Las Vegas Review Journal suing people who post articles online

Who says newspapers can't make money online?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/copyright-trolling-for-dollars/

First place I learned about this was from a college sports message board group that is now having to autofilter out content from there.

http://ncaabbs.com/announcements.php?aid=203

Methinks they're trying to kill a fly with a grenade launcher.

 

The message board wouldn't have to have an auto-filter in place. It would just need to comply with takedown notices.

 

Trouble is, the guy who is buying up the copyrights is going straight to lawsuits and skipping over the other steps. He freely admits he is just trying to get people to settle for a couple thousand dollars - about what they would spend to get a lawyer involved.

 

this is ridiculous.

 

This is really outrageous!!! Linking to articles helps them out since people would click on their link and go to their website. So they are going after message boards now? Unbelievable!

 

Stealing content is stealing content.

 

I think there is a huge difference between linking an article and copy and pasting the content in a messahe post for all to read.

 

I wish I could say I was surprised that Stephens Media was behind this.

 

Not in this context. Not at all.

"Stealing" content is taking a story written by one source, rewriting it and passing it off as your own.

Linking to a newspaper story and properly attributing it benefits both the blogger or other entity posting it and the original newspaper. If this guy succeeds to any extent, then everybody will stop cross-linking newspaper sites he represents, and the newspapers who participate end up losing in the long run. It's very short sighted.

And, by the way, I can still write four paragraphs on my site that says, "The New York Post is reporting ..." and simply skip the link. And if he goes after that kind of thing, good luck.

 

They aren't suing linkers. They are suing copy-and-pasters. There's a difference, even though I think suing either one is silly.

 

If a defendant had the resources to fight back, you would just say how the article harmed the paper. Let's say you had 1,000 views on a thread, the paper would be out $20 bucks at most.

 

Sorry for the irrelevant post, I must have misread it...