or bringing the article to your audience. You are directing them to the newspaper.

Seriously, in Web 2.0 you've got newspapers with "share" buttons so you can spread the news or bring attention to the article.

Newspapers are in a world of hurt, no doubt. Suing the world in the long run is going to bite them in the butt. There will be viewer visitors to the pages without the bloggers out there to send people to their newspaper and to tolerate their ads.

BTW-- if one embeds a YouTube video on their blog, knowing that the material is most likely a copyright violation even though they didn't upload the video -- does that make them liable too?

Dawn Bushman said...

Very good questions to be asking. And yes, I agree with all of your issues that you have with what's going on.

I do want to forewarn fellow bloggers and other readers about this, if they actually post the content of the article for their blog, regardless of whether they've linked it or not. If you quote from the article, you could see this happen to you.

Personally, I would love to see this challenged, but as long as the newspapers get some money out of it, maybe they don't care. Short term profits.