NY Times Sued For Content Theft
Starting your day off with a bit of humor. This story is about a week old, but, still relevant
GateHouse Media Inc. sued the Boston Globe’s parent company, claiming its new practice of grabbing headlines from GateHouse Web sites constitutes copyright infringement.
In a lawsuit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Boston, GateHouse asks a judge to stop the New York Times [NYT] Co. from linking to GateHouse articles on Boston.com’s new local advertising-supported “Your Town” sites. A Newton site launched last month sparked the dispute.
GateHouse, which publishes eight dailies and 117 weeklies in Massachusetts, has posted Newton news online with its WickedLocal.com brand for many years.
The Fairport, N.Y.-based company, which has regional headquarters in Needham, also accused the Globe’s parent of unfair competition, false advertising, trademark dilution, unfair business practices, trademark infringement and breach of contract.
New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis called the suit “without merit.”
“Far from being illegal or improper, this practice of linking to sites is common and is familiar to anyone who has searched the Web,” she said in a statement.
Bwahahahaha……..huh? Wait. Um, I think I am going to have to take the side of the Grey Lady and Boston Times, depending on how much they are linking. We here in ye olde blogosphere kinda rely on doing that. Heck, I just did that for this story (of course, I’m not trying to make money off the stories). But the big point is that Gatehouse seems to be suing primarily on headlines with hyperlinks. Woah!
For more details, check out Media Nation here, here, and here.
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Posted by William Teach on December 27, 2008 8:34 am
» Filed Under Fraud/misrepresentation, Liberal Media/Bias, News
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One Response to “NY Times Sued For Content Theft”
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Links are part and parcel of the web. I hope the court is going to find a smart compromise. This can not mean that linking should be illegal. It can also not mean that stealing content produced (and paid for) by others is the solution.
Boston.com is principally doing a good thing for wickedlocal.com – the links are not set to ‘nofollow’ (sorry for the technical term) and so they are not only bringing extra traffic to them, but also adding valuable Google page rank.
I guess the solution is easy: what Boston.com does should in general be OK – Unless the website linked does not actively veto the usage. Analog to the daily practice of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act WickedLocal.com should be able to contact boston.com – and ask them to enjoin from using their content.
Sadly it appears to me that GateHouse is less interested in stopping the usage but more in receiving punitive damage. Kind of death throes of a company sitting on a dying business model.