Waxman: Deadline’s copyright infringement lawsuit attacks ‘the way of the Web’

The Wrap
Sharon Waxman writes that a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the parent company of Deadline against the company that owns The Hollywood Reporter tries to fight the way news is broken on the Web. What Deadline founder Nikki Finke says is stealing, Waxman writes, is simply what news outlets have been doing for years — confirming news that their competitors break. “Here’s the problem: any website can follow news that is broken on a given site, change a few words, and publish it. THR aside, that it is the way of the web. Countless sites pick up news that has been gathered by sites that do original reporting — including TheWrap and Deadline — and cut and paste.” The Wrap also reports that the claim of stealing entire stories appears to be unsubstantiated. But it notes that The Hollywood Reporter has removed a home page carousel that the lawsuit says is identical, code-wise, to one of Deadline’s sister sites, down to a misspelling (“carouasel”) and the initials of Deadline’s parent company. The Hollywood Reporter says the carousel was coded by a vendor and that it takes that allegation seriously, unlike the other parts of the lawsuit.