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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."
There's a point where the ubiquity of an acronym is so much that it doesn't NEED explaining. Do you need me to type that I live in the United States of America (USA)? Or would you get it from the context of what I was saying because it's a common acronym? The AP has been around for so long and has it's name in so many places that I'd think almost all people reading it would know it.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I just thought I should point that out. Plagiarism is claiming someone else's work as your own. Sharing does not imply plagiarism. The vast majority of copyright infringement is *not* plagiarism.
One of the foundations of international copyright (and an aspect of it not strongly respected by the United States) is moral rights, including the right of the author to be given credit. I find it ironic that vigorous enforcement of copyright actually creates an incentive for sharers and borrowers to obscure the source or credit of material. This makes their activity harder to detect, and easier for them to defend ("I got this from AP" is kind of a dead giveaway).
If copyright law was closer to actual social practice, this kind of plagiarism would likely be much less common.
Personally, I find clear cases of plagiarism to be utterly dishonest and far worse than sharing.
We have IP for a reason: it helps make social structures work better. We have only had the legal concept of IP for a few hundred years now. Are you saying social structures didn't work before then? I think the ancient Egyptians, Mayans, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, and many other civilizations too numerous to mention would probably disagree with you on that one.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
At what point does this end though? You can't own a fact.
You can sue over them though, as the Big sports associations have:
This one covers "Hot scores".
Back in 1996 this was apparently a controversial thing. Info here about owning facts here and on the same site here.
And there are still attempts to sue fantasy sports like this one, but I've never heard of this kind of suit being won by the plaintiffs.
Stranger things have been upheld in court.