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Making Content More Valuable or Stealing Revenue?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hey-kids-get-offa-my-lawn dept.

TechDirt has an interesting look at the short history of complaints over meta content delivery and traffic generation. Looking at everything from complaints over Google's Print program to RSS companies delivering ads on someone else's content the article begs the question, where should the line be drawn? One of the examples, Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc., even chimed in as one of the first few comments.

3 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. BY-NC by Wellington+Grey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How do you define ... non-commercial use in this context?

    This is the question I've always had with creative commons: just what counts as non-commercial? If I take a BY-NC image off flickr, and want to use it in my blog, is that OK? What if I have google ads on my blog? Is that still OK? Does it make any difference if I'm actually making a profit or not? I've gone so far as to email some of the CC lawyers about this issue, and there seems to be no clear answer.

    -Grey

    --
    Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
  2. where should the line be drawn? by Threni · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's my browser - I'll decide. I'll decide if I want to block ads, look at RSS feeds, remix data from multiple sites into one Firefox tab etc. That's one of the things content providers have to deal with - that once the content is out there, it's usable by anyone in any way. It's not like they can do anything about it.

  3. Re:I'm gonna sue Mozilla by GradiusCVK · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Why should content aggregators (or anyone) have to take proactive steps to avoid stepping on people's toes when they put it online in syndicated RSS feeds, which have the effective purpose of being aggregated?

    This is the exact type of argument that I believe cannot win without an unnecessarily long legal battle. Consider an analogy; record companies sell licenses to radio stations allowing them to distribute music... radio stations provide the music over the air for all to hear for free in some aggregated block of music programming time (really simple syndication), and they make money through ads. The record companies are happy with this because the radio stations both pay for the right to play the music, and drive spending by promoting the music... it's win-win, with a doubleplusbig win for the record company which effectively gets paid twice.

    However, what if some third-party radio station starts recording the music that other stations are playing, organizing it, then playing it over the air without the original radio station's ads, but with it's own ads. This goes far beyond mere peer-to-peer music sharing (which I feel is truly a boon for record companies that they are failing to recognize)... this third party is making a significant profit off of this work, without any reimbursement to any of the original parties involved. I think even the most ardent supporter of copy-left can recognize that this activity is at the very least illegal, if not outright unethical. This is effectively the legal reason why "content aggregators ... have to take proactive steps to avoid stepping on people's toes".

    If they were really so upset over having their content show up in other places on the interwebs, my question is, why don't the content producers remove the offending material?

    This statement is tantamount to saying "why doesn't the legal radio station go off the air."

    Of course, this analogy fails in one unique way... in this case, the "radio station" (the Google News) is actually encouraging and facilitating people to listen to the radio station which legally played the song. While this is probably not a good legal defense for the illegal station's actions, it is certainly a benefit to the legal radio station, which will lose some potential listeners to the aggregator station, but will gain many actual listeners thanks to the free advertising.

    The tendency to litigate indicates to me that the outrage is simply faked- they're after money like every other trigger-happy lawyer.

    Of course you are correct here... the "legal" radio station has nothing to be really outraged about... it is making more money than it would have otherwise. However, the fact remains that the "illegal" radio station is breaking the law, and because lawyers and companies love money, the legal station will sue they hell out of the illegal station, hoping to strike a deal where the illegal station will continue to advertise for free, but will also pay the legal station licensing fees. This is doubleplusgood for the legal station as well. Now the legal radio station is basically a useless middleman which has contracts ensuring it continues to get paid for no reason.

    Really, these content aggregators haven't got much of a leg to stand on except the fair use angle (since they aren't providing the entire item, just the most important parts summarized)... and as we all know fair use is no longer protected the way it should be. In all, these guys will have an incredibly hard time defending this. The easiest and most effective way out is simply to end the free advertising for those content producers which no longer want the increased revenue (due to free advertising). When put in those terms, I would guess that very few content producers actually fall into that category.