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Court Upholds AP "Quasi-Property" Rights On Hot News
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A federal court ruled that the AP can sue competitors for 'quasi-property' rights on hot news, as well as for copyright infringement and several other claims. The so-called 'hot news' doctrine was created by a judge 90 years ago in another case, where the AP sued a competitor for copying wartime reporting and bribing its employees to send them a copy of unreleased news. The courts' solution was to make hot news a form of 'quasi-property' distinct from copyright, in part because facts cannot be copyrighted. But now the AP is making use of the precedent again, going after AHN which competes with the AP, alleging that they're somehow copying the AP's news. The AP has been rather busy with lawsuits lately, so even though the AP has a story about their own lawsuit, we won't link to it."
Instead of this fancy legal term of "hot news", I use another term for what AHN is doing to AP: "plagiarism". According to nolo:
putting your name on someone else's work is still plagiarism and is unethical within artistic, scientific, academic and political communities
I guess the press is not one of those communities. I'm not a big fan of lawsuits: I was sued once by a company that wanted to put me out of business and they almost succeeded. Being right doesn't matter, it's whoever has the deepest pockets.
So in this case, I'd much rather have the community (the readers) shun AHN. It's important for everyone to know what is going on, and let the public make their own choices.
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It's the The Associated Press, a wire service.
The press isn't one of those communities because the press doesn't deal in the kinds of concepts you can plagiarize. If AHN copied AP text verbatim, you might say that they plagiarized the writing, but then they would get sued for copyright infringement. But they are merely stating the same fact as a fact stated in an AP news story, and it's a fact that, unlike a scientific experiment, didn't require creativity to observe--it merely required presence.
So, I don't think it's plagiarism.
I know your being cynical, but if you:
a) answered the question
b) put interesting facts in
c) put relevant link in
d) entertain people in the process
Hell, you deserve to be modded up.
This post meets a & d, but misses b and c so should still do ok. But overuse this particular d and it will cease to entertain which just leaves a, and there is no shortage of a's, which means this template, if it remains unfilled will start out funny, but as the funny wears off your moderation will trend towards redundant. ;)