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Ziff Davis To Website: License To Link, Updated

Posted by timothy on from the ominous-creaking-noises dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Ziff Davis is threatening pocketpctools.com with legal action for posting a snippet from and link to a Ziff Davis story. Is it just me, or is this sort of the IDEA of the internet? From pocketpctools.com: 'We are currently being threatened with legal action by a large organization that produces news stories (I am trying to find out if I am "allowed" to post the emails they have sent me). A while back (about a month and 70 posts ago), one of our admins posted a story that introduced you to one of their stories. Needless to say, there was a small editorial about the said story, a short quote from the story, a link to, and full credit given to them for the story.'" Update: 08/08 23:55 GMT by S : To clarify, Ziff Davis/EWeek (and not ZDNet, as the submitter and linked story suggest) are involved in this story. Update: 08/09 02:08 GMT by T : Matthew Rothenberg of eWEEK writes with a clarification (below); it seems like this is just a tempest in a teapot, and linkers can breathe easy.

Rothenberg writes: "Hey! I'm the executive editor in charge of eWEEK.com -- and before this situation unravels any farther, I need to make a couple of quick clarifications about our reprint policy:

While I haven't gotten all the details about what happened, this legal warning to PocketPCTools seems to be a result of miscommunication within our company. We understand and embrace the principles under which sites such as PocketPCTools link to and excerpt our content. There are plenty of occasions when a professional media company needs to question the wholesale appropriation of its content or the use of its marks. From everything I understand about the PocketPCTools case so far, this is NOT one of those occasions!

We're moving to correct the situation now ... PocketPCTools was apparently acting within the appropriate bounds of Web etiquette -- actually, doing us a favor by sending us the traffic -- and Ziff Davis was apparently mistaken in issuing this warning.

My personal apologies to anyone inconvenienced by this error. We're investigating the situation now and will act accordingly."

5 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Uh Oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Did Slashdot get permission to link to this story?

  2. Re:Let's send a message... by Loadmaster · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actually, to send the right message we should post a story about ZDnet and /. their servers. See how much traffic you would have missed if there was no link? Damn, ZDnet should pay /.

  3. Watch out slashdot! by Muerto · · Score: 5, Funny

    Your days are so totally numbered.

  4. Re:Let's send a message... by foidulus · · Score: 4, Funny

    boycott ZDnet India!

  5. Re:Boss of eWEEK.com here by Almost-Retired · · Score: 4, Funny

    Greetings Matthew;

    It rather sounds as if we're in violent agreement here.

    I think I'd like to be a fly on the wall in the offices come tomorrow morning. I think I'd find I was living in some of those "interesting times" Confusious was fond of refering to. :-)

    Can the air conditioning handle the expected smoke?

    Mmm, I suppose I'd better put in the obligatory smiley here, you might need it tomorrow. :-)

    --
    Cheers & good luck, Gene