https://mobile.twitter.com/Hiddemhigh/status/769636034749558...
it appears the journalist works for both de volkskrant and al-jazeera. scrollytelling is mad that they haven't got paid twice.
In addition to copying the code, they left some original asset urls in there as well. Which means that those come out of our bandwidth bill. So yeah ... we're a little mad. Not terribly so, though. Life's too short.
I don't know if it was intended, but that line is really funny.
There are journalists fighting the good fight all over the world (Greenwald etc). They shouldn't be demeaned just because they have colleagues like Judith Miller.
It's still wrong for Al Jazeera to use your code without licensing it, but you need to let your readers have all the facts. Without that detail, I was rather curious why de volkskrant wasn't also upset.
I mean, with a sentence like this, it's hard not to jump to the conclusion that there's more than hotlinking and code copyright going on: "We know you love us Al-Jazeera, but stealing from us and then ignoring us is not the way to express it."
I wouldn't call them unethical, just incomplete. We have a case here where someone paid Scrollytellio to create a story in their content-management system. Their system is such that, to a layperson (which I assume the reporter is when it comes to webdev), the code and presentation is inextricable from the content.
The reporter was wrong, but that's just one level of confusion and ambiguity where it's possible to understand why AJ messed up. Even more confusing is that AJ itself uses the same open-source tech that ScrollyTelling does:
https://twitter.com/Hiddemhigh/status/777535017383845890
https://twitter.com/pageflow_io/status/777562569468964864
A web dev/producer at a media company not knowing the difference between the open-source code they've used in the past, and the modified version that a freelancer has given to them for this one package? Yeah, incompetent, but not malicious.
Again, it doesn't excuse AJ, their web producer, and the reporter, for not following up with more speed. But I can see why it's more likely that incompetency is the culprit and not malice.
If the Dutch paper did redistribute/re-license the story to AJ, and if that is in fact a violation of the scrollytelling license, then they(the paper) should be the customer that scrollytelling should be name/shaming and DMCAing. It is also likely that AJ views this(DMCA/blog post) as a upstream licensing issue, and the fact that they have a business relationship with the Dutch paper may lead them to take that up with the paper and not respond to scrollytelling. As, from AJ's point of view, they have already payed a license for the content in this scenario.
EDIT: If scrollytelling does not have a straightforward and integrated solution for redistribution licensing then this was bound to happen and probably has before, they just didn't notice because it wasn't an outlet the volume of AJ.
2. In the updated conversation it seems the reporter doesn't think any thing was wrong here and it was not his responsibility, which seems odd after said he was working on it back on 28th Aug.
So it looks like there was messup on both sides.
Though there are some things which are still not clear: 1. What were the specific terms of contract scrollytelling had? Did it in any form bar sharing of content? 2. Who was the initial owner of the contract - volkskrant or the reporter? If it was volkskrant, they have to talk to them first about allowing this to happen.
Also note that the twitter post is from August 28 and the blog post that was written is from today (September 18) So it seems that Al Jazeera was not that interested in resolving the issue.
Or they just didn't see a random tweet that happened to mention their handle. The post doesn't mention any direct communication from Scrollytelling.
Except: it seems unlikely to me that Al Jazeera English is hosted in the US, which would mean a DMCA request is not legally binding for them.
I can imagine that many companies could have an office and a legal entity in US while the actual service is run somewhere else, and I'd think that DMCA would still be enforceable towards the US legal entity.
https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/415046/#Commen...
[Of course, taking legal opinion from a random forum comment is probably a bad idea...]
Technically, and as a layman, I'd say a DMCA takedown would never be binding, because that's a provision intended for public online service providers like ISPs and website hosting platforms. Al Jazeera, as author and editor of their own site, does not qualify for the Safe Harbor protection, and can be sued outright by the aggrieved party, even if they did take down the article in response to the request.
> We contacted the author of the piece, Hidde Boersma, who promised to resolve the situation.
It's been a couple of weeks—how long do you think they should wait, while their costs keep mounting?
They could've just denied access to the assets so that the AJ webdevs would have to recopy-refix them, while at the same time continuing the legal press. A couple of weeks is not a long time when going through the legal system.
I'm not saying that winning a lawsuit is the ideal situation. I'm saying it leaves open the possibility that someone with actual power at AJ notices the problem, gets things fixed, and says, "Hey, this is a cool product, can we talk about a long-term deal for future stories?".
Now they not have virtually no chance in getting AJ as a customer, which is too bad because AJ actually has money for these kinds of deals. But even if scrollytelling didn't want to work with AJ out of principle, they've now unnecessarily turned off other big media clients. Big media clients, i.e. traditional outlets with the morals, lawyers, and funds to pay for proper distribution contracts. These companies generally have lawyers who do not like dealing with vendors who litigate over Twitter.