Freelance Unbound

As pointed out by Soilman in the comment threads, a High Court judgement on Friday rules that web links to online sources are copyright. Which means news aggregation-type web sites need a licence to use them in their content.
What are the implications for bloggers? After all, we link to external content all the time.
According to the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) web site:

The licence permits the copying of UK national & regional newspapers, both print and online editions as well as foreign & certain specialist titles. 

This includes photocopying, faxing & printing, digital reproduction (scanning, emailing and hosting on an intranet site etc.) and the receipt and distribution of content supplied by a third party such as a public relations or media monitoring agency. 

Our online questionnaire will help you determine if your organisation would benefit from a NLA licence and the type of licence required. Please select the appropriate licence from the list of licences on the left hand menu.

This doesn’t seem to cover simple hyperlinks – but High Court judge Mrs Justice Proudman disagrees. In the case (NLA versus Meltwater News) she ruled that:

“By clicking on a Link to an article, the End User will make a copy of the article within the meaning of [section 17 of the CDPA] and will be in possession of an infringing copy in the course of business within the meaning of [section 23]. By forwarding Meltwater News or its contents to clients an End User will issue to the public copies of the work within the meaning of section 18 CDPA.” (via Out-Law.com)

It seems there are two problems – the clicking on the link, and the forwarding of the link by email.
Bloggers cite their sources and references by linking all the time. In fact, if they don’t, they are in breach of standard web etiquette. But this now seems to be a breach of copyright. And if someone subscribes to a blog via email, they will receive those links in their inbox, thus breaching both parts of this ruling.

“When an End User clicks on a Link a copy of the article on the Publisher’s website which appears on the website accessible via that Link is made on the End User’s computer.”
“When an End User receives an email containing Meltwater News, a copy is made on the End User’s computer and remains there until deleted.”

So is there any difference between bloggers citing and sending links, and this being done by news aggregators or clippings services?
According to NLA managing director David Pugh, yes. He says that the case was not aimed at bloggers, that bloggers do not fall within the remit of the NLA and there is no licence available for the work that bloggers do.

“Our focus is business to business use of web content. Companies that charge to use newspaper content in their services. Meltwater acts in effect in the same way as a press cuttings agency. Clients pay to receive a media monitoring report every day.”

Pugh argues that the Meltwater case revolved around whether client requires a licence to receive such reports. Headlines and text extracts acquire copyright, and the company charged clients to receive it. Therefore, their service required a licence. However, he argues that bloggers should not be affected.

“I don’t think it’s the intention of newspapers to stop people linking to their content or driving traffic to their site. Our focus is business use and paid-for media monitoring.”

However, it is clear that, just because a group is not the target of a court ruling, it does not follow that that group will not be affected by that ruling.
If a blogger is very successful and makes a living from their blog (Guido Fawkes, for example), are they making commercial use of the links they use?
According to Pugh, there is no licensing structure in place to handle this, and it is not in the remit of the NLA to apply the licensing framework to the blogosphere. Obviously, however, the ruling potentially opens up bloggers to action by media owners.
Pugh’s advice for any content producer is to check their position.

“If anyone is in any doubt about whether they are infringing copyright, talk to the NLA or contact an individual newspaper,” he says.

What do copyright lawyers make of this?
Kim Walker, a partner at law firm Pinsent Masons, is “not at all surprised” at the ruling. Apparently the fact that URLs are a legitimate target for copyright action is not actually news. Here are some weird copyright facts:

• Posting a URL (web address) is not in breach of copyright.
• Clicking on a URL and therefore copying the web page it points to into your browser is a breach of copyright.
• So bloggers aren’t breaching copyright law, but site visitors are.
• But on the other hand, bloggers might be encouraging their readers to breach copyright, which is an offence.
• Bloggers can use extracts of copyright material for the purposes of fair dealing (ie comment and analysis).
• But clicking on a reference link could still be a breach of copyright by a reader.

The web exists as a network of links – so is everyone breaking the law?
No – according to Walker, there is an implicit licence for web users to click on links and so copy the copyright material to their computer.
However, if a web content copyright owner specifically says in their site’s terms and conditions that they do not allow it, that is a perfectly legitimate position. (Though clearly it is a bit bonkers.)
If the link is on a page owned by the copyright owner though, then you can click through to it, as the copyright owner has given you an implicit licence to do that. Which is a relief.
Luckily, the government is reviewing copyright law to make it “fit for the internet age”. Let’s hope they have some grasp of mashup culture…

It’s actually obvious from the reporting, but somehow last week’s coverage of “The world’s most boring news day” misses the point.

As part of the publicity campaign for search engine True Knowledge, “experts” used a computer search of world events to pinpoint 11 April 1954 as the most boring day of the 20th century.

Yet clearly this is rubbish. Even the Daily Mail featured its front page from the day after to show what was going on – and it included military intervention in Indo-China and news of the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya.

So what’s going on?

As noted here before, the internet tends to destroy history. Because when all you do is look at online, digital sources for information, rather than discovering the gaps in history when nothing much happened, you discover the gaps in those databases, when nothing much was recorded.

Clearly, 11 April 1954 was a busy day in the world. Not the busiest, for sure, but busy enough.

The problem is that search engines, by their nature, cannot uncover information that is not on a computer (and that is not in a form that can be interrogated by that particular search engine). And so much of what happened in the world before 1995 is simply not in that format.

There’s a warning here – we must try to put less reliance on online research and archives, at least until they become much more comprehensive.

But there’s also an opportunity. There is so much information outside the internet that aspiring journalists have a treasure trove of potential material to mine for exclusive, newsworthy material – if they only get away from their computer screens and get back into the mouldering bookshelves and newspaper stacks.

True Knowledge? Only as far as it goes. An amusing gimmick, yes. A valid piece of scientific research, no.

Should have gone to the British Newspaper Library in Colindale…

[HT: FleetStreetBlues]

If you came home from work and found that the local council had broken into your house and seized your possessions without warning because it believed you owed money for Council Tax, you’d be incensed. Yet this is pretty much what has just happened in the digital world.
Via Mashable, here’s an interesting and disturbing item about the closure of P2P (peer-to-peer) torrent search site Torrent-Finder.com by US government agencies. It may seem far removed from journalism blogging, but there are serious implications.
Apparently the first the site owner knew about it was when he visited his web host and saw a change to his domain name. It seems the host (GoDaddy) had no idea what was going on and the action had been taken unilaterally and without warning to the host or the site owner.
Copyright theft – the main business of P2P file sharing – is illegal, and the bane of many copyright holders’ lives. But two issues are important here.

1. Torrent-Finder.com is a search engine of torrent hosting sites, not a torrent site itself. Its results are functionally only the same as those you’d get from Google.
2. If there as any alleged infringement of copyright, or any other data offence, a site owner should have some warning that the feds are about to arrest him (or close his site).

You may not care about the fate of a torrent site (after all, it’s all about bootleg movies and pornography). But what is the implication for other site owners?
Big media owners complain endlessly about bloggers, among others, stealing their copyright material, even just by linking to it. What if they get enough traction to push the US government into closing down aggregation news sites or bloggers with no warning whatsoever?
Despite the seriousness of the allegations, the digital world needs the same due process of law for exactly this reason. Will your site suddenly be unavailable next time you want to publish a story?

Quote of the day from Future Publishing founder and TED conference curator Chris Anderson speaking at a Creative Bath event last month:

We’re obsessed with attention […] but when we measure it we measure it all wrong. We obsess over quantity of attention – circulation, page views, ratings; we obsess over demographics. But the third axis of attention is far more important. It’s intensity; it’s quality. Because the difference between high-engagement, focused-attention media and casual, take-it-or-leave it media is not 20% more or 20% better – it’s orders of magnitude. That’s what we call passion.

Here’s the video of his keynote speech (it starts at 4:25, after a trailer for the TED conference. Quote is at 11:50):
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/16674916[/vimeo]

I also like his “I screwed up” admission a few minutes earlier…

Things will be quiet on Freelance Unbound for a few more days, as I have a couple of OU science assessments to work on, on top of the usual day job and dog.
This is all giving me a fresh perspective on why my journalism students leave everything until the last minute, let me tell you. I feel I will be a wiser and more humble teacher as a result. (Well, maybe…)

Here’s most papers’ front page image of yesterday’s student fee protest riot:

And here’s a wider angle view, used by the BBC web site:

My – that looks spontaneous. I wonder how long he waited before he thought there were enough photographers around to justify his feat of passionate ad hoc window-kicking…

How I love my comment spam. Thanks to the excellent Akismet plugin, I don’t generally have to moderate it, and it’s very rare that real comments get caught in it. So I can just empty the spam bin (currently 164 comments) whenever I remember, safe in the knowledge that there’s very little risk of losing genuine reader input.

Before I do, though, let’s have a look at some of the top-notch comments that the sellers of Viagra and various other adult services think will trick their way into Freelance Unbound. Here’s my top five.

1. Leandro Gschwind
   “Intimately, the post is in reality the freshest on this laudable topic. I fit in with your conclusions and will eagerly look forward to your approaching updates. Saying thanks will not just be sufficient, for the fantasti c lucidity in your writing. I will right away grab your rss feed to stay informed of any updates. Fabulous work and much success in your business dealings!”
   “Fantasti c lucidity” almost got this approved on its own, never mind the great commenter name.
   
2. Australian Brothels
   “Great post – bookmarked!”
   Not really worthy of recommendation, except for the post chosen to comment on: “Ladybird Junior Science: ideal grounding for the Open University”, which is so inappropriate it gets the crucial extra marks.
3. Persons Unknown
   “Persons Unknown is an American mystery drama tv series that revolves around strangers who are imprisoned inside a little ghost town. Diverse strangers find themselves stranded in a forsaken town with no clue about how they got there. Security cameras are watching their every move, defeating their attempts to escape. Faced with physical challenges, the hostages must trust each other to endure as their abductors sow mistrust and pit them against each other. At the same time, a reporter starts to investigate the disappearances of the missing people despite aggression by those who apparently know their every move.”
   Which is actually very interesting – it is a US mystery drama series that I’d like to watch. Shame the comment wasn’t posted on one of my TV-relevant posts, or I might have published it. Here’s a link (though not to the spammer).
4. E Cigarettes
   “Winsome thoughts right here. Are you convinced it is the accurate solution to look at it although? My own private practical knowledge is the fact that we really should virtually dwell and let are living because what one particular man or woman thinks just — another man or woman simply will not. Human beings are heading to perform what they want to do. Within the end, they usually do. Probably the most we can hope for is always to establish a number of factors here and there that hopefully, makes it possible for them to create just a small superior informed decision.” 
   It’s almost philosophy. As soon as I figure out what it means, I’m going to put it into practice in my own life. The clincher was the contrast between the content and the poster’s name.
5. Madie Rijo
   The following pair of superhero-sized hand protection seems to be identical to the Hulk character’s fingers using glide proper in excess of possession regarding slamming superhero make-believe! Release people inner super hero these kinds of super-sized set of two Hulk-inspired hand protection. Thorough with stuffed blood vessels along with huge environment friendly fingernails, these kind of outsized, cushiony gloves are generally the lighter in weight using that they look. Get ahead–pack your comfortable, but hero-sized hand techinque. Evaluate 9?L x 9?W.
   Uh… sometimes the internet bewilders even me.

Fabulous stuff – do keep it coming, comment spammers. Maybe I’ll run a competition and publish the most creative efforts. Or, you know, maybe I won’t. You’ll have to keep posting and wait and see…

Following its unofficial, 48-hour wildcat industrial action in support of BBC pension rights strikers, the Freelance Unbound (Non-pension) Collective is resuming work.

However, as this is a Sunday, when no update is normally planned, this is an official non-strike, non-update update for informational purposes only.

The normal pattern of intermittent blog posting will resume at 9am sharp on Monday morning, with updates every so often as usual.

In solidarity with oppressed comrades at the BBC, Freelance Unbound is going on a 48-hour strike.
Obviously if there was a simple “no update” strategy, visitors to the site might make the mistake of assuming I just hadn’t got round to writing a new post. So here is a special “On strike” update, that in no way should be considered to be a real update.
Let’s remind ourselves of the cause of this bitter dispute.

• Increases to pensionable pay will be capped at 1% from April 2011
• Employees will be forced to reduce pension contributions from 7% to 6%
• Pension benefits are a new career-average amount – revalued by up to 4% a year. (Whatever than means.)
• Payments will increase automatically each year in line with inflation, by up to 4%.

Clearly, this is appalling. The Freelance Unbound (Non-pension) Collective can only back NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear’s comment that:

“NUJ members across the BBC have consistently dubbed the proposals a ‘pensions robbery’. That hasn’t changed.”

The Freelance Unbound editorial assistant has already walked out in solidarity (she does this twice a day, actually – she’s very committed to the cause).
Now, all I have to do is sort out a pension so I can campaign on how poor its terms are.
Then, as I’m a licence fee payer, it’s back to work twice as hard on Monday to actually pay for the BBC’s pension scheme…

I had to read the first paragraph of this Metro splash twice to ensure I didn’t misinterpret what was going on:

“Schoolgirls are being told to take off their ‘too sexy’ trousers when they arrive for lessons…”

Uh – oh, I see. Then they put on some other trousers that aren’t sexy.
Phew – that could have been a whole other can of worms.
[And I love the inappropriately positioned picture caption of the US President – how the Tea Party would love that…]