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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."
I suppose what is needed is some sort of cross between
Or maybe just bloody mirror the links...
Cool, but useless.
Wait a minute, they're deep-linking, against European law, in cyberspace, where we can't claim they're under our legislation, since they're not in out country?
;)
Bomb them!
Seriously though:
Could people 'fake' news through this net?
I mean, what format are they using? Someone could (theorically, for now) break the format, and post any news he wants (or rather, links to what he wants) that seem like Newsbooster's content
This whole story is interesting: It seems that any law on Internet content can be solved with a decentralized network.
This could also make internet traffic very interesting - everyone will always be connected to several networks - one for music/video/files, one for news, one for subversive terrorist activity.
Im sorry, did I write that out loud?
<bad UF reference>Then we could run a TCP/IP network on top of that...</bad>
My other
I haven't been able to dig up more on the story. How are the appeals going, for example? I'm not sure it is a good idea to route around the court before you have gone through all possible appeals, especially since they've got TimBL on their side.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
How does Google's News-service differ? Google even has pictures of the stories, so it certainly breaks some copyright laws.
Okay for a moment, I'll just pretend the obvious "adult reference" never occured to me and I won't mention anything about what "my girlfriend likes."
Can someone please spell out the argument against "linking" in general and why it's so offensive to anyone? (Let's leave the slashdot effect out of the discussion because that's an anomoly of another sort.) Why is linking to a news site any form of infringement, tresspass or offense of any kind? To me, a link is nothing more than a pointer or a sign post and only slightly more convenient than spelling out a URL explicitly so that I don't have to type it in or cut'n paste it to my browser.
I sincerely want to know, even if it's invalid, why people are concerned about linking.
Next, I am concerned about spoofing and validation. For news to be worth reading, there has to be an element of credibility. What are the assurances does a user have that it's not news created by some sensationalist with his own personal agenda (say, for example, some **AA group trying to spread their message?). Given all the news about people putting out unreliable and corrupted data on P2P networks already, I think it's a natural concern that information be valid.
I think that decentralized news is a great idea but validation is a big concern. If there is an original source, then I think there should be a central validation store that would hold a registration for articles that are "verified" in some way. I haven't put a great deal of thought into the concept but maybe some sort of decryption key to allow the reading of the news that is downloaded from the P2P news resource network appears to be a direction that would make things work nicely. That, of course, would require the cooperation of news services.
In summary, what's the problem with linking? And what about validation/verification?
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
How is this useful for Americans?
You wouldn't be interested, it's called NEWS.
I must've been asleep. Hyperlinks to a publicly accessible file are illegal?
Me: "Hey random friend, you should check out this book at the library. It's not in their index, but it's on the shelf so nobody really knows about it. It's really informative."
Librarian: "No, that book isn't in our index yet. It might be on the shelf for public consumption, but you can't tell people it's there before we do. *calls police*"
"The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?" -- Richard Bach, Illusions
The printed media obviously fears that the Internet business model will hurt the printed business model. We all thought this in the dotcom days and it will happen but most likely not anytime soon.
However, according to this article about NYTimes.com the online readers are not the same as the print subscribers.
The paper's typical reader is 45, while the site's average reader is 35, said Calder. And while 85% of the website's users come from outside the New York designated marketing area, 44% of the daily's readers are inside the area.
Furthermore:
Since January, NYTDigital has been examining the overlap between site users and the newspaper's readership and found that only 8% of site users are also print subscribers.
It saddens me that the news media do not seem to get that the Internet is a way to expand their business model. A study would most likely show that the newsboster readers are new readers.
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!
The problem I have with these anti-deep link policies is that there are multiple ways to prevent a deep link using stupid server tricks.
Why are these people turning to the lawyers to make deep links illegal, why they could just turn to their IT guys to make deep links impossible?
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".