The content of this post (originally titled ‘how scribd makes money’) was taken off because of legal threat from the technology editor at Guradian named Charles Arthur. Please see the comments below. This provides an interesting casestudy of how the news media companies do not seem to be learning from the past mistakes of the music industry. If using lawyers to threaten bloggers is their new media strategy then god help them.
July 23, 2009
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Hi
Could you confirm that you have authorisation to use entire content in this way?
Otherwise your first experience of entrepreneurism could be getting sued by a large media organisation unhappy that you have ripped off its content in full, which is against the law. (That law applies in the US too.) The article is on the Guardian website and will remain there: why not leave it there, and comment constructively on it here.
Ripping off content is not constructive. Quite the opposite.
Charles Arthur, editor, Technology Guardian
Comment by Charles Arthur — July 26, 2009 @ 2:27 pm
Hi Charles,
I linked to the article and used excerpts from the article in my post. If I am not mistaken that is fair use. I usuall only cite selected excerpts, but not sure if I quoted the whole article or most of it this time. I have been on the road for the last few weeks so am pressed for time to be more selective in the excerpts. I also clearly mention that the article is from the Guardian and mention the author’s name. Anyway, I am not trying to make money of your content. My blog is not of commercial nature. Thanks for stopping by.
Regards,
Raja
Comment by Raja — July 28, 2009 @ 3:30 am
You’ve used pretty much the entire article, if not all of it - that absolutely does not fall under “fair use”. That is actionable. If you’re somehow suggesting that you have no idea how much of an article you’re copying, then I suggest that you need to pay a bit more attention to what you’re doing. Take some more time. Don’t do things that you might regret later. It is immaterial whether you’re been on the road or sitting in a hammock.
You are completely mistaken about the notion of “fair use”. I suggest you actually look it up instead of mouthing it. You have not used the content for the purpose of criticism, commentary or even satire. You’ve copied it. The commercial or non-commercial nature of your blog has no impact on whether this is a breach of copyright.
By copying wholesale like this you’re denying us traffic from people coming to see the actual, full article, which means we can’t sell ads and other services. It doesn’t matter whether your blog is commercial or not - you, the person in charge of its content, are liable under copyright and other laws for what’s on it.
Please alter this and take note of this reality: you cannot steal content like this with impunity. It annoys people, and some of those people have full-time lawyers. As indeed the Guardian Media Group does.
Comment by Charles Arthur — August 3, 2009 @ 2:33 am
I try to add my perspective in most of the articles I quote. I did not have time to do that for some articles including this one because of lack of time. I also us this blog to post articles that interest me and my friends. So my intent is to promote your content that interests me not steal it. I know there is an ongoing debate between google and newpaper publishers about such issues. So things are not black and white. I am not saying that you are wrong. I do appreciate your comments. I am just saying that I have decent intentions behind my posts.
Comment by Raja — August 4, 2009 @ 8:16 am
A judge will not take account of “intentions”, only of the offence.
To reiterate, by putting all the content here you *are* stealing it and you *are* stealing from us because you deny us advertising revenue from people coming to our site. If you want your friends to find content, get a Delicious account and push that to them, with your commentary. Don’t copy all our product.
Would you be happy if we took all your work for nothing and made money from it, or distributed it and denied you the opportunity to make money from it?
The debate with Google is entirely different: Google does not take the entire content of an article and republish it. Do not try to obfuscate with irrelevance: it makes you look seriously uninformed and does nothing to mitigate your offence.
This case is *entirely* black and white. You have infringed our copyright, been warned, and ignored the warning twice.
Please remove this infringing content - reducing it to real fair use with or without commentary - or I will send this to the Guardian’s lawyers for action. Final warning.
Charles Arthur, editor, Guardian Technology
Comment by Charles Arthur — August 5, 2009 @ 1:30 am
No problem. You have the wrong idea about me and my blog.
In the future I will not promote any content from guardian on this blog. I will not visit guardian ever again. I will use this episode repeatedly on this blog as an example of how old media companies spend their time threatening to sue people like me. You guys probably have bigger things to worry about than threatening to sue people like me.
BTW, you are happy to take all that I write here and make money from it, if that were possible. It will benefit you and me both because you are promoting me and you are making extra money. You seem to miss that point. I was freely promoting your content to all the people that visit my blog. I am not making any money from your content. I can not believe that I get threatened by the editor of guardian for that. In any case, good bye guardian and best of luck.
Comment by Raja — August 5, 2009 @ 6:23 am
“I will use this episode repeatedly on this blog as an example of how old media companies spend their time threatening to sue people like me.”
Uh-huh. If you want to show that you don’t understand the law, even when advised to look it up (Wikipedia actually has a very good article on fair use/fair dealing), that’s a great idea - any potential investor in any business you might want to run will be fascinated to find that out. Good thinking.
Secondly, I’m not the editor of the Guardian. As my signature made clear, I’m the editor of the Guardian’s Technology coverage, which you could easily have checked by doing a search on my name. You’re impressing those would-be investors more and more: this guy really knows how to do research to be sure of his facts.
“I was freely promoting your content to all the people that visit my blog.” No. You were taking all the content and, as I have repeatedly pointed out, thus denying us advertising revenue and page views and unique visitors. That’s a third one for those would-be investors: showing that you really understand money flows. I make that a triple.
Your claim at the top of this page is wrong: I’m not the editor of the Guardian. I’d advise you to change it. (Frankly, I’d advise you to delete the entire posting, because none of it makes you look in the least bit smart. Lesson 4: know when you’ve completely lost, stop digging, and walk away.)
Comment by Charles Arthur — August 5, 2009 @ 2:05 pm
Charles, So far I have refrained from personal attacks. But you are the one who is clueless. Anyone who reads your threats to me can decide that for themselves. I know what fair use is and I don’t need to go read wikipedia. I have decided to delete the content of the post as part of my decision to not promote gaurdian content anymore. I also have better things to do than deal with lawyers.
I am happy to hear that you are not one of those in your profession that thinks google is stealing your content. You should be aware of many high profile news media execs that have publicly stated such a position. So ’stealing’ content is pretty subjective.
You are an editor at Guardian and this post will remain on my blog. This is my blog and I will decide what goes on it. Thanks for your advice. I will let the readers make their conclusions on who is anal.
Finally since this is my blog I will give you some free advice. You would be better off not threatening bloggers like me with law suits on their blogs. It paints you and the Guardian in bad light. Please use some common sense.
Here is a secret. It does benefit you if a blogger like me shares one of your artciles (even if it is quoted almost in its entirety) on their blogs. It is like providing a sample to showcase your content. I showcased it with full attribution with a link to the original article. You should be happy and thankful to me. You should encourage people like me to ’steal’ (in your lingo) in such cases. You should most certainly be concerned if a blog is ripping off all your articles without attribution on a daily basis and selling ads against it. That is clearly not the case here. Stop acting like RIAA and learn from the lessons of the music industry. It is clear to me that you do not GET new media. Stop calling me clueless and start learning about evangelizing in the new world. You don’t have to thank me for the free advice. It is a perk of being a reader of my blog.
Comment by Raja — August 6, 2009 @ 7:27 pm
“I know what fair use is”. You don’t. You’re not a lawyer and you’re not trained in copyright. You copied the entire article and put it here. On my pointing out that that was a breach of copyright, you took it down. Ergo, you could not distinguish fair use from outright ripoff.
“Stealing” content is not subjective when you have taken the entire content and put it here, thus denying us - who originated the content - the chance to serve ads against it, which would help defray its costs. If someone reads it here, why would they follow your link?
Glad to see you’ve corrected what you previously wrote about my position at The Guardian, but you need to learn skills such as how to use the strikethrough tag to indicate where you’ve changed content in the light of learning more detail.
I asked whether you had permission to use all the content. Some people do. You came back saying that you could if you felt like it. That’s untrue. You need to explain why we should not defend our IP.
“You should encourage people like me to ’steal’ (in your lingo) in such cases.” No, I will not. I will encourage you to use short extracts for the purpose of commentary or even satire, as allowed under fair use (you could still go and look it up, even now). I won’t encourage you to take away viewers from our site, for the reasons I keep explaining - and that you don’t listen to, for no reason I can fathom. We’ve determined our commercial model, thanks. I await the fruits of your commercial efforts in whatever field it may be. I’ll be especially interested in your attitude to IP, given the precedent you’ve set here. Will you be delighted for people to deny you revenue when it’s your product they’re copying? Do keep us posted.
Comment by Charles Arthur — August 7, 2009 @ 5:32 am
“Many people including me click on the original link if they like an article promoted by a friend or someone they trust.”
Provide a link to some research backing that up. Otherwise that’s just a ridiculous claim pulled from the air to justify yourself. I contend it’s more likely that if you offer a short taster - say, a “fair use” extract - and say “click for the rest” then *more* people will click through than if you provide all the content. Prima facie, the latter seems more likely: if you’re claiming people are willing to click on a link, they’ll be even more willing to click a link to get the rest of the content, not to get what they’ve already read. Why would they want to click a link to re-read what they’ve already read? You’re going to need a rock-solid study there. Remember, you’re the one who offered the assertion: I’ve offered the empirical refutation. Now you need some research to back your hypothesis. Or you could concede gracefully, of course.
“You should absolutely defend your IP when someone is making a business out of stealing your content and making money out of it. My blog does not fall under that category.”
As I have pointed out multiple times, if you put all the content of a piece on your site, thus reducing (by my contention) the number of people who click through to our site, you deny us business. That’s just the same as building a business around our IP because it reduces our benefit. If you were building a business around it that would mean that in a court case the damages would be amplified. But the fact of not building a business does *not* exculpate you. It simply makes the offence less egregrious.
“See what legal strong arming has done to the music industry.”
Actually it’s not legal strongarming, but untrammeled copying that’s cut out the ground from under the music industry - though I’ve argued many times that doing a deal with Napster would have been its best move, enabling it to make money from that file sharing: a per-track payment for a subscription-based Napster would have been a win-win.
Serrastreet? Nice. Now imagine how you’d feel if you found your clients giving your software modules away on their website, or telling you they weren’t going to pay your programmers for their time because they were only writing code they’d done before and they should think of a new way of making money. I doubt you’d be impressed. The short version? Don’t step on other peoples’ business models. They don’t like it.
That said, you are *still* free - indeed welcome - to use short extracts from any Guardian article for the purposes of commentary, criticism or satire. With or without a link. Just not the whole thing. Not even most of the piece.
Comment by Charles Arthur — August 7, 2009 @ 1:58 pm
“Now imagine how you’d feel if you found your clients giving your software modules away on their website”
We opensource our software modules so we usually thank our clients if they give away our modules on their website. We don’t threaten them with lawsuits.
We could charge for our software and maintain lawyers to sue our clients. But we earn more money by giving away our software for free. Funny world, eh?
Comment by Raja — August 7, 2009 @ 4:57 pm
[...] I had an interesting interchange (checkout the comments section) on my blog with Arthur Charles, tech editor at the Guardian, who [...]
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