The New York Times just stole our column. Should we sue?
blog.thephoenix.com
blog.thephoenix.com
But seriously, yes, sue. And offer to settle if Bill Keller prints a front page apology that makes note of the disconnect between his self-righteousness on the topic of copyright violation and his paper's (apparent) willingness to engage in it when it suits them.
You said "I'm sure that's fair use, and not theft, because the Gray Lady doesn't do such things, and you're vile for even suggesting it."
Which could have easily been, "I don't think that's fair use, and believe it's theft."
The rest I don't even know how to unparse because it's not particularly useful. Are you saying everyone does it? Are you saying the New York Times vilifies anyone who argues they don't? Are you saying other people vilify others that don't?
Sarcasm is a way to say very little, and just be cynical with no justification. It's not adding anything to the discussion.
The NY Times had no ability to get permission from the original copyright holder because no one knew who that was. They republished the original article as an appendix/supplementary item to another article published in the physical paper (available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/opinion/nocera-the-cost-of...).
This is the textbook definition of "fair use": providing a copy of an out-of-print, otherwise unavailable news article, for the purposes of supplementing a published news article. (Fair use is a multi-factor test with no fixed requirements...it's basically whatever use is "fair" in the context of the actual use.)
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such
use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational
purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation
to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value
of the copyrighted work.
Mind you, the list is not exhaustive and judges are able to give their own interpretation on questions of substantiality. But very small units of copyrighted material (a few hundred words from a book, a 1 second sample from a 4 minute song) can break fair use. So I don't see how copying the entire work passes the substantiality test.
Furthermore, the NYT could have tracked down the source. They got the copy from Booth, Booth wrote it for the Real Paper, and a bit of legwork of the kind journalists are meant to be good at would have revealed that the Real News had been subsumed by the Phoenix.
Even if it's not a slam dunk, it's still a blinding act of inconsistency.
(Again: IANAL, TINLA).
Fair use is an affirmative defense. That is: it's not a right to copy, but a defense against copyright infringement.
There are four points to be considered. Generally a successful defense will hinge on at least one, but it may very well fail at others.
And there are other defenses which will also succeed. In Sega v. Accolade, copyright infringement was not supported, because the role of the work in which infringement was alleged was functional: Accolade were copying a verbatim string from Sega in order to provide game-cartridge / player compatibility. Copyright protection does not apply to facts ... or to functional aspects of a work.
The term "affirmative defense" simply means the defendant "affirms" or acknowledges the action, but defends it on specific grounds (in this case, that the copying was a fair use and thus not a violation of copyright).
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml 107. LIMITATIONS ON EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS: FAIR USE
"...the fair use of a copyrighted work...is not an infringement of copyright."
The devil (or the lawyer's profits or the danger to user attempting to make fair use of a copyrighted work) is in the details of considering and balancing those four points, and that is done at the discretion of the judge(s) hearing the case.
Other limitations to the scope of copyright:
§ 102. SUBJECT MATTER OF COPYRIGHT: IN GENERAL (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
- Fair use isn't granted by some license-issuing or -exempting authority. It's determined in court. Meaning: you get sued for copyright infringement, you get lawyered up, you get a court date, you defend yourself. You're still out the costs and time, provided your accuser wishes to follow through. Law is very often a battle of attrition and wills. And often stupidity or arrogance among one or more of the parties involved.
- It's a defense. You're still making an unauthorized copy. That is, limiting a copyright holder's "exclusive rights to do and to authorize" reproductions, derivative works, etc. In order to assert the defense, you've got to be challenged at it.
Simply asserting "fair use" is not sufficient, though a reasonable copyright holder (or her legal counsel) might look at this and say "hrm, he's probably got a point".
"More like ... guidelines".
1. The purpose and character of your use.
Verbatim republication, including original layout, etc. in a commercial publication - NYT.com is a paywall and ad-supported site.
2 The nature of the copyrighted work.
Originally published at some not-immaterial effort and expense in a reputable independent journal. Well known in the industry.
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion taken.
All of it, and the kitchen sink.
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market.
Destroys any chance the owner had of charging for this material.
You make assumptions about what the NY Times knew and didn't know that you yourself can't possibly know. My opinion is that it would have been easy for the Times (a crack news organization) to find the owner.
Also, you say that the Phoenix didn't know the story existed, despite the fact that the author clearly indicated that the story is legendary.
Long story short: spurious analysis of a complex issue.
The only difference is the scale.
It didn't seem clear to me that the original newspaper was even going to be able to clearly prove it held the copyright to the material.
But this is not fair use. I'd categorize it as the same kind of benign and beneficial piracy that we all know promotes culture and the arts (just as sampling an MP3 illegally doesn't in fact harm the artist or even the label since it often increases the likelihood of future economic activity benefiting the actual copyright holders.)
I actually think the article's author would completely agree with you. Sane copyright would allow for this use, but I haven't seen anything resembling sanity WRT copyright as long as I can remember. and if NYT is pushing for that insanity, they absolutely should be held to that same standard.
From Wikipdiea: Op-Ed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed
"An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial
page (though often mistaken for opinion-editorial),
is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions
of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with
the newspaper's editorial board. These are
different from editorials, which are usually
unsigned and written by editorial board members."
"Bill Keller is an Op-Ed columnist for The New
York Times and writes for The New York Times
Magazine. His column appears on alternate
Mondays."
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/edit...
These usually have no bylines, or attributable to one person. They don't deal with topics covered by Mr. Keller, the most recent one being titled "The House’s Less Persuasive Ban on Insider Trading".
Essentially the Times has News, Opinion, Editorial. All of these are separate and the Editorial is the only one where the Times offers its "own" public opinions.
Hope that helps.
From what I can tell:
1. The NYT didn't run the story "Death and Football" on their site
2. They provided a link to a bad scan of the PDF of "Death and Football"
3. The story, "Death and Football", is not easily accessible anywhere else (if at all?)
4. The point of the main Times story by Nocera directly related to the article
5. The only offense so far is: the PDF was hosted on Times servers
The only thing you can argue against is #5 and I think you could make a valid "fair use" argument based on the some of the other points. The PDF provided context.
And again, if the "fair use" argument doesn't hold up I think any story about this "theft: would take 3 paragraphs and not 30 or so...
Disclaimer: I'm a former Times employee (developer)
Apologist: a person who makes a defense in speech or writing of a belief, idea, etc.
I think rprasad said it best:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3569201
To quote:
This is the textbook definition of "fair use":
providing a copy of an out-of-print, otherwise
unavailable news article, for the purposes of
supplementing a published news article. (Fair
use is a multi-factor test with no fixed
requirements...it's basically whatever use
is "fair" in the context of the actual use.)This is the entire offence. We're not talking about lifting a few paragraphs here, it's a pixel-perfect reproduction of a document with multiple overlapping copyrights, none of which the Times had permission to use.
I also believe that if the author has a legitimate claim it doesn't take 30 paragraphs to make a case.
Did you read it through? It took me a few reads to figure out the specifics of what he was talking about.
I'm guessing that the view by people here is that the NYTimes took an the Article and published it standalone, by itself, as they would one of their owns, without attribution.
That wasn't the case.
The NYT wrote an article, referenced the one in the PDF, and provided a copy of the PDF (of an old black/white scan) as context/background.
If they'd name checked it and used a quote or two, fine.
I don't think a Article and a Book can be properly compared. I also suspect that Harry Potter won't be out of print (digitally or otherwise), and as of now has a clear copyright holder to which you could ask (likes like original Times article includes interview with original author and may have their consent for what thats worth).
Each case is on its merits, and this is far from clear-cut. It is my opinion that this is very well fair use but there are plenty of opposing view-points here.
The only offense by the pirate bay is hosting hash values of indexes of servers hosting content (magnet links).