On Tuesday, a U.S. District judge denied GateHouse's request that Boston.com immediately stop linking to its stories. The Boston Globe reported, "Instead of deciding whether to grant a restraining order immediately, Judge William G. Young said the court would consider an injunction after a jury trial, scheduled to begin Jan. 5."

 

GateHouse Media, which owns more than 100 papers in the New England area, is suing the New York Times Company, which owns The Boston Globe's Boston.com, for publishing headlines, the first sentence of many stories, and a deep link to articles on its local Boston Web sites -- usually 10 to 30 items daily.

		RELATED
		Glossary of Terms Deep Link: A link that directs readers to a specific page instead of the site's home page. The permalink on this article page is an example of a deep link. Snippets (also referred to some as a widget): Reusable source code that allows users to embed content into other sites. Fair use: This chart does a good job explaining what has been traditionally considered fair use.   Previous Coverage "GateHouse Media targets Boston.com," Boston Herald "Newton TAB publisher sues New York Times Co. over Web site," GateHouse News Service "GateHouse sues NYT Co. over local websites," Boston.com Romenesko Links "GateHouse sues NYT Co. over local websites," via Romenesko "GateHouseGate," Mark Potts "A Danger to Journalism," Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine.com   Additional Poynter Articles

GateHouse claims its sites are losing money because people are visiting the individual story pages instead of the home pages of its sites. It wants to block the Times Co. from aggregating its content, receive compensation for losses, punitive damages and reimbursement for legal fees.

In a statement from the Times Co. published on Boston.com, Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis says the company is "doing what many other news sites already do -- aggregating headlines and snippets of relevant stories published elsewhere on the Web."

The Opinions
Many initial reactions from bloggers side with The Times Co. Danny Sanchez included links to the 25-page lawsuit, request for injunction and affidavits in his blog entry on Journalistopia. Sanchez notes deep linking is widely practiced, and this lawsuit could have "dire implications" on bloggers, news sites, social media and other aggregators. Sanchez mentions Poynter's Romenesko in his blog stating:

"If GateHouse were to have its way with its deep link argument, it would create a legal precedent that makes the act of linking to a copyrighted article illegal. It could mean a crippling of sites such as Romenesko and the Drudge Report, which can bring in enormous amounts of readers while being primarily built upon links to someone else's expensive-to-create content. But, if enforced, it would also cut off the voluminous flow of readers who arrive to news sites via search engines and aggregators. That, too, has an effect on the bottom line."

 

Henry Blodget questions the strategy of punishing a high-traffic site like Boston.com for sending additional traffic it would not likely see otherwise to its site.

Dan Gillmor supports GateHouse's specific claim -- if true -- that the Times overcame security measures set in place by GateHouse to protect its content. Gillmor writes it's the custom for sites to respect html code that says "leave me alone." If Boston.com ignored this code, then that's the main difference between what Boston.com has done and what other sites like Google do.

Gillmor mentions Dan Kennedy's blog post from Media Nation, which points out that the Times Co. may not be in compliance with fair use because of the substantiality of the content that it is republishing without permission.

The Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) staff has added this case to its database of legal threats directed at those who engage in online speech. The database entry shares all of the court information and documents, and legal updates as they happen. In a blog entry, the CMLP staff breaks down the legal issues involved.

In Wendy Davis's blog post on Online Media Daily, she interviews Eric Goldman, a cyberlaw specialist who said that facts can't be copyrighted. And since most first sentences and leads are usually a summary of facts, this could be fair use of copyrighted content.

The Twittersphere
"What I like about this Gatehouse story is the ability of the meme to go from anger to bargaining to acceptance and back to anger in 8 hours."  -- @dkiesow

"After a day reading Gatehouse vs. NYT-related stuff, I'm beginning to think it's in everyone's best interest for boston.com ... to take steps to negotiating with Gatehouse to establish conditions for the withdrawal of the lawsuit. It's not just this suit ... it is the precedents that may be established that could deeply injure the ability to link." (Three tweets) -- @gmarkham

Similar cases/events
In 2005 the Agence France-Press filed a copyright lawsuit against Google News for aggregating its headlines and summaries. The two companies settled and now Google has made arrangements with other news sources like the Associated Press to pay for its content.

The Huffington Post was recently criticized for re-publishing a concert review (in its entirety) that originally appeared in the Chicago Reader. Huff Post co-founder Jonah Peretti admitted its mistake in a blog post on Wired.com saying:


In the first case to deal with deep links to Webcasts, a U.S. District Judge in Texas granted an injunction against the Web site Supercrosslive.com in 2006 for broadcasting copyrighted audio Web casts published by SFX Motor Sports.

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