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11-Word Extracts May Infringe Copyright In Europe

Posted by kdawson on from the dibs-on-copyright-on-"the" dept.

splodus writes "The European Court of Justice, Europe's highest court, has ruled that a service providing 11-word snippets of newspaper articles could be unlawful. Media monitoring company Infopaq International searches newspaper articles and provides clients with a keyword and the five words either side. This practice was challenged by the DDF, a group representing newspaper interests, as infringing their members' copyright. The court has referred the issue back to national courts to determine whether copyright laws in each country will be subject to the ruling. The full ruling is available at the European Court of Justice Web site."

6 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. I'd love to be plagiarized like this... by tjstork · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I really don't understand how Newspapers would not want the traffic that a link would generate. There is nothing more than I would love to have than a thousand sites with 11 word snippets of my articles linking back to me.

    Seems foolish.

    --
    This is my sig.
    1. Re:I'd love to be plagiarized like this... by simcop2387 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      that's just it, most of them want that traffic, but they also want to be paid for the privilege of having a link to the article. it's just them being greedy.

    2. Re:I'd love to be plagiarized like this... by tjstork · · Score: 3, Insightful

      that's just it, most of them want that traffic, but they also want to be paid for the privilege of having a link to the article. it's just them being greedy.

      Me thinks they need to learn that the internet is pretty unforgiving when it comes to shoddy content.

      --
      This is my sig.
  2. Aftermarket lights⦠by jscotta44 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The BMW thing does make sense. The time used in replacing your burned out bulb is paid for by BMW on the original lights. It is a light that BMW has confidence in and they know the reliability of the bulbs and thus can reliably predict a cost to themselves. The aftermarket stuff is not approved by them, they know nothing about it, its problems, the cost of the bulbs, or life expectancy. They will not pay for it because they cannot reliably determine what their liability will be.

    This is similar to web developers who will guarantee their work and/or provide some sort of fixed fee structure to maintain a site that they build provided the code is only modified by them and no others. Once another developer starts altering code, their confidence on what is going on drops dramatically and they can no longer reliably predict what their time liability will be and thus their own cost to work on the code. They'll then switch to an hourly charge to fix/maintain the code. Makes sense to me.

  3. Re:I wonder how far you could take this by Shin-LaC · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you're talking about those hideous ultra-bright blindness beams that assholes have been putting on their cars lately, refusing to install them is in everyone's best interest.

  4. what about quoting someone? by openright · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the newspapers can claim that an 11 word phrase is copyrighted, then a person should be able to claim that a statement is copyrighted,
    and the newspapers would be prevented from making direct quotes.

    --- a future newspaper article --- ...
    With these events, we should be reminded of the words of John F. Kennedy: (paraphase*) "[Do not ask what services your government can provide for you. Instead ask your government how you can help.]".

    * The original quote is owned by the Kennedy family,