If Google's Book Scanning Violates Copyright Law, What About The AP's Book Scanning?

from the hard-to-see-the-difference dept

Danny Sullivan does a great job calling out the hypocrisy of the Associated Press yet again. The organization, which has taken a very maximalist position on copyright, where fair use gets mostly ignored, apparently had no problem scanning Sarah Palin's entire book into a computer so that reporters could search it. Of course, this is no different than what Google is doing with its book scanning program (which, again, I still believe is a clear case of fair use). Yet, since the AP seems to take such a limited view on fair use (and has a habit of accusing Google of "stealing" content), it's amusing that it's now trying to defend its actions by claiming that it was legal because it was for the sake of journalism, and the scan wasn't for public consumption. Except, of course, Google's book scanning isn't for "public consumption" of the entire work either, but so people can do a search to find the relevant tidbit of info within the book. The AP's statement on the matter is laughable:

"The book, purchased several days ahead of its on-sale date by the AP, was scanned after the first spot stories moved on the wire from New York so that staffers in bureaus in Washington and Alaska with knowledge of various parts of Gov. Palin's life and political career could read those relevant sections the next day."

Yes, you can understand why they did it, and even why it seems reasonable. But that doesn't change the fact that it appears the AP made an unauthorized copy of the book, in violation of its own interpretation of copyright law. Funny how the law seems oh so different when it limits what you can do, than when it's about limiting what your competitors can do...

20 Comments | Leave a Comment..

There Are Lots Of Ways To Fund Journalism

from the if-you-look-around dept

As various folks in the news business (and outside of it) continue to fret about how it could be possible to ever fund the production of news, some are taking more positive looks at the space. Jay Rosen has listed out 18 different sources of subsidies for funding journalism (or journalism-like) work. Some of them are better than others, but it's a useful list to get you a thinking. Full disclosure: a part of our own business model is on the list. Along those lines, since people have been saying nice stuff about our business model, Jesse Hirsh has a way-too-nice writeup about our CwF+RtB experiment, which I still think is a bit short of a full business model, but is getting closer. Based on our experiences with it, we're getting more and more ideas on how to fund not just journalism, but all sorts of content creation.

And, really, that's the idea. There are lots of different ideas and experiments going on -- and many of them are showing early signs of success, and I'm sure more will come along at a later date that are even more successful. Really, the only ones complaining and demanding changes to the law are those who represent the old way of doing things, and don't want to change. They talk up all sorts of horror stories and moral panics about how "journalism" or "music" or "movies" are going to go away -- despite the fact that we actually have more of all three of those things happening today than at any time in history. Based on that faulty reasoning, they demand special protection not for "journalism" "music" or "movies" but for the old business models and old institutions that produced all three.

Eventually, as these new business models and new institutions work themselves out, it'll suddenly seem "obvious" what the right answers were, and people will forget the hundreds if not thousands of different experiments -- both good and bad -- that went into developing the new model. It's a time of upheaval, for sure, but there's no indication that there's any real risk to the production of content. Just a few businesses that got big and don't want to change with the times.

14 Comments | Leave a Comment..

How The Constraints Of 'Traditional Journalism' Sometimes Lead To A Missed Opportunity To Better Inform

from the experiments-in-breaking-out-of-the-box dept

Recently, a NY Times article about the giant patch of floating garbage in the ocean got some attention, not so much for the contents of the article, but because it was the first time the NY Times had worked with Spot.us to fund some journalism. If you're not familiar with Spot.us, it's an innovative non-profit startup, that helps "crowdfund" certain journalism projects. I'm not convinced it's a great business model, but it is one that's interesting to watch, and a partnership with the NY Times is definitely a big win for the organization.

However, I think Mathew Ingram really highlighted the most interesting thing about the whole project. While the NY Times article that came from Spot.us was somewhat mundane and didn't add much to the half a dozen or so other articles that have been written about the garbage patch, the blog written by the reporter who did this project, Lindsey Hoshaw, was a lot more interesting and compelling than the NY Times article itself. But the blog wasn't a part of the NY Times at all.

What Mathew was really showing was how some traditional publications get locked into a certain way of doing things because "this is how we do things." And in that world "the article" is the ultimate goal. It's a "deliverable." The process and the journey seem less important -- even though they're quite often the most interesting parts, to a wider community that wants to feel more and more a part of the journalism process itself. The NY Times is pretty good about doing certain topic blogs, and even brought in the Freakonomics blog under its own brand, a while back. But Mathew makes a really good point that this sort of thing probably would have worked better if the entire blog was seen as a part of the NY Times process. It could have ended with a big "story" -- or not. It's not even clear that's needed here. In the end, the real point is that the old structures don't always make sense. And while it was already a big step for the NY Times to create this story using such a new and different process as Spot.us, the end result might have been even better if they'd gone even further and highlighted the journey of the story, rather than just the endpoint.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Prosecutors Claim 'Innocence Project' Journalism Students Paid Witnesses

from the gets-a-bit-more-complicated... dept

Last month, we thought it was quite excessive that states' attorneys in Illinois were asking for all sorts of information on the students who were involved in the Medill Innocence Project -- a journalism school investigative reporting effort that has helped free wrongly convicted individuals. The prosecutors were asking for information on the students' grades and private notes, which seemed to go beyond what seemed reasonable. However, now the prosecutors are claiming that the students may have paid witnesses for their interviews, which could raise questions about their authenticity (found via Romenesko). Of course, reading the details, it's not so clear cut. The students admit that they paid for the guy's cab fare, but it sounds like there was money left over from the cash they gave the cabbie, and he gave it to the interview subject (who then used it to buy drugs). That certainly makes it a little more clear as to why prosecutors were looking for more info, but it still seems like the overall request went beyond what was reasonable. It certainly looks more like an intimidation tactic than any attempt to get to the bottom of the case.

36 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Supreme Court Justice Kennedy Teaches Wrong Lesson On Freedom Of The Press

from the except-for-when-it-comes-to-supreme-court-justices dept

You would think that a Supreme Court Justice (and the people who work for one) would know better than to tell any sort of news publication -- even a high school newspaper -- that he needed to approve any articles written about a speech he gave, but that appears to be exactly what happened with Justice Anthony Kennedy and a recent speech to Dalton High School students in Manhattan. The people who work for Kennedy are now trying to claim that this was just to make sure the quotes were accurate, but those who work for the school paper say they were under the impression they needed full approval of the article first. It's amazing that whoever made the request (whether Kennedy himself or some staffer) didn't realize how bad that would look, especially from a Justice who has always been a strong proponent of strong First Amendment rights...

26 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Is Murdoch's Move Against Google Really About Twitter And Facebook?

from the no,-not-even-close dept

I'm a big believer in the idea that "earned media" or "earned links" are increasingly important online. That's the idea that growing numbers of people are relying on news links that are being passed to them via friends on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. It's about recognizing that more and more often news stories "find people" rather than the other way around. That is, people are increasingly getting links from friends, acquaintances and colleagues, rather than going searching for the news. And those "earned" links or "passed links" are quite valuable because friends are more likely to trust and pay attention to what is personally sent to them, rather than what's just on the front page of a news site.

However, even given all of that, I'm not sure I buy Mark Cuban's explanation for Rupert Murdoch and his plan to stop Google from indexing his sites. Cuban says that it's all about this recognition that such earned links are becoming so important these days, and Murdoch realizes that links from Twitter and Facebook are growing in value, whereas links from Google have little value. To be honest, I'd be surprised if Murdoch had thought through it that carefully, but more to the point, I'm not sure I believe the full premise. Yes, those links are valuable, but they need to start somewhere, and one of the ways they start is from news junkies using aggregators like Google News to find the news and start passing them around. Blocking that starting process makes little sense. On top of that, even when I'm passed a link, I'll often use Google News or other sites to dig deeper. Taking News Corp. sites out of the picture doesn't help at all. And, finally, while I keep hearing about sites getting so much more traffic from such passed links these days, I can say with authority that on Techdirt, they're still a tiny fraction of the traffic we get from Google.

So, yes, directly passed links from friends or colleagues are valuable and important, but it's a part of a wider ecosystem of news sharing that Google News and other aggregators are most certainly a large part of. Saying that blocking Google News makes sense because of things like Twitter and Facebook ignores how Google News plays into those links even being on Twitter and Facebook.

41 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Judge Says No Twittering From The Courtroom

from the keep-it-quiet dept

There have been many debates over whether or not it's appropriate to blog or Twitter from the courtroom -- in fact, just last week I attended a short conference at the US courthouse in San Francisco about how the court system is dealing with such things. While you might understand why it's barred for jury members or participants in the trial to use such things, it does seem a bit excessive for a judge to bar reporters from Twittering as well, but that's exactly what's happened. The judge ruled that it was a form of a "broadcast," which is prohibited (why broadcasts are prohibited is a separate topic for a separate day, though it doesn't really make any sense).

19 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Murdoch Reconsidering Paywalls? Delaying Implementation

from the so-much-for-that-plan dept

Is Rupert Murdoch flip-flopping on paywalls again? Way back when (i.e., two years ago) Murdoch was a big believer in the idea that news should be free online, and that he could more than make it up with other business models. But, then, earlier this year, he did a complete flip-flop, declaring that all his publications would put up paywalls, saying that free content is bad, and accusing aggregators and search engines of "stealing" content. Some speculated that it was all a ploy to get others to put up paywalls. Though, others just think Murdoch's getting a little senile. Either way, it looks like he's stalling a bit. Jay Rosen points us to the news that Murdoch is "postponing" the date for when he wants his papers to have paywalls. It's not clear if the delay is due to technical difficulties in implementing a paywall, or if he's actually reconsidering. Either way, it doesn't look like the great big paywall is going up any time soon.

12 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Is It Really A Problem That 'Only' 31 Newspapers Sent Reporters To The World Series?

from the really? dept

Earlier this year, we had a discussion on the changing nature of sports beat reporting in the internet era, and one of the points we made is that there really is an awful lot of overlap and duplication in effort in some cases (such as the NY media). And yet, as pointed out by Jay Rosen old school baseball reporter Murray Chass is complaining that about half of the newspapers that have baseball beat writers did not sent a reporter to the World Series this year, calling it a "sign of a dying industry." Apparently there are 60 newspapers in America that have beat reporters who travel with the teams they cover, but only 31 of those papers sent reporters to the World Series.

I'm really searching to see how this is a problem. First of all, those 29 other papers are all papers whose local teams are not in the World Series, meaning less interest. Second, those beat reporters are equally capable of watching the games on TV from the comfort of their own home and getting their quotes from the televised press conferences afterwards. It's not as if a player on the Yankees is going to break an important story to the Braves beat reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. All they'd really be doing is adding to the media scrum around the players before and after each game, adding absolutely nothing of value. On top of that, the count of papers also leaves out the national media reporters -- such as those from ESPN and Sports Illustrated -- as well as the the reporters employed by MLB.com. I'd argue that the fact that about half of the papers decided not to send their own beat reporters is a sign of (finally) smarter newspaper management in not wasting money on a boondoggle for a baseball reporter.

34 Comments | Leave a Comment..

German Chancellor Proposes Special 'Save Newspapers' Copyright Law

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

It's beginning to look like German Chancellor Angela Merkel believes the entire point of copyright is not to provide incentive to create, but as a way to hurt Google and protect obsolete local businesses. Last month, we wrote about her complaints concerning the Google book project (where she conveniently left out the fact she had tried to fund the European equivalent). And, now, her party has proposed creating a special new copyright law just for old school news organizations. There aren't many specifics, other than they want to protect news organizations, and this odd claim:

"The Internet cannot be a copyright-free zone."

The thing is, it's not a "copyright-free" zone. But what the internet has shown is that if you put in place dumb copyright laws that do no more than to prop up business models, people will route around them. That's even more likely to occur if Merkel and her colleagues create a special "protect newspapers" copyright.

The article suggests that the likely proposal would involve "neighboring rights," which are found in some other areas of copyright law -- and would require that the original creator of the content give some kind of permission before any commercial use of the work. So, in theory, any "commercial" aggregator could only aggregate and link to stories from which it has received explicit permission. In other words, it would effectively break the basic premise of the web by not allowing you to summarize and link where you would like.

Not surprisingly, newspaper and magazine publishers in Germany are all for it, though they might want to think twice about that. Just wait until one of their competitors breaks a story, and they're unable to talk about it without "permission." Meanwhile, plenty of people who actually have put some thought into this realize that the "commercial/non-commercial" line is not clear at all. Is a personal blogger who puts up some basic ads on his or her site (even if they earn pennies) a "commercial enterprise"? And what about Google News, which doesn't have ads on the European version of Google News (it only recently put ads on the US version)?

On the whole, this sounds like someone decided they wanted to "help out" the major media companies, but without anyone putting much thought into the actual details or inevitable consequences of such a law. A more cynical person might suggest that this proposal is really designed to gain the current ruling party a bit of support from the mainstream press in Germany...

17 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Newsday Columnist Quits Over Paywall, Wants To Be Read

from the as-he-should dept

One of the reasons why the NY Times eventually did away with its old "paywall" was that its big name columnists started complaining that fewer and fewer people were reading them. We've suggested in the past that newspapers who decide to put up a paywall may find that their best reporters decide to go elsewhere, knowing that locking up their own content isn't a good thing in terms of career advancement. So, with Cablevision deciding to put Newday behind a paywall, it didn't take long for some of its columnists to start to bailing. The NY Times is reporting that Newsday columnist Saul Friedman quit and did so while publishing an open letter on why paywalls are a bad idea, while also telling the NY Times that he knew his column was popular with people outside of Newsday's footprint, and he was upset that those people would not be able to read his column and that he wouldn't be able to send out links to his columns.

Oh, one other thing? Mr. Friedman is 80 years old and worked for newspapers for over 50 years. In other words, he's not just some "young kid who thinks everything online should be free" as we're so often told is the real problem. News organizations that lock up their content are increasingly going to discover that it's more and more difficult to attract top talent when compared to publications that actually help raise the journalists' profiles.

25 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Senate's Latest Shield Law Brings Back Protection For Participatory Journalists

from the good-news dept

It looks like the Senate has pushed back on the restrictions that the White House wanted on a journalism shield law. Not only does the new Senate version greatly limit the circumstances under which the White House could get around the law, it also goes back to covering amateur/freelance/citizen/participatory journalists as well. The White House had wanted the right to basically claim which stories wouldn't count for shield law protection (meaning journalists would need to give up their sources). But the "compromise" bill from the Senate will only allow this in cases where the government can show (not just say) that the information is needed to prevent terrorism or substantial harm to national security. That seems a lot more reasonable. Of course, this is only the Senate version and the bill very well might change before it gets approved, but at least it's good to see that it doesn't just create a special class of "professional journalists."

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Washington Post Calls For Federal Funding Of Newspapers?

from the gee,-biased-much? dept

Just days after we wrote about a study that showed more government funding of the press leads to less reporting on government corruption, along comes the Washington Post with an editorial saying it's time to have the federal government fund more journalism. I wonder how Watergate would have turned out if the Washington Post was relying on Nixon for cash... The editorial piece claims that no one is "filling the gap" left by fewer newspaper reporters, but presents no evidence whatsoever to support that. The market is changing, absolutely, but we're seeing all sorts of new, unique and innovative ways of covering the news -- often allowing much greater coverage than in the past. Getting the government involved may sound good to the Washington Post, but it hardly seems like the right formula for an independent press.

8 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Why Not Aggregate Yourself?

from the can't-think-of-any-reason-not-to-do-so dept

With various news publications complaining about online aggregators somehow being unfair, back in August, we wondered why those big mainstream publications didn't just aggregate or, as they prefer, "parasite" themselves. For example, they complain about other sites writing up short "bloggy" summaries of their long and in-depth news reports -- but why can't those publications create their own shorter versions as well?

As if proving that point, the website Gawker (who has been accused of such "parasiting" before) apparently tried this approach itself recently. It had a 2,000 word story that it purchased from a guy who had worked with Richard Heene (the father behind the "balloon boy" stunt). But rather than just leave the 2,000 word story, it also created its own shorter bullet-point version, which is likely what it would have written up if the original story had been published elsewhere. And, while the original story still got a ton of traffic, the summary post still scored a lot of pageviews -- more than the average Gawker post.

If anything, this supports the idea that publications really have nothing to complain about with these sites that summarize their longer stories. There's absolutely nothing stopping them from doing it themselves as well -- and, who knows, it might augment their traffic as well.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Fact Checking vs. Rapid Corrections: Which Is More Important?

from the reporting-vs.-conversations dept

A bunch of folks have been pointing to a recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review, discussing the speed and style with which some "mainstream" media sources and some "new media" sources corrected a particular story. Apparently a newspaper in Arizona misreported some comments by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and the misquote was picked up by numerous blogs and online news sites. However, once it became clear what had happened, the new media sites were much faster to issue corrections, while making it clear what was corrected (often leaving the original up and noting the correction). The mainstream paper -- who originated the story -- was much slower about fixing things, and when it did, simply deleted the mistaken part at first, before later putting up a vague note about the change.

To some extent, I believe this shows the different mindsets of some of these newer publications. I've talked in the past about how I view this blog as a conversation, not a reporting venue. And, as such, I don't delete stuff, even when it turns out that I made a mistake. Instead, I'll do a strikethrough or cross out, along with an update explaining what happened. I don't think it's right to simply "disappear" the original -- though I've had some traditional journalists (and one Hollywood lawyer) act as if I had done something horrible in using a strikethrough on mistaken content.

And yet, personally, I've found that, while I hate it when a story is wrong, the fact that I correct such stories fully and openly has built up greater trust. The few times we've needed to correct such a story, the response has almost always been universally positive rather than negative. As mentioned above, it's like the difference between a conversation and old-school reporting. Old school reporting sought to be "the source of record." A conversation is more about learning as you go. In a conversation, I might say something -- and the person/people I'm talking to may correct me, and from that we all learn. But for traditional reporters, such an error is seen as a huge black mark that requires rewriting history and "disappearing" the mistake -- rather than leaving it there, with a clear update, so that everyone can learn.

19 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Shield Law? What Shield Law? Police Just Get Reporter's Phone Records

from the how-about-that... dept

While there are still debates over proposals for a federal shield law to protect journalists from having to reveal sources, California already has a shield law for journalists, but what good does it do if authorities totally ignore it. It seems that may have happened in the case of TMZ's Harvey Levin and the Los Angeles County Sheriff obtaining Levin's phone records in trying to track down who leaked information about actor Mel Gibson's arrest. Levin is pointing out that this does, in fact, appear to violate both state and federal law and is apparently working with lawyers over this. While the Sheriff's department says it spoke with a prosecutor and got a judge's approval to get the records, it's difficult to see how that fits with California's shield law.

12 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Prosecutors Subpoena Tons Of Info On Student Journalists Who Provided Information To Reopen Murder Case

from the chilling-effects dept

Northwestern University's Medill Innocence Project is a very cool program for journalism students, teaching them investigative reporting techniques in the real world, by having them investigate potential wrongful convictions. As the program's website notes, it's helped free 11 wrongfully convicted individuals, five of whom had been on death row. However, some prosecutors don't really like being proven incorrect. In one of its latest projects, the Innocence Project has provided enough evidence to reopen the case of Anthony McKinney, who has been in jail for 31 years for allegedly killing a security guard.

However, state's attorneys in Illinois are now subpoenaing all sorts of excess information on the students themselves, including their grades, the grading criteria, student evaluations, and private notes and and off-the-record interviews that were used in gathering the information necessary for the case. While the state's attorney Anita Alvarez is defending this overreaching subpoena effort, it has many concerned that this is really just an attempt to intimidate the students and create a serious chilling effect on this type of investigative research. It's difficult to see how the student's grades make any difference at all in whether or not McKinney is innocent or guilty.

46 Comments | Leave a Comment..

AP Convinces Newspaper That Watermark Will Stop Mythical Evil Copiers

from the cut-and-paste? dept

Someone anonymous sent in an explanation by the Town News for its decision to use the Associated Press' hNews "watermarking" system which is the AP's silly and meaningless attempt to stop copying of AP content. The General Manager of Town News, Marc Wilson, explains why they signed up for the program using the totally unsubstantiated scare tactic, claiming that there are these awful content thieves out there stealing content:

Probably the biggest issue within the newspaper/Internet world is controlling the re-use of content posted on the World Wide Web.

Actually, I'd say that the biggest issue is figuring out a business model that works. If you're trying to control the use of content you put online, you're doing it wrong. And, oops, the hNews format doesn't do much to stop content reuse due to the magic of the world's worst copyright infringement tool: cut-and-paste.

Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out who believes this myth that copying news content is some massive problem. Sure, there are some spam sites out there, but they get no meaningful traffic. There are some claims that they cause search engine trouble, but that's overblown as well. Google and others are pretty good at sussing out where the content originated. But, according to Wilson, this is a huge problem:

But what they don't like the rise of the many companies that copy or scrape content off of newspaper Web sites -- and end up competing with the sites that originated the content.

Again, where are these mythical content copiers? There are spam sites, but they get no traffic and they go away pretty quickly. Besides, if you can't compete against a spam site scraping your content, you're definitely doing something wrong. If your brand and your community management is so weak that a spam site can compete with you, you don't deserve to be in business.

15 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Media Watchers Beginning To Ask Why People Would Pay For Online Journalism

from the about-time dept

Ever since the latest round of newspaper paywall/micropayment suggestions have come up, we've been asking why none of the newspapers/reporters pushing these plans can explain what added value will make people buy. And that's because almost none of them are actually thinking about this. They just keep thinking that if they add a mechanism to get people to pay, that people will magically pay, rather than go elsewhere. The problem, of course, is that readers have made it clear: if their local paper charges for online access, they'll just go elsewhere.

The newspapers, like the recording industry, seem to be under the delusion that they're somehow owed money from consumers, rather than needing to actually give them a reason to buy. Mathew Ingram points us to a Columbia Journalism Review article by Jan Schaffer that finally makes this point by saying it's time to look at the demand side of these newspaper business models, while noting that the problem isn't a lack of paywalls, but a lack of interest in what is called "journalism" these days:

In looking to reconstruct journalism, I'd start not by asking how do we get money for what we've always done. I'd ask instead: How do we provide something worth paying for? As a long-time news consumer, I have recoiled at much of what we are rendering as "journalism."

What if it's not just the business model of journalism that is broken? What if the way we are doing our journalism is broken, too? How are some of the new media makers trying to fix that?

None of this is particularly new, but it's great to see CJR finally realize that's the issue, rather than how to best structure the paywall.

9 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Future Of News? Newsroom As A Cafe

from the come-on-in-and-chat dept

Jeff Sonderman points us to the fascinating story of a newspaper in the Czech Republic that is experimenting with making newsrooms into cafes. One of my big complaints about newspapers these days is how little they've done to help enable their community to participate in the news process (whether it's finding, writing, discussing, distributing or sharing the news). However, it looks like Nase Adresa is going a step further than just enabling the community online. It's enabling it in real space as well -- creating a news cafe. It combines both a newsroom and a typical cafe, so people can come and interact with editors and reporters, see the paper being created -- or even chip in and help out as well. And they're also doing more to serve the community than just offering up coffee and bites to eat, but are also holding concerts at the cafes as well (rescuing news and the music industry in one shot?). Apparently circulation is growing -- with 50% of subscriptions coming from people who happened to stop into the cafe.

The other interesting bit is that it appears that each of the cafes is working on producing specialized local content for just that local community -- all supported by a more centralized newsroom/journalist training center in Prague. So, there's a main newsroom, and then each local cafe gets to produce its own version, mixing news from the central source as well as locally produced content. The local papers/cafes need about 5 full-time employees, with plenty of other local volunteers or part-timers. It's still early in this experiment, so I do have some questions about how it functions long-term, but it is still nice to see a newspaper that actually focuses on serving a community directly. Next up? The Techdirt cafe?

6 Comments | Leave a Comment..