Tuesday, Jul. 14, 2009

More trouble ahead for copyright scofflaws

By Ken Robertson, Herald Executive Editor

Copyright thieves in radio, television and on the web who grab news stories, photos and other unique content without regard to legal consequences have gotten a couple of warnings this past week.

In New York, The Associated Press reached a settlement in which it will collect undisclosed damages as part of settling a lawsuit against All Headline News, a site that copied AP stories online without permission.

And in Paris last week, newspapers and magazine publishers renewed their call for the European Commission to bolster copyright protections the publishers see as a way to “lay the groundwork for new ways to generate revenue online,” The New York Times reported.

The AP suit focused on the “hot news” doctrine established in a 1918 Supreme Court case. As Andrew Vanacore, an AP business writer, reported Monday:

“AHN Media Corp., the company behind All Headline News, acknowledged improperly using AP content and agreed to stop, according to a joint release from the companies. A lawyer for AHN Media and its CEO, W. Jeffrey Brown, both declined to comment further.”

The AP, meanwhile, was “pleased to have successfully resolved the litigation through a principled settlement.”

The lawsuit was a test of a 91-year-old principle that concedes facts can’t be copyrighted, but when a competitor copies time-sensitive news, there’s grounds to sue and collect damages. In February, a judge ruled the principle was still valid.

The AP sued All Headline News in 2008 for copying AP stories from websites that legitimately carried them.

The case is one of several ways AP has been fighting misuse of its content online. In 2007, it sued Moreover Technologies Inc. and its parent, VeriSign Inc., for using AP headlines, photos and stories without permission. That case also was settled for undisclosed terms.

While the AP suits looked back at precedent, the European publishers are aiming to press forward to a day when Google and other internet companies will have to adopt new technology that allows publishers “to set the terms of search engines’ and aggregators’ use of their content,” the Times reported.

In Germany, publishers want even tougher steps that would create a right for them to protect their content in the same way existing law safeguards the rights of music publishers and other content owners.

No matter the location, the aim of all these actions is the same: To protect unique content from those who steal with impunity.

But laws and judges are only one step in this battle. For decades, radio and TV news broadcasters have grabbed content from newspapers so freely that many of them now take it as a right, so long as they make a minor change here or there. They then shamelessly pass it off as their own.

w Ken Robertson: 582-1520; krobertson@tricityherald.com

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