Newspaper Articles Not Copyrightable In Slovakia

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Newspaper Articles Not Copyrightable In Slovakia

Posted by Unknown on Monday January 9, 2012 @08:05PM from the us-to-issue-trade-sanctions dept.

Yenya writes "In Slovakia, newspaper articles can be freely aggregated and archived, and are not worth copyright protection. The district court in Bratislava, Slovakia, stated in the case between news publishing house Ecopress and a news monitoring company Storin, that while the news articles manifests traces of creativity, it is not enough to be considered worth protecting the authors rights (English translation)."

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Because, they are not worth by rastos1 · 2012-01-09 20:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

Most likely, they are not worth protection, because they are generally crap. Journalism is a dying art. All you get is poorly translated blurbs from AP/AFP/Reuters. With population of 5 millions is not worth attention of foreign reporters and the only case where I've seen local reporters to get to the bottom of the issue are some consumer-protection cases. Never in science, politics or corruption, etc. But who cares. Most people just want tabloid, so they get that.
I get better news coverage here, than from newspaper articles.
I live in Slovakia by SlovakWakko · 2012-01-09 20:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

The copyright lobby is still trying to locate us on the map. Once they find us, our politicians will last maybe 3 minutes...
1. Re:I live in Slovakia by SlovakWakko · 2012-01-10 06:20 · Score: 2
  
  I don't know how about other member coutries, but in Slovakia you can donate to the politician's party. The parties also get some state donations after elections based on the votes they get, so they're supposed to get a loan to cover the campaign, and then repay it from this donation. IRL this money is not enough to run a serious political party, so they make a lot of shady deals with the private sector. The corruption is almost universal.
2. Re:I live in Slovakia by SlovakWakko · 2012-01-10 06:41 · Score: 2
  
  Yes it does. It's not as strict as U.S. law, and it even recognizes 'private use' - for example I may copy a portion or all of certain types of copyrighted works (including movies and music, but not books) for private use, without having to notify or pay the copyright owner. He/she is reimbursed from a small tax levied on all recording media and devices (CD/DVD media and burners, HDDs, ...). The law also recognizes derivative works, which are allowed (a photo of a sculpture, for example) and other useful concepts. Besides, our police has never tried to go after small-time infringers who use p2p to dl movies, music, and software. All copyright-related busts were against companies using unlicensed software on a large scale or against individuals regularly selling unlicensed copies of copyrighted works. The court decision in question here does not mention fair use, it is based on the judge's notion that news articles are just reporting factual events, and thus are not creative works (yes, we still remember the purpose of copyright :). I know the original reasoning of the plaintiff and I have to say that in my opinion the judge is wrong, since the aggregated articles are sometimes also author commentaries, which clearly are creative works, sometimes of high quality. But I cannot imagine that many of our judges are educated enough in the modern issues of copyright in the virtual world to recognize the problem, and copyright laws is not really considered a big issue here. We are still waiting on the bastard who will come and turn it into a serious business.
In Slovakia... by vikingpower · 2012-01-09 20:50 · Score: 2

...copyright owns you !

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Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
1. Re:In Slovakia... by airfoobar · 2012-01-09 21:15 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  No no no, in America copyright owns you. In Slovakia, copyright knows its place.
Interesting by gmhowell · 2012-01-09 21:00 · Score: 3, Interesting

There is plenty of creativity in journalism. In the US, journos exhibit creativity when they try to create two sides out of a one sided issue, conjures up non existent reasons for an illegal war, or print outright works of fiction as fact.

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Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
1. Re:Interesting by LordLimecat · 2012-01-10 04:01 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  When you say "illegal war", you mean "military activity not authorized authorized by congress?"
  Because heres the huge irony of all these bashing statements about "Bushe's War" being illegal getting +5 interesting: All of Bush's military activity was explicitly authorized [wikipedia.org] by Congress, in one case by a landslide [wikipedia.org]. The huge irony here is that Obama voted "yea" for both.
  The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for Obama, despite his vocal opposition to non-authorized military activity-- Libya was not approved by Congress (though it was by the UN; I guess that trumps constitutionality requirements in Obama's book).
  To be clear, I am not against the intervention in Libya-- I can give Obama credit where credit is due; but there is some HUGE hypocrisy from a guy who stated
  "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
  and even more so from those who ignore Libya and continue blithely attacking Bush. At least Obama had the good sense to shut up about Bush's "Kinetic Military Actions" being unconstitutional; yall should take a page out of his book.
Re:In Slovakia.... by Opportunist · 2012-01-09 21:07 · Score: 3, Insightful

You sure? These comments are original works of me, my opinion, my creation.
You have to see the difference between information and creation. That Hydrogen is the lightest element in the periodic table is not copyrightable. It's information. Even if I create an elaborate statement that culminates in its essence in this and little else, there's no chance that I'll retain copyright of it. Because the main part of what I created is still just the information that hydrogen is the element with the least mass.
A fantasy story about various atoms coming together and having a party, while playing puns on their weight and some of their properties (and look how fat uranium looks, any more yellow cake and she's gonna blow!) is a different matter. That IS copyrightable.

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We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Manipulative wording by Forty+Two+Tenfold · 2012-01-09 21:08 · Score: 2

It's not 'author's rights' to recognition that are neglected rather than the publisher's rights to monopolize monetary or informative value of their writing.

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Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
1. Re:Manipulative wording by Trevin · 2012-01-10 02:40 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  That's closer, but monopolizing the news is not a right. It's a privilege which may (or may not) be granted by the government.
For now by Kikuchi · 2012-01-09 21:18 · Score: 2

US of A Ambassador : "That's a nice country you have here. It'd be a shame if something happened to its economy..."

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There's no scientific consensus that life is important.
Re:In Slovakia.... by ciderbrew · 2012-01-09 21:40 · Score: 5, Funny

You sure? These comments are original works of me, my opinion, my creation.
You have to see the difference between information and creation. That Hydrogen is the lightest element in the periodic table is not copyrightable. It's information. Even if I create an elaborate statement that culminates in its essence in this and little else, there's no chance that I'll retain copyright of it. Because the main part of what I created is still just the information that hydrogen is the element with the least mass.
A fantasy story about various atoms coming together and having a party, while playing puns on their weight and some of their properties (and look how fat uranium looks, any more yellow cake and she's gonna blow!) is a different matter. That IS copyrightable.
Does this mean I can't use the quote button?
Because they aren't worth it by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-09 22:01 · Score: 2, Funny

The more likely explanation is that they are not worth protecting, because their quality is so low. Journalism is a dying art. Newspapers consist of poorly translated blurbs from AP/AFP/Reuters. With a population of 5 million, Slovakia does not receive much attention from the foreign press, and the only case where I've seen local reporters get to the bottom of an issue are in a few consumer-protection issues. Never in other important fields like science, politics, etc. But who cares. Most people just want a tabloid, and that's what they get.
I get better news coverage here on Slashdot than from Slovakian newspaper articles.
I'm sure you will be more than happy if my edit gets voted to +5. Now imagine if you were a professional, and had your text stolen. Still think it shouldn't be copyrightable?
Re:First! by Urkki · 2012-01-09 22:16 · Score: 2

causes damage to the posters reputation
If the poster wasn't AC, maybe
Oh, no, that just means that everybody who ever posted as AC is is eligible for damages. Actually, this is a class action case!
Re:In Slovakia.... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-09 22:54 · Score: 2, Informative

You seem confused. The copyright of facts and the copyright of newspaper articles are two distinct things.
Re:In Slovakia.... by fatphil · 2012-01-09 23:41 · Score: 2

I don't know why you were marked funny, it's more worth "insightful". You raise a good point, and it's one that predates web-based communities like /.. There would often be loons on usenet who would like to assert copyright over everything they posted (grand theories about how something impossible was true, usually), who used to get all riled up when people would reply quoting everything. The general consensus was that such posts, whilst copyrighted by the original poster, have been explicitly sent into a medium which by design permits, or even requires, mass duplication and sometimes cosmetic rewriting. So permission to copy has already been granted as soon as the initial "send" was clicked.

I don't recall this precise (fora) idea being tested in court, but I'm far from confident that the decision would go the right way. Similar requires-duplication-in-order-to-even-ever-work scenarios have been tested, and decided upon in the braindead fashion. (Namely that the person who issued a HTTP GET for an image, and who was then willingly send a copy of the image by the web server, was found guilty of copyright infringement.)

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Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Re:In Slovakia.... by aix+tom · 2012-01-09 23:52 · Score: 5, Funny

You seem confused. The copyright of facts and the copyright of newspaper articles are two distinct things.
That may indeed be true in the US, where "facts" and "newspaper articles" definitely are two distinct things most of the time.
Finally a test case by Mathinker · 2012-01-09 23:59 · Score: 5, Interesting

Will this cause the total collapse of the Slovakian news business? My suspicion is "no".
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens, so finally there might be some (slightly) more objective evidence for those of us who are interested in how the current copyright laws encourage or discourage various economic endeavors.
1. Re:Finally a test case by MisterMidi · 2012-01-10 03:24 · Score: 2
  
  No test case. As an AC pointed out, Like most countries in the EU (and for that matter, most countries in the world), Slovakia doesn't have common law, precedents, and test cases. In civil law, law is written, not precedented.
2. Re:Finally a test case by Mathinker · 2012-01-10 04:47 · Score: 2
  
  I think you misunderstand "test case", here. I did not mean a legal test case. I meant an economic test case --- for that, it is sufficient to have just this one decision.
We could cut the copyright on newspaper articles by rollingcalf · 2012-01-10 01:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

... down to 5 or 10 days after publication, and it wouldn't kill the incentives of journalists to research and write the articles, or of newspapers to publish them. Nearly all of their monetary value is realized in the first 48 hours after publication.
Cutting the copyright short would also make it easier for newspapers to make their archives of old articles available. In America some newspapers get cockblocked by journalists suing to collect royalties again on years-old articles just because the article is republished in a different medium.

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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Re:FTFY, DMCA by ciderbrew · 2012-01-10 03:45 · Score: 2

You've just made that filthy. Well done.