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Newsbooster Creates P2P Newsbrowser
scubacuda writes "Newsbooster, the Danish company that got busted for deep-linking to newspaper stories, has created a new P2P version of its service to get around European law. Newsbooster's "Newsbrowser" software works like Kazaa - users download the software and it networks their computers together, instead of serving up files from a single server."
The RIAA is only upset with P2P networking because of the illegal MP3 sharing. Legal-wise, they have the ammunition they need - people use it to do illegal things
If I didn't totally misunderstand the article, deep-linking is not illegal everywhere - just in Denmark where the company resides, and maybe several other countries. Deep-linking from the P2P network has not been pronounced illegal in any court (it is not even under any jurisdiction, except maybe the computer client's country) and in most countries actions are legal until pronounced otherwise (at least in law they are)
It seems at first that deep-linking might cause a Newsbooster's reader to think they wrote the article the link is sending to, thus hurting the credit-per-bandwidth of the real news company's server.
However, if anyone uses the P2P network, he'll be aware of all these issues, and will know the links simply refer to other news companies. Their reputation is not damaged - it would be excatly the same as if he entered on their main page, and clicked an article he liked
No one's work is being ripped off in any way - when you click on a link on newsbooster.com (try it!) you reach a news website - you can't ignore it - you see the headline, a link to the news site's home, etc.
You'd have to be very thick to believe newsbooster.com wrote the article the link refers to. They're providing an index (portal?) of news articles, and nothing seems to suggest otherwise.
You might as well sue TV guides for "deep-linking" into the TV - after all, someone might only open his TV set at 5:00pm, without seeing all the great crap they showed before!
There is no real difference between opening a TV set on a second show in a row of three than opening a web browser into the middle of someone's site, skipping the main page.
I think I've yammered enough.
My other
Simple question - simple answer:
The last I heard, the first time a company sued over "deep-linking", it's claim was simple:
People clicking this link, they said, would think the site's author wrote the content they arrive at, thus destroying our reputation, causing confusion.
People need to go through our main page, they said, for them to fully register the fact that this company wrote this content and should recieve credit for it.
The complete change in style, colors, and the company logo is obviously not enough.
My other
CNN has an article on the original case.
If I remember correctly the case was more about Newsbooster stealing content from the news sites than them linking to them. If I remember correctly, what they where doing was pretty much the same thing as news.googl.com is doing (took the headline and a bit of the article and then linked to the original article).
But the sentence still doesn't make much sense...
TC - My Photos..
Why does the article point to the page in Danish, when there a English version available? http://www.newsbooster.com/?lan=eng. It's just a matter of changing a parameter on the link.
my sig
A little not - afair it isnt the deep linking part that is illegal in denmark - deep linking is legal in denmark, as it should be - the thing newsbooster did wrong according to the judge, was to do database lookups in the newspapers sources.
:D
That is - on THIS occation the court found it to be similar to a database lookup in someone elses database - something that is illegal without prior permission.
One note - I just woke, and its a long time i read about the start of the case(its ½-1 year old i believe), so my memory should not be trusted at all!
I must admit - the story about Newsbooster IS a bit confusing.
Having the obvious advantage of being danish, I reread the computerworld.dk coverage of the case, dating back to February 1. 2002, when the Association of Danish Newspapers gave their first warning about taking the case into the courtroom, if the deep linking did not stop.
The court ruling was based on the observation, that Newsboosters use of articles and headlines from online newspapers, and the use of deep links to these, violates the Danish law of Intellectual Property Rights 71 section 2, and law of marketing 1.
According to the Danish law of Intellectual Property Rights 71 section 2, the creator of a database has exclusive rights to even unessential parts of a database. Third persons use of such unessential parts is prohibited, if the use is repeatedly and systematic, and provided that the use violates the creators legitimate interests unreasonably.
The court found that Newsbooster violated the online newspapers exclusive rights according to the law of Intellectual Property Rights 71. Also, the court attached importance to the fact, that the grounds of Newsboosters commercial activity with deep links are:
- that the newspapers produce material, which can be linked
- that the by Newsbooster used material constitutes the foundation of business for the media, whereto Newsbooster links
- that Newsboosters service is in competition with the newspapers
- that Newsbooster, by deep linking, can reduce the advertising revenue at the newspapers homepages, hereby reducing their prospect of income
On this basis, the court forbidded Newsbooster:
- to offer a news service with deep links from newsbooster.dk and newsbooster.com directly to newspaper articles at the newspapers homepages
- to display and make available the headlines from the newspapers homepages
- to distribute electronic newsletters with deep links directly to headlines and articles at the newspapers homepages
So, as I understand it, this case is not about "linking in the regular sense", but about linking that yields a repeated and systematic use, and significally reduces the owners prospect of income.
In my opinion, the Newsbooster case implies several interesting issues, eg. if the newspapers revenue of income is in fact reduced, when one should think that Newsbooster would provide more hits at the webpages where only the headline and article - and presumably a banner advertisement - are to be found. Or, it could be seen as yet another example of how the laws of copyright does not make sense, when they are applied to the use of the internet.
Hope this brings the discussion "back on track".