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Comment by bjelkeman-again | Hacker News Reader

> it's that if you use any text of an article, including its title, you can be sued or made to sign a license.

This seems a great place to use automated translation technology, but into the same language. Link to the news article, but rewrite it using a similar meaning, with different words.

(I am an EU citizen and I think this is major overreach by the legislator who thinks they are saving the newspapers, but have no clue as to what effect they will have on the current system, but it still will not save the papers.)

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News articles are written with the understanding that the reader could stop reading at any time so information is put as early as possible. This applies especially to the title which is used as the very first filter for user interest. Requiring rewriting titles is a bad idea as you are never in an automated fashion going to make a better title.

As an example note that this very website heavily prefers the original title for the link text, only changing it when substantial updates are made or the original title is heavily biased.

> Requiring rewriting titles is a bad idea as you are never in an automated fashion going to make a better title.

Depends on how you define "better".

I would argue that a rewritten title you can read is "better" than an un-rewritten title you can't read because the site couldn't "link" it without risking a lawsuit or signing an agreement.

That is like claiming you can re-publish someone else's book if you translate it to Spanish or just replace all of the words with synonyms: you are creating a derivative work and are still using the original.

Not really. That is a huge differences.

Original title: Hurricane Florence’s Path: Winds of Category 2 Storm Hit Carolina Coast

Alternat title for the link: Hurricane Florence hit Carolina coat, category two

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/us/hurricane-florence-pat...

Would that really be the same as translating someone’s book? I’d argue that if I can’t do this then I can’t link at all (without paying a license) and that breaks the web. Which I realise is the argument against the legislstion, but I don’t think is the intent, albeit that the intent is shortsighted.

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