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Some thoughts on copyright oppression and the 'bloid

2010-07-24

Yesterday we discussed the legal bully boy who's decided to make a living shaking down bloggers for copyright infringement. As an instrument of oppression it's more effective than calls to "take away the license" of Fox News because it goes after the little guy who's feeding the opinion system. With very few exceptions bloggers can't afford lawsuits. We work for a living and blogging is a spare time activity.

We had lots of suggestions and I've been thinking on the subject for the past 24+ hours. Rantburg's about to complete its ninth year of hoovering press articles relevant to WoT for comment or just for record and I'd like to see year ten. At that point I'm thinking seriously about turning it over to Doc Steve and retiring.

To survive to that point we have to think about defenses, so here are a few points I'd like to emphasize.

Use just the meat of the article. I'm the worst offender in this respect, but we've got to keep articles short and snappy, which means chopping them as soon as the boilerplate starts. Everybody knows the U.S. has waged war against the Taliban since 2001 blah blah blah.
Use our foreign sources. The flavor of the 'Burg comes from Pak Daily Times, Bangla Daily Star, and all the other tasty news organizations that carry the news a day or two (sometimes a week or two) before it reaches the domestic papers. Often the news doesn't make the domestic MSM, which is why we carry more news that's fit to print than the New York Times.

Some of those sources wink in and out of existence without warning. Who among us doesn't miss the Frontier Post, that didn't pay its hosting bill? The Balochistan Post, that was fulminating on Tuesday, gone on Wednesday? Quqnoos is now Tolo News, so the database needs updated and I haven't done it yet. That's my fault and I've got to be more diligent. The Rantburg News page should be more up to date than it is. That's my bad alone.
Add your commentary. Comments can go inline, sidebar, or after you post an article. It's hard to make the "fair use" case if the article's there with no commentary -- what'd we use it for? We know it's part of a continuing series, but it's best if that's obvious enough that we don't have to point it out in court with a $250 an hour lawyer. Or you can pick a subject and write your own article on it from scratch.
Translate the article into Rantburgspeak. I played with the Translate feature, adding it as an option, but regarding it as a toy. Every once in awhile I look at it and discover it's broken or it doesn't work on Firefox or something goofy like that. I'm thinking seriously about building it into the posting process, so it'll replace "gunman" with "gunny," "militant" with "terrorist," "Red Cross" with "Red Thingy" and so on.

Bad's translations from Spanish-language press, by the way, count as original content.

Since we've been carrying more than just WoT, and I'd as soon not give up pages 4 and 6, I'd have to extend the translation process to the Wonderful World of Politix, replacing "political operative" with "ward heeler" or something along that line. Suggestions for both translation processes will be welcome. Keep in mind that we're looking for a more natural translation than Babelfish gives.

I may also add automatic inlines, if I can refine the process enough. When a spokesman for the Taliban says something the following sentence should read "If you can't believe the Taliban who can you believe?" The same might apply to any spokesman for the Pak government or the city of Chicago, or even the city of [fill in the blank].
Give me more suggestions. I'm getting old. My mind's slowing down to slug-like lethargy. If I tilt my head too sharply thought process runs out my ear and stains my collar.

One of yesterday's suggestions was to post the link conspicuously rather than hiding it under the headline. I may do that, or I may take only the base link and show that and leave the full link under the headline. I'm still thinking about it. I've been trying to source articles, which is easiest when I use RSS -- the "[Al Arabiya Latest]" slugs, or "[Iran Press TV Latest]." I may have it insert the base URL if the slug's not present.

On another note, I've been mailing out the 'bloid as soon as I complete it for a couple years now. I've been using my GMail account to send it to a mailing list with about 70 recipients. Last night they all bounced because Google's changed its spam-sniffing engine. I'll have to write a routine to send them directly from the 'Burg's mail server, which involves rebuilding the mailing list. If you want on it, now's the time to let me know. Likewise if you're on it and you're tired of getting the 'bloid in your mail let me know and I'll dump you.

Posted by:Fred

#13 A suggestion.

After having dicked around editing out inline ads, filler text, unnecessary paragraphs, etc, I find I often don't add a comment giving the reason I posted the piece - snarky or otherwise.

Hence, a box on the posting page in which a comment must be added would be both helpful and cover the 'fair use' requirement.

Ie, either you post a link or you post the text of an article with your comment.

Posted by: phil_b 2010-07-24 20:04

#12 Fred:

Please add me to the bloid, you should have my address.

Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2010-07-24 19:05

#11 Fred:

One of my Golf Buddies is an Exec with the group that owns the Las Vegas Riverview-Urinal. He said as far as he knows the big gripe with the blogs is that some are taking content and posting it as there own. He felt as long as you link to the original and include the byline (Written by Sam Smuck etc.), we should be ok. His statement: "Bring on the links!"

Just his opinion.

Conservative website among 3 sued over R-J copyrights

Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2010-07-24 19:02

#10 As far as the non-WoT stuff, overwhelming WoT stuff, it might work to use a "linkdump" page, sort of like the Sink Trap, which has a good look. For example, I've long admired the *style* of Linkdump.be, even though their content is for the most part crapola, (and some NSFW, be advised.)

http://linkdump.be/

What it would amount to is a page of "Ephemera links that posters here found, that they thought someone here might think was interesting." No commentary attached to it, unless interesting enough to mention in the O Club.

It could serve double duty for the mods to put links that were bloating the main page, or had posting errors, without killing them outright. No frets about the double posting of popular stories, or archiving, either.

Just a thought.

Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-07-24 16:38

#9 snark away! Fair use, baybee!

aside to Dr Steve: you are one ~~stylish bitch~~ great asset. Don't change!

oh wait...you said style...nevermind

Posted by: Frank G 2010-07-24 16:02

#8 A few points in response to Fred's and others --

1) Fred -- no deal. The Burg is yours, I'm just a happy worker-bee :-)

2) Use just the meat of the article.

Absolutely. I'm guilty too, but I do try, as the unofficial Rantburg Copy Editor ~~and Style Bitch~~, to cut the fluff. We should always do that. It's tougher to complain about infringement if we're using only a part of an article.

Readers who wish to post should review our style guide (linked on the main page) and work to trim / rewrite / translate a post. Think of it as an opportunity to teach the MSM how to write.

3) Use our foreign sources.

Absolutely. Who wants to read the NYT for their news?

4) Add your commentary.

Whether serious or snark, your commentary makes the Burg special. I know there is a tendency to post articles 'straight up' without comments if time is limited, but that just sets us up for a complaint. Add your comments!

If you don't have comments to add and don't have the time / inclination to edit, seriously consider just posting a link and letting us mods handle it.

5) Headline and link

I'd personally leave it the way it is.

And now one plea from me -- let's start limiting the non-WoT stuff. Some is unavoidable and helps us understand what's going on in the world. But some of the political corruption, etc., causes us to stray from what makes the Burg unique. Again, I'm guilty too. I point out that posting those stories without commentary also makes it tough for us to defend the Burg -- why is a story about a local crooked Dhimmicrat posted if the Burg is about the WoT?

Just my thoughts. I don't often get to thank Fred for allowing me to mod and have a barrel of fun doing so, but I thank him now.

AoS

Posted by: Steve White 2010-07-24 15:44

#7 My 2 cents. Posters should write the titles different than the articles. The hidden link is ok. The poster can do a snarky executive summary highlighted. Then the reader goes to the link. That would be done for the alpha hotel type of sites that like the lawfare model. The rest of sources should be reported using Fred's model.

We just need to know the hazmat sites.

And yes, Fred, put me on the bloid. You have my email address. The enemy will not quit without a fight, foreign or domestic.

Posted by: Alaska Paul in Hooper Bay, Alaska 2010-07-24 14:22

#6 The easiest way to get around this problem is a filter for postings so that if the URL content comes from a copyright sensitive site, the posting is automatically abbreviated to just a title.

This is close to how things are right now, the only difference being it is automatic, based on the linked URL, instead of the guesses of posters.

For example, if a link is from http://ap.tbo.com/
it posts as link only, because all their links are AP links.

Free Republic has used "link onlys" for a while now.

Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-07-24 14:00

#5 I figured the comments and pictures would make it harder to machine-match to an original. I've also note WaPo uses -- instead of a dash, which I change to -, figuring the -- is a marker of sorts. I've seen that same thing - funny punctuation marks - somewhere else, but with a different marker.

Posted by: Bobby 2010-07-24 13:57

#4 Yeah, Pap. That'd be hard...

Posted by: tu3031 2010-07-24 13:40

#3 In short, look at this as an opportunity to do a better job than the regular media.

Posted by: Pappy 2010-07-24 13:39

#2 Suppose the poster writes a few original lines getting at the meat of the article and the site with the original article is linked; is that O.K.?

Absolutely. Fair use is fair use. The issue with bloggers who have been sued is that the bloggers being sued made no effort at respecting the copyright of the originator of the article.

For example:

From the Las Vegas Tribune:

Amy Kremer, one of the founding members of the modern Tea Party movement, was in Las Vegas this week to help propel Conservative Republican Tea Party activist, Sharron Angle, to victory in the campaign for U.S. Senate to Defeat Harry Reid.

Could be rewritten like:

The Las Vegas Tribune reports that Amy Kreme, who was a founding member of the Tea party organization, was in Las Vegas to help he senatorial campaign of Sharron Angle.

Did we violate copyright?

No.

Did we include salient elements of the original article that could be construed as copyright violation?

Hell, no. We rewrote it. Web crawlers can pick the article apart until hell freezes over and other thing they will get out of it is a lousy bandwdith bill.

The issue is not to paste the article, but if you can't rewrite, only use a little bit of it, i.e. the meat of it.

The alternative is to do what Fred does: Inline comments. What is done at rantburg changes the whole complexion of copyright if commentary is added to the articles. It makes the article a whole new work, and that is protected.

Posted by: badanov 2010-07-24 13:35

#1 Fred, you have provided an excellent site and service. The Rantburg website has provided a source of commented, interpreted, and analyzed news. It has done the work that the MSM is too lazy or agenda-driven to do themselves.

These copyright leeches could end up freezing out the blogging sites and bloggers. I saw reference to a lawsuit yesterday where a man was sued for using a copyrighted article that he wrote.

Suppose the poster writes a few original lines getting at the meat of the article and the site with the original article is linked; is that O.K.? Is a analyzed and commented article really the original copyrighted article? Glenn Reynolds is a Constitutional lawyer at the University of Tennessee. I wonder what he would say about this issue of intellectual property?

Posted by: JohnQC 2010-07-24 13:07

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