[...] GateHouse-NYT Co. deal: A bad precedent for the web » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Futur… [...]

[...] weil der Vergleich zu einem Präzedenzfall werden könnte. Zwar ist die aussergerichtliche Einigung rechtlich nicht bindend, aber es kann durchaus sein, dass sich Urteile in zukünftigen ähnlichen Fällen darauf beziehen [...]

1) Boston launched a direct competitor to WickedLocal, to the point of using the same positioning language
2) Gatehouse asked Boston to stop indexing, several times. Boston refused.
3) Gatehouse tried to block the IP of Boston’s crawler. Boston found a work-around and continued to crawl.

.. etc. It’s worth reading the claim to get the flavor.

[And to echo Chris' comments - at Daylife, we get daily publisher requests to *be* indexed, and requests to be more heavily promoted. Opt-outs are nearly non-existent. Market data indicates Gatehouse is the exception. Especially when Newscorp, Timewarner, Gannett, WPNI, and nearly every other major media company practices aggregation in big and small ways.]

Since we’ve had over 10,000 publishers *ask* to be included in Topix (dwarfing the folks like gatehouse which asked to be removed), it is pretty clear that there are peoplel who recognize that being included on CNN’s front page of local news or Mapquest’s local news headlines, or myAOL or ESPN’s local sports stories is useful (since we are powering all of these guys).

Just because the IT vendor can’t see the value doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist :-)

This decision just reasserts the status quo – people can link to you, and if you really get bent out of shape, you can block them from crawling you.

Clearly no one *really* wants to go to court, since we don’t know what will happen.

Obviously, the web is built off of “opt out” linking rules, and if Stephen Larson thinks he’s going to get “opt in” copyright rules on the web, he’s likely to go out of business before *that* happens, because no sane person is not going to settle first…

Mind you, the real issue is that most local areas don’t have enough coverage — we’ve grown the commentary to supply news in areas which don;t have that coverage, such that most new subjects on Topix are user generated now. 80% of the pageviews on Topix are on the commentary, 75% the threads coming in without a referring article.

So even if people like Stephen get their way, we’ll do just fine, thank you.

It’s good that it didn’t happen now. I’d like to see the current generation of senior judges die off first. I don’t think most of them would understand the technology or the ethos of computers, the Internet and blogging in particular. Not sure that the next generation will be any less corporatist, but at least they’ll know how to turn a computer on.

The bottom line is, the Internet belongs to the taxpayer. Big corporations can go on using it for free, but not at the expense of our freedoms. The advertising-supported model that has turned radio and TV into a vast wasteland cannot be allowed to do the same to the ‘Net. It’s a public place, not a private market. We have a right to read, review, discuss, debate, critique, quote and link to anything anybody puts in our public square. Let’s keep creeping privatization out of our public discourse.

And while we’re at it, let’s find a better model that provides for direct support of content creators by consumers, without a middleman soaking up most of the gravy, who then uses the money for lawyers to try to limit the rights creators and consumers.
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[...] 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. [...]

The case was not about the links that are the backbone of the web. It wasn’t about the blogger who links to interesting sources, or the blogger who quotes a headline and a few paragraphs from the local newspaper then riffs on the story. It’s not even about the blogger who starts The Bedford Falls Watchdog and includes a feed from the local newspaper in a rail on the side of the blog. And it’s not really about search, although that was allowed to muddy the settlement.

All those uses do indeed work on the principle of sending traffic through the link. But when aggregation comes to selling ads against content, there’s the possibility for exploitation. It would be possible to create a Neo York Times out of feeds and reblogged content from the real Times and sell ads of your own against that. More likely, it would be Potter Media Corp. creating a hyperlocal site off the work of local bloggers. It’s possible to aggregate just enough to make it not worth clicking through to the original content and ads. Unfair use suggests very little of your own work, riding on someone’s else work, for your profit and not theirs.

That’s too close to link farms, spam blogs and hot-linked images to to be considered in the generous spirit of the link economy. The ethos of the link economy should be supportive and not exploitative. It shouldn’t take a lawsuit, but there are times when it’s reasonable for someone to say: Back off, be fair, you’re using too much of my work, and come to an understanding.

There’s something else at work here. It’s the separation of reporting from the bundling of news. Traditionally, it’s been a vertical organization: Reporters turn in their news, which goes down the assembly line through various bundlers (editors, layout artists, printers), all working for the same organization. We’re starting to see a horizontal process. Scattered reporters do their reporting, scattering it to the winds by feeds and streams, then unrelated bundlers like Daylife or Alltop design aggregators as they see fit. The trouble is, the reporters for now are still working for other aggregators, who bear the overhead.

We’d like to think there’s value in the original reporting, but unless the reporter can watermark a fact and sell an ad that travels with that fact where ever it goes, the aggregator will be the middle man who makes the money. Why not, I guess, if the aggregator has created an elegant design that delivers the news you want. Should we all go out and sell ads against the Times’ reporting, so that it becomes a competition for the best interface design?

The questions arise when the link economy transitions from sharing in the conversation (and a link is a generous thing to offer someone else) to selling ads against content (and the middleman is grabbing the lapels of your customers before they get to your link).

As far as aggregation goes, I think it’s very enlightened of you to remove feeds if someone doesn’t want them to be aggregated — but I don’t think you should *have* to, provided you aren’t reprinting the full text.

As far as I’m concerned, RSS feeds are a content-distribution method, and they imply that the content is meant to be used — in accordance with copyright of course — and that includes fair use, quoting, etc. If you don’t want your content used, then don’t put out an RSS feed.

Think of it this way though: what if this was a blogger who simply didn’t want to be aggregated by a particular site. I may have this objection if the site (news or not) that I was being aggregated on did not correspond with my personal or political beliefs. I could then say “hey! I don’t want your traffic because I don’t support your viewpoint!” and as a blogger it would be fine for me to ask that, and for me to expect the other guy to drop my feed. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to bring it into the courts because it would be settled informally.

At Placeblogger.com, when someone requests their feed be removed from our aggregator, we grant their request. No problem.

but as I understand it, GateHouse just couldn’t say “hey, quite aggregating our feed!” and that the matter had to go to court.

so, I don’t see it as setting precedent, but that it’s an agreement between two particular parties. and any other disputing parties will have to forge their own agreements. Maybe it will make a difference for aggregation sites, but that will be dependent on whether or not the parties involved aggree to the aggregation.

That’s bad law, and it would make for a significantly less useful Internet as well — and likely wouldn’t even help the content owners who seem to think it’s their only hope.