Ziff Davis To Website: License To Link, Updated

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."

Comments

fp

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch out /. you're next. Or at least, Jon Katz.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

i like acsii art.

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Bush

[Anonymous Coward]

George W. Bush is, like sooooooo cute! I saw him on TV the other day and he gave me that look and I was like OMG WTF ^__^!!11 I'm gonna vote for him even if it means I can't marry my gay lover. Sorry bout that, Rob.

Idiotic

[i wanted another nam]

Idiotic accusations made by an idiotic website run by idiots, and trusted by idiots.

I never visit their site anyways. Idiots.

Re:So, in simple terms, the story summary is wrong

[srwalter]

Perhaps you should go off and start your own "News for nerds" site. Nothing stopping you, is there? That way you can be a critical grammar-Nazi as much as you want.

I don't see you moving. Guess you just like to bitch. Typical. Too many people in this world who are quick to judge and slow to take any action to fix things.

You fucking bastard.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was expecting to see some real ASCII art. DO NOT DECODE THIS! It is just some (kernel?) debugging output!

Attn: They replied! Already!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just go this back.

from: randy_zane@ziffdavis.com
to: pharmboy@n-e-mull5ex.org
re: blog concern

Dear Mr. Boy,

Thank you so much for your recent email concerning Ziff-Davis and a possible inclusion of bestiality pictures into fugure editions of "PC Magazine".

It is an interesting possibility you raise; however, in discussions with my boss, we feel that while this might add hundreds, if not thousands of possible readers to include bestiality pix in a mainstream computer magazine, we feel that this might be disturbing to people who are closer to what we call "normal" here at ziff davis.

Please, feel free to use this idea yourself; if you're really feeling frisky, you might draw your own pictures in crayon and place them over top of the pictures dealing with computers, as they appear to have no interest to you.

While I personally bear you no ill-will, they have sickened me and the staff here at Ziff Davis, and so you'll excuse me if I ask that you never write to us again; indeed, we feel it best if you never even touch a Ziff Davis publication, or avert your eyes if you see one. We can all rest a little easier then.

With deep revulsion,
Randy Zane
Media Relations