[caption id="attachment_6526" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Judge's tools"]
[/caption]Carol Forsloff - The days when a blogger or citizen journal site canLas
simply lift a news story out of the newspaper verbatim or through a substantial rewrite might one day be over, as the Las Vegas Review Journal now has a lawsuit against 30 websites for doing just that.
Journalists who work for traditional newspapers, or who have studied the practice of journalism, understand press releases are one thing and newspaper sites are another when it comes to using posted material. Press releases are available for the press for posting with appropriate credits as they are embedded within the press release and with some additional editing to correspond to the contentsite. But rewriting substantially an entire article posted on another news site that is original with that news site is an entirely different matter.
Some citizen journal sites have been maintained
substantially by rewrites of a single news item that would, by definition,
utilize the same or similar key words to drive traffic.
There are also news aggregators that copy entire
articles verbatim and have no obvious contact information and use Google ad
words as well, therefore taking away from potential profits of the original
writers and newspapers on a variety of levels.
Advertising Age reports that one-third of all online readers use newspaper websites for their
news. On the other hand, the sites themselves only get 11% of online advertising.
In addition these newspaper sites have also experienced a 16% downturn
in advertising since 2004. What AdAge believes is that the less expensive news aggregators with lower ad rates take
the money that should go to the original content creators. When people “Google” and get a website, many
don’t look to see whether the article is an original or the entire article
posted somewhere else. All of this adds
up to lost revenue.
But this is not something the big boys and others are going to accept anymore. Some are just talking right now, but some are
preparing for action. In fact it has been reported in a recent press
release that The Las Vegas Review Journal has filed a lawsuit against over 30 websites and
blogs for using their stories without permission. According to PRN, the Allegra
and Emerson blog City Felines posted a story about birds that had been reported
in the LV Review Journal and was printed on the blog, according to allegations.
Mark Hinueber, corporate attorney for Las Vegas Review Journal, observed the lawsuit is
primarily directed towards those involved in copyright infringement, of the
cut-and-paste variety or taking substantial portions of article material and
posting it without reference or citation.
Steve Gibson of Right Haven, a group hired to represent LVRJ in this action said the examination for
copyright infringement includes what is called “fair use,” or the substantive
content used in rewriting entire articles for secondary sites. He underlined the fact that the practice is
widespread and serious across the news industry.
So it’s bloggers and citizen journalists beware, along with those in traditional media who know the rules and choose to
violate them anyway. No more copying or
mostly rewording a single news story, because there is a hint of trouble on the
horizon that might make the news game just a bit more rigorous when it comes to where the news flows and the money goes.
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