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Ziff Davis To Website: License To Link, Updated
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."
I'm going to make a very obvious statement and ask what this means for blogs. If you can strongarm anyone into un-linking something, then where will blogs be able to go?
Also, what the hell was ZDNet thinking, the folks at pocketpctools.com were sending them traffic!
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
There are easy technical means to stop people from linking to you. You check the referer header, and if it's from a site you don't like... you block it! Yes, a few people will have blank/fake referers, but they are in the minority.
Example... Mozilla's Bugzilla doesn't want Mozilla to link to their bugs, so they block them! Easy.
I say boycott ZD until they stop smoking crack.
After reading Slashdot for a while, I get the impression that these things happen all the time, and most of them are due to an overeager employee/lawyer who can be easily shut up with a polite letter pointing out why you aren't breaking the law, or, if that doesn't work, then a letter from a law firm which says the same. This isn't DeCSS-like infringement
It's unfortunate you have to do this, but this kind of stupidity seems like something web-authors will have to live with no matter what kind of copyright laws your country has.
I think the most important thing is just to know that this happens, and not to panic.
What's it matter what the internet was designed to do? It's the duty of corporations to bend laws and technological infrastructure to suit their own needs, right? ZD is only doing what any good corporation looking out for their shareholder's interests would do. /sarcasm
This is absurd. If it's just a snippet of information from the website, given proper credit to the source, what could be the problem?
What happens when Google News takes the first sentence of one of their news stories and uses it on their front page?
The point of making news is for people to actually read it (along with the ads displayed along side it). Barring access to this news doesn't make much business sense. Sounds to me like Ziff-Davis has an overzealous legal team, which acts in self-interest rather in the interest of the company as a whole.
That and otherwise stop linking to them altogether.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I'm sure ZDNet itself has links to other news sources in many places... maybe they should set a standard and pay some royalties to those sites also .. ;)
Mod me down im a newf (wiki)
I thnk pocketpctools has a pretty solid stance. If they cannot give a short quote with a reference then why is it legal for me to do the same in a research paper? How will anyone ever be able to do a book review? This type of useage is what makes research and debate possible. I mean Bush can quote Kerry (and often does) in order to make a logical debate, and he does not need a license from Kerry. This is an example of our failed system, where corporate thugs can make any demand and win because the system is too difficult and costly to use to defend one own legitimate rights.
:)
PS Any one who laughs at Bush being logical should get -1 offtopic. Of course, I should get +5 funny for saying it
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There is no absolute yardstick for fair use. The law doesn't specify that quoting anything below a specific percentage of a copyrighted work is fair use, or that anything above is not.
That's why copyright is a civil, not criminal issue. Ziff-Davis probably sends these letters to hundreds of sites every year. (And, it seems to work. When was the last time you saw someone pointing, regularly, to Z-D sites?) Most sites lack the money and means to challenge Z-D in court. Z-D knows they might lose a Fair Use case, but also knows that the recipients won't take them to court. Hence the letters.
It's a silly thing to do -- driving away potential traffic -- but Z-D has the right to do this. And, they will keep on doing it until someone takes them to court and wins.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Um, nobody (I think) has posted this yet, so here goes...
I always thought that linking to your website was a GOOD thing, especially when it's your JOB that's depending upon people visiting your site. If all websites started doing this, search engines would be out of business and nobody would be able to find anything on the web.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
It amazes me the sheer level of pedantry that goes on here...and how quickly being right stops being important as soon as you're wrong...
the legal principle is sound
A web link is nothing but a written address.
Then the reporters and editors and publishers should be thrown in prison for "contributing to people distributing illegal material" every time they print the address of a crackhouse or the address of any other illegal activity. Making a written address itself illegal is a very very dangerous precedent. Not only would it make the New York Times illegal for publishing addresses of illegal activity, but it is also quite a mess because the owners of that location can always change the content of that location from cookies to cocaine.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
But I have this nagging feeling that only about 1/4 of the story is here.
Yeah, I know, ZDnet is a corporation therefore it's evil and should be burninated, but, for a community that's supposedly based on questioning the Conventional Wisdom, there's a rigid adherence to the dogma that:
1. All corporations are evil.
2. Copyrights are all wrong. All knowledge is public domain.
3. Except knowledge about you. In that case, it's an evil plot by an all-knowing group of shadowy government agencies.
4. Any claim by a web site must be true, if it adheres to Sacred Teachings #1-3.
5. Based upon these indisputable facts, the EC (evil corporation) must be punished.
6. This justifies ignoring all intellectual property laws, with, of course, the sole exception of Sacred Truth #3.
Well, it's good to see you to take that stance. I don't think you can blame people for thinking that you really were pressing for an absurd level of absolute, fair-use-need-not-apply control over all your content -- since many publishers have taken exactly that absurd of a stance.
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.