Andrew Beaujon
May 22, 2013
10:31 am
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Andrew Beaujon
Apr. 25, 2013
5:06 pm
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Taylor Miller Thomas
Apr. 17, 2013
4:26 pm
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Andrew Beaujon
Sep. 7, 2012
12:04 pm
Associated Press
A New York judge has
sentenced artist Shepard Fairey to two years of probation and 300 hours of community service for lying and destroying evidence relevant to the Associated Press' complaint that he'd used one of its images of Barack Obama as the basis for his iconic "HOPE" poster. Fairey
admitted in 2009 he'd "submitted false images and deleted others in the legal proceedings." He
pleaded guilty to criminal contempt in February.
The government had argued Fairey should get jail time; Fairey's attorneys argued his offenses were misdemeanors. The AP sounds glad to have this all over and done with:
"After spending a great amount of time, energy and legal effort, all of us at The Associated Press are glad this matter is finally behind us," AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement. "We hope this case will serve as a clear reminder to all of the importance of fair compensation for those who gather and produce original news content."
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Steve Myers
Aug. 14, 2012
8:11 am
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Andrew Beaujon
Aug. 10, 2012
9:28 am
Social Science Research Network
Few journalists understand the rules of fair use, but they often successfully fake their way through the issues it raises. That's one takeaway from "
Copyright, Free Speech, and the Public's Right to Know: How Journalists Think About Fair Use," a study by Patricia Aufderheide, Peter Jaszi, Katie Bieze and Jan Lauren Boyles, who interviewed 80 journalists and compared their often-comical understanding of legal matters to reality.
Among their findings, people who work in newsrooms had the advantage of colleagues they could consult:
Interviewees who work within institutions had confidence that their editors had established a newsroom practice that they could comfortably follow. Journalists also referred often to “common sense,” or as one put it, “You just know in general you shouldn’t park too close to a hydrant.” Through this process, most journalists acquire baseline knowledge of fair use, often without realizing they are even relying on it. Those who lack newsroom support often display less confidence.
Amazingly, they often got it right:
Interviewees demonstrated a robust confidence in their ability to access other people’s copyrighted material without permission or payment, in some situations, typically without knowing they were employing fair use. Further, when they employed fair use without identifying it as such, they often accurately used the reigning logic of the doctrine -- transformative purpose and appropriate amount.
Photo editors were more sensitive to copyright concerns than others, maybe because so many of the people they work with get their stuff stolen all the time.
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Jeff Sonderman
June 27, 2012
10:49 am
Slate |
Pbump.net
Farhad Manjoo writes:
How does this one site come up with so many simple ideas that people want to spread far and wide? What’s their secret?
The answer, in short, is that BuzzFeed’s staff finds stuff elsewhere on the Web, most often at Reddit. They polish and repackage what they find. And often—and, from what I can tell, deliberately—their posts are hard to trace back to the original source material.
... Once you understand how central Reddit is to BuzzFeed, it’s like spotting the wizard behind the curtain. Whenever you see a popular BuzzFeed post, search Reddit, and all will be revealed.
It's not the first time BuzzFeed has
taken heat for republishing other people's photos in lists like “
33 Animals Who Are Extremely Disappointed in You.” Manjoo said BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti "concedes that some of its ideas have appeared elsewhere online, but he argued that
there’s nothing wrong with that because few things on the Web are really original."
Grist writer Philip Bump, writing on his personal blog,
evaluates Manjoo's case against BuzzFeed:
Where Manjoo's post hits hardest, I think, is when it suggests that BuzzFeed steals ideas. ...
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Steve Myers
May 2, 2012
12:31 pm
The Atlantic | Slate
Tuesday, The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal wrote that
BuzzFeed co-founder Jonah Peretti believes BuzzFeed can legally republish others' photos in thematic packages such as "
33 Animals Who Are Extremely Disappointed in You."
So, Peretti told me that he considers a BuzzFeed list -- its sequencing, framing, etc -- to be a transformative use of photos. That is to say, including that unattributed photo of the otter in that list was OK because its inclusion as an "extremely disappointed" animal transformed the nature of the photo.
"It's a question," Peretti said, "of when lots of little things add up to a transformation as opposed to a copyright violation."
A law professor tells Slate's Jeremy Stahl, however, that
he wouldn't expect that to hold up in court.
Adding a funny caption, however, has not been viewed as transformative. “I would expect an interesting response from a judge if I argued that putting a caption on a photo was transformative use for the purposes of fair use,” says UVA professor, copyright expert, and occasional Slate contributor Thomas Nachbar.
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Steve Myers
Apr. 23, 2012
12:54 pm
Meltwater has filed a response to the
Associated Press' copyright lawsuit by saying that it's simply a sophisticated Internet search engine, and it hasn't violated copyright law by indexing AP stories.
In its
copyright infringement lawsuit, AP called Meltwater a "modern-day clipping service." For $5,000 a year, Meltwater enables clients to search news stories for mentions of keywords and to receive email digests that contain portions of relevant news stories. AP contends Meltwater is undercutting its business by providing its content without paying AP for it.
Meltwater's defense is important,
as Nieman Journalism Lab's Justin Ellis reported, because courts have treated search engines and clipping services differently in regard to copyright law.
By attacking a search engine, Meltwater contends, AP "challenges one of the core functions of the Internet."
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Jeff Sonderman
Mar. 26, 2012
12:37 pm
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