Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Apple’s iTunes Match (aka iMatch): The First Royalties Are In

First off today, Tunescore founder and CEO Jeff Price has publicly released information about the first royalty checks his label has received from iTunes Match: Specifically over $10,000 in the first two months. iTunes Match is a new service by Apple to let users synchronize their music via the cloud. Apple charges users $25 per year for that feature and pays a portion of that money as royalties to labels. Tunecore is an Internet-based label dedicated to helping unsigned and independent artists get their music on iTunes and similar stores. Price did not say how much of the royalties were going to his artists and how they would be divided up but said that it seemed like “magic money” that was not there before.

2: High Court Confirms Pubs’ Rights to Screen Football Matches

Next up today, in the UK a High Court judge has ruled that pubs in the country will be allowed to stream football (soccer) matches using foreign decoders as long as they do not charge an admission fee and only play the live game. The issue has been the center of two now-joined lawsuits that both featured pub owners using cheaper foreign decoders to access football matches. In both cases the FA Premier League (FAPL) sued the owners and one of the cases went before the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which found that, while it was legal to stream the games using a foreign decoder, it was still a public performance that the league had a right to control. However, the High Court in the UK, basing its ruling on the ECJ’s ruling, found that the FAPL had no such right when no admission is charged, opening up the opportunity for other pubs to do the same. This, if upheld, would put a severe limitation on the FAPL’s rights to restrict streaming of matches to pubs and other venues.

3: New York Times Busted for Violating Copyright Bill Keller Defended

Finally today, The Boston Phoenix is calling out The New York Times claiming that the newspaper published a PDF of a 1976 article from The Real Paper about the Death of Football. However, though The Real Paper is defunct its rights were bought by The Boston Phoenix’s publisher and that, according to the paper, makes the use a likely infringement. Though they have no plans on taking legal action, The Phoenix points out that the PDF appeared the same days as an op-ed by former NY Times Editor Bill Keller, who was advocating for stronger copyright enforcement and taking a strong pro-SOPA/PIPA stance.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Dutch Court Orders Companies To Block Pirate Bay

First off today, a Dutch court has ordered two of the country’s biggest ISPs, Ziggo and XS4ALL, to block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay. The action comes after a judge ruled that the reciprocal nature of Bittorrent makes it so that users can not merely download pirated content but must upload as well. In the Netherlands, downloading unlicensed content is legal but uploading it is not. The lawsuit, which was brought by the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, may be appealed though the ISPs will have to comply with the order as it goes through. BREIN has also said it will be taking similar action against other ISPs in the country.

2: AP, NYTimes, McClatchy, Others Launch NewsRight Online Rights Clearinghouse

Next up today, the AP, New York Times and 26 other news organizations have formed a company named NewsRight to track, monitor and enforce copyright in news-related content. The company, which opened formally last week, is composed of 11 people and is said to be using technology to track news content, understand how it’s being used and, eventually, seek licensing agreements for it. According to a representative for the company, the first year will be spent mostly learning the market for this service with a focus on selling the data its content tracking can generate.

3: Reddit Going Dark for a Day to Protest SOPA Online Censorship Bill

Finally today, the popular social news site Reddit is planning to shut down for a period of 12 hours on January 18 in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act. The act, which would make it possible for copyright holders to obtain court orders forcing ISPs to block access to “rogue” websites, has been the source of controversy online and the Reddit community has been instrumental in organizing opposition to it. Reddit is also attempting to get Google and other major sites to join them with the blackout.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

The article takes a look at the case of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the German Defense Minister who has had his Doctorate revoked and may lose his job over allegations he plagiarized his dissertation. The article compares attitudes toward plagiarism in Germany to those in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The article, which appeared in the international edition, was written by D.D. Guttenplan and does a great job looking at many of the intricacies and complexities surrounding plagiarism, especially on the global scene. It’s a great article and one well worth reading.

On that note though, a big thanks goes to Mr. Guttenplan for including me in the article and for taking such an in-depth look at this very thorny subject, and one many newspapers and reporters shy away from…

1: RIAA Asks Judge To Freeze LimeWire’s Assets

First off today, in addition to the injunction that the RIAA is seeking against LimeWire, the record labels are also seeking to freeze the assets of both the company and its founder, Mark Gorton. According to the labels, LimeWire has done nothing to change its illegal ways since being found liable for copyright infringement last month and may be on the hook for over a billion in damages. LimeWire has up to two weeks to respond to the injunction request before the judge in the case may issue orders.

2: IFPI Reacts to Publication of Draft Canadian Copyright Amendment Bill

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has issued a press release on the draft copyright reform bill in Canada. Though the IFPI has said it is pleased that Canada is taking up the issue, that the bill, as it is written, does not go far enough. The bill, though it prevents the circumvention of digital locks, also codifies the “notice and notice” system for dealing with infringement online and expands fair dealing within the country. The IFPI is hoping that the bill will be amended and the current draft is merely a starting point.

3: New York Times Forces Apple to Pull Popular ‘Pulse’ iPad Newsreader

Finally today, in a case of copyright fail, the New York Times, briefly at least, had Apple remove the popular iPad app Pulse claiming that it was infringing their copyright. The reason? Pulse displayed the New York Times’ RSS feed, along with millions of others, in that it is a feed reader. The $4 app was restored to the app store some time later but it is unclear if the NYT withdrew its complaint or if Apple realized what was going on.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 6 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

1: UK Gov Nationalises Orphans and Bans Non-Consensual Photography in Public

First off today, some last-minute changes to the Digital Economy Bill in the UK is drawing the ire of visual artists. A largely overlooked portion of the bill deals with the licensing of orphan works, works for which the copyright holder is unknown, and opens the door to their use so long a licensing fee is paid to an unnamed licensing body. Photographers and visual artists are deeply upset about this but it seems that the bill will now go through unchallenged.

2: NYT reporter Kouwe resigns amid allegations of plagiarism

Next up today, New York Times reporter and blogger Zachery Kouwe has resigned after the editor of the Wall Street Journal sent a letter to the paper expressing concern over some passages in his work. A further sweep of his writing found several more suspect passages and Kouwe resigned at a meeting within the newspaper. Kouwe has said that the plagiarism was unintentional.

3: Aamir Khan Resigns from Copyright Act Panel

Finally today, in India, Bollywood star Aamir Khan has resigned from a government-assembled panel to discuss changes to the country’s copyright act. This comes after, according to media reporters, Khan said that a popular song of his needed his star power to become popular and that, by inference, writers should receive lower royalties. This angered many authors who accused Khan of trying to hurt them.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

It is Monday again and that means that it is time for another episode of the Copyright 2.0 Show.

It was a big week for copyright news, including the re-trial of the year, the Jammie Thomas case and it’s jaw-dropping jury award. However, there was a lot of other important happenings going on including some drama involving Catcher in the Rye, the New York Times and much, much more.

All in all, there were eleven stories this week including news from all over the copyright world including our “Weird Story of the Week”.

This week’s stories include:

• Thomas Loses Her Retrial in a Big Way
• Catcher in the Rye Sequel Because a Big Dispute
• NY Times Goes After a Political Site
• Nesson is at it Again
• Van Halen Sues… Nike?
• And Many more…

You can download the MP3 file here (direct download). Those interested in subscribing to the show can do so via this feed.

Show Notes

About the Hosts

Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey (@plagiarismtoday) is the Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today (Hint: You’re there now) and works as a copyright and plagiarism consultant. Though not an attorney, he has resolved over 700 cases of plagiarism involving his own work and has helped countless others protect their work and develop strategies for making their content work as hard as possible toward their goals. He is currently available for consultations on all copyright and plagiarism-related matters.

Patrick O’Keefe

Patrick O’Keefe (@iFroggy) is the owner of the iFroggy Network, a network of websites covering various interests. He’s the author of the book “Managing Online Forums,” a practical guide to managing online communities and social spaces. He maintains a blog about online community management at ManagingCommunities.com and a personal blog at patrickokeefe.com.

It has become something of a custom on this site to offer analysis and opinion on every great plagiarism scandal that breaks. I did it with the Obama, McCain and the recent Biden scandal. So, it is only fitting that we also take a few moments to analyze the the recent allegations (and confessions) of Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist accused of plagiarism.

Though a journalist caught plagiarizing a quote is no longer a huge scandal, even one as well-known as Dowd, what makes this case interesting to many is that Dowd, back in 1987, Dowd broke the story of then-Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s alleged plagiarism and vigorously attacked Biden for it.

Now, 20 years later, Biden is the Vice President and it is Dowd who faces very pointed and very public allegations of plagiarism. Though the New York Times appears to be standing by Dowd in the face of the accusations, saying that it was an error and has now been corrected, many have been celebrating the turn of events.

So question becomes whether or not Dowd plagiarized and, if so, how serious are the allegations? I decided to take a look at the passages and see for myself.

What Happened

Yesterday, a blogger on Talking Points Memo (TPM) noticed that a paragraph from Maureen Dowd’s Sunday online column bore a striking resemblance to a paragraph in a post by TPM’s editor Josh Marshall from earlier in the week.

Upon further examination, it become clear that the two paragraphs, both over 40 words, were identical save for one minor alteration. The story first appeared on TPM and quickly caught fire on liberal blogs, especially The Huffington Post.

The exact quotes are as follows, in Dowd’s column, she said the following:

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Marshall’s column, from earlier in the week, had this paragraph:

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Between the two columns, there was only one change, where Marshall said “We”, Dowd said “the Bush crowd”. It was a near-perfect plagiarism, but not necessarily a very damming one.

Dowd’s Response

Eventually, Dowd was force to respond and she admitted to the plagiarism in an email to the Huffington post saying:

josh is right. I didn’t read his blog last week, and didn’t have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now. i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent — and I assumed spontaneous — way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column. but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me. we’re fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.

The only story was corrected to give attribution to Marshall and a correction was also printed in the next day’s edition of The New York Times directing people to the new column on the Web.

However, the controversy is ongoing. Many are starting the process of looking through Dowd’s other work, including her book, and it seems likely that any instance of copying, no matter how slight, will be attacked.

My Thoughts

There is little doubt that Dowd copied from Marshall. Marshall’s passage is 43 words and all but one of them appear verbatim in Dowd’s passage, which is 45. However, it is not an egregious amount of copying by any definition. If this amount had been properly attributed, it would almost certainly not be viewed as unethical. and, even in plagiarized form, has a strong fair use argument in its favor.

Dowd had no reason to plagiarize this passage, she also had no reason to assume that verbatim plagiarism would not be detected. When I first heard about this incident and looked at the evidence, my first thought was that it was an honest mistake, one where the attribution had been hacked off in the editing.

However, there are two problems with that argument. First, Dowd edited the quote. Though the edit was minor in terms of the percentage, it changed the context of the quote at least some. though journalists do routinely edit quotes, there is a style standard for doing so and one never edits a quote to change its meaning. Dowd’s edits violate both of those rules.

The second problem, however, is Dowd’s response. Rather than admitting she made a mistake, she instead has claimed to have heard the quote while talking to her friend and wove it into her column. This claim, does not seem to hold up to scrutiny. If this is to be true. She remember a 43-word quote from a verbal conversation with approximately a 97% accuracy (43 words in the original quote, 42 reappearing verbatim). That is, quite frankly, almost impossible.

If Dowd had admitted that it was a mistake, said that no plagiarism was intended and worked to correct the mistake. I would not have been suspicious at all. The truth is accidents do happen and it is entirely possible that an intended quote could be accidentally melded in with original content. I know first hand that the process of drafting and editing a news article is brutal and confusing.

However, covering up what easily could have been, and may still be, an honest mistake with an almost certain lie doesn’t help. It is very likely that Dowd did just make a mistake, but now the specter of plagiarism will haunt her and the allegations will carry weight due to her response.

Bottom Line

In the end, the Dowd plagiarism scandal, much like the Obama, Biden and McCain ones from the election cycle, center more around politics than they do actual plagiarism. There is a great deal of schadenfreude on the parts of both conservatives and liberals, both of whom she has attacked over the years and there seems to be a great deal of interest in making a mountain out of this, even if it was just a mistake.

That being said, Dowd did not help herself any with her explanation and I would have encouraged her to be honest about what had happened.

Personally, if had been doing this plagiarism analysis for a client, I would have confirmed, with a very high level of probability, that copying did take place but I would have added that it was unclear if it was intentional plagiarism or an accident. The amount copied and the nature of the copying makes it very likely that the plagiarism could be attributed to accident, not malice.

However, Dowd’s own words cast doubt upon that. Before her reply, I would have at least considered defending her, much as I did with both Obama and McCain, but now I am unsure. Though I still believe that the lack of attribution was likely an accident and the editing a possible oversight, Dowd’s explanation makes very little sense and that, more than the copying itself, has given me reason to be worried.

1: Citing $130K in legal bills, Jammie Thomas lawyer withdraws

First off today, Jammie Thomas-Rasset’s attorney, Brian Toder, has filed a motion asking to withdraw from the case. He is citing over $130,000 in unpaid legal fees and the likelihood of many more as the retrial draws close. Thomas-Rasset has filed a separate motion that does not object to the withdrawal and the RIAA has filed a similar one.

This is not the first time Toder has filed such a motion. The first time was right before the first trial but, at that point, the judge did not allow the withdrawal saying that Thomas-Rasset was making payments to Toder and that communication had not broken down. However, it seems more likely that the judge will grant this request.

This may result in the retrial being delayed but the RIAA has filed an objection to any delay from the June start date. This is fairly unusual as a continuance is fairly customary in cases where an attorney has withdrawn from a case right before a trial was to begin.

2: A9 wins summary judgment motion on contributory infringement claim; entitled to DMCA 512(c) safe harbor

Next up, famous copyright litigant Perfect 10 lost again in the courtroom, this time against Amazon subsidiary A9. This case centered around a DMCA notice filed by Perfect 10 against A9 that did not result in the removal of the content because, rather than filing with A9 itself, Perfect 10 filed with its parent company, Amazon.

The judge ruled in favor of A9 in this case saying that filing the notice with Amazon did not result in A9 having actual knowledge of the infringement and, thus, losing their safe harbor protections. This could have a great deal of impact on those who file DMCA notices as it means they should be more careful about who they file their notices with, especially in cases when you have one company being owned by another.

Perhaps more disturbing for DMCA filers though is that the judge ruled that the lack of registration or an outdated registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is not grounds for losing safe harbor and that it is, in fact, inconsequential. This is something that is actually written into the law so it is a bit puzzling how the judge reached this conclusion, but nonetheless it stands at the moment.

However, in this case the latter point isn’t terribly important since the USCO filing was, despite Perfect 10′s claim, valid and accurate.

3: NYTimes columnist admits using blogger’s words

Finally today, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has been accused and has admitted to plagiarizing a paragraph from Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall. Dowd, however, claims that she did not read the blog post in question but instead, got the idea from a friend and she included it in her column.

Most people are treating Dowd’s story with a great deal of skepticism.

While this is not terribly uncommon in recent months and years, perhaps a sad testament to modern journalism, what makes Dowd’s case somewhat unique is she is famous in large part for exposing and repeatedly attacking Joe Biden’s alleged plagiarism in 1987 as part of run up to the 1988 election.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

A recent post in the New York Times entitled “Copyright Challenge for Sites That Excerpt” has caused a controversy on the Web. The article, by Brian Stetler, talks about the frustrations of copyright holders, specifically large media companies, with sites such as the Huffington Post and Silicon Valley Insider, that routinely excerpt and repeat information from them with a link back.

The article quotes Joshua Benton, the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, as saying, “They (the news organizations) think they need to defend their turf more aggressively.”

This has become a very hot topic in journalism circles in the last few months. Last month, Scott Baradell, a former journalist and executive at Belo Media, wrote that newspapers are running out of time to deal with their “content theft” problem. It has also taken off in blogging/social media circles as well as yesterday, following the NY Times article, Allen Stern on Center Networks wrote an article about about why scraping will only get worse.

These are among dozens of op-eds and blog posts on this topic. However, the question that has been raised by all of them is simple enough, when does copying, even excerpted and attributed, become something that harms content creators and what, if anything, should they do about it?

Answering it, however, is far more difficult than asking it.

The State of the Scraping Web

In Stern’s follow-up, he wrote that there are two types of scrapers “Those who scrape full rss feeds and those who scrape just enough to keep you on their site and keep the conversation there as well.” Though he originally thought the first type was the bad kind and the second was tolerable, he now feels that both kinds “suck”.

If I have noticed any shift or changing scraping over the past three years it has been that there are fewer and fewer “whole feed” scrapers to be found. Though there are still many on the Web, there has been a huge shift to partial feed scraping. When I look through my FairShare feed for this site and other sites I monitor, I see almost no blogs scraping more than a few dozen words.

I have been timid about going after these sites though many are clearly just spam blogs. By using such short excerpts, even though most violate my CC license or the licenses of my friends, they are giving themselves a decent fair use argument and they aren’t hurting either in any meaningful way.

However, there has been a new group of sites that have begun to push the boundaries between scrapers and social news/networking sites. As Stern pointed out, these sites scrape content and then encourage users to to comment, vote and socialize on generally stay on their site rather than visiting the original. I instantly think of SocialMedian and Fav.or.it when I ponder these sites.

Though the two sites above scrape significant portions of the post and even hotlink images, two things that has raised a lot of concern among many bloggers, there have been a new crop of scrapers that take only a small part of the content and add social news features such as voting and commenting. Though these sites may look like Digg or Reddit, it is clear that the content is not user-submitted and the human element only comes in after the fact.

In short, what is happening is scrapers have been shifting their focus, trying to improve their legitimacy both in the eyes of copyright law and in terms of users. With that, some have turned their attention away from blind attempts to game the search engines toward keeping users and building repeat traffic.

This has been a constant headache for me in the past few months and education/outreach attempts have been largely unsuccessful at producing any real change.

The Human Element

The area that Stern only touched on, which was actually the crux of the original New York Times column, is the human aspect of this. Many blogs have built quite a reputation on gathering news from other sources, excerpting and linking to it. Huffington Post, my most accounts, is the poster child for this kind of blogging and has turned it into a very successful business, one with over 20 million pageviews per month according to the article.

Though the Huffington Post has begun to do its own reporting, much of its content is still just excerpts and links to other articles. The question is whether the links it provides back to the content sources is adequate “compensation” for the content used. Many in the news industry feel that these sites are “leeches”, doing nothing to pay for the reporting and writing of an article but building an entire businesses around their use of other’s content even though the only value typically added is the organization and any additional commentary.

Even though most still feel excerpting and linking is, on the whole, a positive force, many news organizations have begun to recoil and are re-raising paywalls and shying away from their open attitude on free content. It is clear that many have reached the conclusion that “free” is not a viable long-term strategy for content that costs money to produce for the Web.

The question though becomes, what about the rest of us? Whether we’re blogging for fun, to promote a business or to earn ad revenue, we still spend hours writing posts and creating new works. Excerpting can affect us too. Good excerpting can drive tons of traffic and visitors, bad excerpting takes it away. Furthermore, many bloggers, including myself with the “3 Count” series, use excerpting alongside with original commentary. We certainly don’t want to harm or detract from those we pull from.

But where is the line drawn and how can anyone tell what side of the fence they are on?

Finding Guidance

As the New York Times article discussed, fair use guidelines in the U.S. are far too ambiguous to be of much use in this area. There are no “hard line” rules with fair use and everything is decided on a case-by-case basis.

While that maximized the flexibility in the law, it also causes headaches when trying to set up simple rules. Attributor, a company I have consulted with, took a stab at setting some “bright line” rules on their blog, suggesting the following three rules:

1. Excerpt must contain a link.
2. Excerpt must use less than 50% of the original content.
3. Excerpt must also use less than 100 words.

Though they admit that the exact numbers are up for debate, they feel that a combination of percentage and word count can be used to compile a good standard.

However, Silicon Valley Insider, one of the blogs mentioned in the New York Times article for its heavy use of excerpting, has taken a more “golden rule” approach to the problem and defined their excerpting policy as simply, “We excerpt others the way we hope others will excerpt us.” Though they open the door for excerpting well outside the boundaries of what Attributor laid out in their rules, they did say that they would work with content creators that feel the blog took too much or did not provide clear enough attribution.

What has become clear is that “fair” truly is in the eye of the beholder, something I strongly agree with in the Silicon Valley Insider post, and that what one blogger considers right another will consider wrong. For example, even though I’ve done everything I can to make the “3 Count” column as fair to the original reporters as possible, including large links, limited quoting and adding original commentary, many will likely think it to be bad form.

As true as it is, it doesn’t help bloggers that seek to reuse content while doing the right thing nor does it help those who’ve had their content use on borderline sites.

Excerpting is one giant gray area and it is getting uglier by the minute.

My Personal Experience

Recently, my article about CC0 took off, receiving a Slashdot and a mention on Ars Technica.

As a result of this, my article has been quoted and excerpted countless time. My FairShare feed has been lit up with quotes from the article over the past few days as it has appeared on many blogs of varying sizes. Nearly all of the uses have involved short quotes, almost always with proper links.

Though I have seen some traffic from those mentions, it certainly has only been a small percentage of visitors to those sites. It has been more of a trickle than a flood from these blogs.

However, this isn’t to say that I think those sites “ripped me off” or did anything wrong. On the contrary, I’m very glad that they liked the article enough to quote it and link to it. I’m very happy with how that article did and caught quite off guard by the attention it received.

On the sites that I visited, it seemed that everyone was doing what was both right and legal. Even if we discarded my CC license and assumed I wanted to stop this kind of behavior, fair use would probably have prevented me from taking any action. Even though I only received a small number of visitors, they are people who never would have found my site otherwise and the fact many visitors didn’t click through is not the fault of those that used the content. The visitors, for whatever reason, were not interested.

To me, proper excerpting is not about bright lines, but about symbiosis, making sure that the creators of the original work gain from your use as much as possible. Though I don’t think I am ready to accept the Silicon Valley Insider’s “golden rule” approach to the process, laws and feelings other than your own still have to be considered, I’m not in favor of bright line rules, such as Attributor’s either. Though the latter can be useful as loose guidelines, the type of thing editors would send to their reporters, but not as an absolute rule.

The reason excerpting doesn’t work as well as we would like is because visitors routinely don’t follow through to the source. Even the best use of an excerpt will only pass along a small percentage of visitors to the original story. Though there are exceptions to that rule, such as sites like Digg and Reddit (these are sites where the “easiest” path is to the original site), most of the time visitors don’t click through, it’s that simple.

As surfers, we are all guilty of that, we’ve all read a post with an excerpt and moving on without checking out the source. We probably do it hundreds of times a day without realizing it. First off, it is infeasible from a time standpoint, second, sometimes the excerpt is all we need or want.

That’s understandable, and it explains why even proper excerpting can feel like a very unbalanced relationship.

Bottom Line

If you’re a blogger or are otherwise posting content on the Web, you are automatically involved in three different ways. First, as someone who is going to have their work turned into excerpts, as someone who is going to use other people’s work, either as quotes or as research, and as a visitor reading excerpted content and deciding whether or not to click through.

Though bright line rules can provide some guidance, the only solution that is going to work is respect. Whenever we do any of these things, we have to show respect to the others involved. We have to work when using other people’s content to attribute correctly and ensure they gain from the use, we have to be respectful of other’s rights to use our content within some limited capacity and, as we surf the Web and share links, we have to work to ensure we find reference original sources or at least sites with original commentary.

Are mistakes going to be made? Yes. Are some people going to go too far and need to be called on it? Yes. But if we keep it in our minds that the people who do the research, write the articles and create the content deserve the lion’s share of the reward and let that guide our actions, for the most part we’ll be ok.

Though big content creators like newspapers and magazines are going to have to hammer out business strategies to keep their doors open as they transition to the Web, bloggers and smaller content creators have a different, albeit similar, set of concerns.

In the end, we all have to work together. The difference between the good guys and the spammers is that the latter doesn’t care if the creator gets any of their due. If they work within the law, it is only because it is easier, not because it is the right thing to do. Good neighbors on the Web consider these issues and, though they might reach conflicting conclusions, at least try to offer support back to creators.

We should focus as much on the true bad guys of the Web, they are the ones doing by far the most harm and, while this conversation is important to have for many reasons, it can’t be a distraction either.

There are plenty of real scumbags on the Web to fight.

Up until literally a few hours ago, the New York Times Co. and GateHouse media seemed to be destined for an epic courtroom clash over which much of the Web’s linking practices hung into balance.

The dispute was over a “hyper local” site created under the boston.com banner, which is part of The Boston Globe, which in turn is owned by the NYT. The site, featured links aggregated via RSS from a GateHouse-owned local blog, published under the “Wicked Local” banner.

To be clear, this was NOT a case of RSS scraping. The boston.com site was merely using the headlines and linking out to the GateHouse stories. However, GateHouse filed suit in the matter last month and the matter seemed to be heading to a trial this week (one of the fastest turnarounds I have seen).

However, the matter was abruptly settled, as was announced yesterday, much to the chagrin of legal scholars and Web technologists hoping to see a solid ruling in this area.

The details of the settlement have been slow to come to light, but a PDF on the New York Times corporate site lays out the actual terms.

What does the settlement say and what does that mean for the rest of us? That’s what we’re about to look at.

The Settlement

The settlement itself is a pretty basic document. However, like most legal documents, it spends a lot of words saying something that can be summed up pretty quickly:

1. NYT has agreed to stop aggregating all GateHouse content.
2. NYT has agreed to remove all existing links the best it can by March 1.
3. GateHouse will take some undefined steps to prevent future aggregation.
4. Provided the other terms are met, nothing in the settlement prevents deep linking of content (Meaning this settlement only pertains to automated aggregation).
5. No money changed hands and both sides are covering their own legal fees.

In short, regarding the use of its content on NYT-owned sites, GateHouse got pretty much everything that they wanted, including a removal of all existing aggregated links and a promise to not aggregate in the future. NYT, on the other hand, avoided a legal conflict and playing any money.

It was a compromise settlement, as most are, but one can not help but feel that GateHouse just managed to bully one of the largest and most prestigious new organizations in the world.

What Does it Mean for Bloggers

The frustrating thing about settlements, such as this one, as that they do not become case law and have no bearing on future cases. If and when this kind of dispute arises again, we will be starting over from square one.

What is interesting is that the NYT is still continuing to aggregate headlines form other sources, just not from GateHouse sites. This kind of duality is hard for many bystanders to justify.

However, it doesn’t bode well for RSS aggregation that GateHouse was able to push the New York Times into stopping the systematic linking to their headlines.

On the positive side, this means that RSS scraping and spam blogging is even less likely to be viewed as legal and ethical. On the negative, it makes the future of more acceptable aggregation, such as headline widgets, more tentative.

Where I think that this is more likely heading is in a similar direction to search engine indexing, which will likely mean one of or a combination of these two things:

1. A system similar to meta tags and/or robots.txt that will allow RSS publishers to identify how they want their feeds to be used. Disobeying the tags may be grounds for legal action.
2. A notice and takedown system by which an RSS publisher can request their work be removed, failure to do so could also be looked at as an infringement.

In short, I feel strongly that RSS headline aggregation, since it is already a commonplace activity, will remain, for the most part, an accepted practice. However, there will be systems put into place, either using technology or the legal system, that will give RSS publishers who don’t want to allow such aggregation a means to opt out.

Wholesale, unlicensed RSS scraping, on the other hand, will remain legally dubious.

Conclusions

Obviously, those who are outside the case and building technologies around RSS would have preferred an actual ruling. Still, the settlement can provide clues as to the direction we are heading in with RSS aggregation, especially when you consider it’s potential use as a negotiation tool in future disputes.

This may not be the firm answers we were all hoping for, but it may be the beginning to the answers that we need.

Let us hope that when the ruling does come down, it manages to draw the line in such a way that rights and aggregation are both protected.

Copyright law is always a tricky balance and every ruling threatens to upset it. This dispute is no different.