The high cost of headlines
p2p news / p2pnet:- Headlines are becoming positively dangerous, not to mention expensive.
Agence France Presse is suing Google News for damages of around $17.5 million and an order barring Google from displaying copyrighted AFP pix, stories and headlines without permission.
Now Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun has successfully sued a Kobe company for using its headlines without permission.
Digital Alliance runs a small information website called Line Topics which collects news articles and headlines,” says, appropriately, AFP, going on, “On clicking a headline, a web user is forwarded to the Japanese site of search giant Yahoo!, which provides the article.”
The Intellectual Property High Court ordered Digital Alliance to pay about 237,700 yen (2,000 dollars) to the Yomiuri.
The firm has an electronic flash news service, “under which headlines of online news stories distributed by news organizations are shown, and visitors can jump to news sites run by Yahoo and other companies that carry the full text of news stories,” says the Yomiuri. “News organizations charge Net service companies for online news distribution. The Kobe firm, however, used online news headlines without permission and earned advertising income.”
But the court also ruled headlines were still in a legal gray area as they are not mentioned under Japan’s Copyright Law, says AFP, and therefore it didn`t order Digital Alliance to pull the Yomiuri headlines off its website.
Although the award was only about $2,000, the ruling could have enormous ramifications because it means that unauthorized use of headlines alone could be considered illegal, says CNET News.
If this kind of judicial interpretation spreads to other nations, it could jeopardize countless sources of information now taken for granted on the Web, such as blogs, search engines, RSS feeds and a seemingly infinite number of sites that provide some form of headline aggregation.
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See:-
stories and headlines – Google sued by France’s AFP, March 19, 2005
AFP – Japan newspaper wins damages for online use of headlines, October 6, 2005
Yomiuri – Court ruling favors Yomiuri, October 7, 2005
CNET News – Headline links can be dangerous in Japan, October 10, 2005
October 12th, 2005 at 4:25 pm
Why ban free speech when all you have to do is trademark and copyright just about every phase, headline, opinion, or even words used in certain contexts. That way, in order to suppress speech that is ‘unsuitable’ to the powers that be, one only has to sue for infringment.
Imagine publishing information about a corrupt politician in a student newspaper and end up getting sued by a corporate patron for copyright infringment. That the way things are headed
If I am in the hardware business and am competing against Home Depot, and I TRUTHFULLY say “Here at Joes, we always have the low prices – always,” I could be dragged into court for infringing on “Walmart’s trademark” The copyright laws of this country and many others have become so crazy that it is now becoming suppressive. This is just another reason why to support FreeWans. At least on a FreeWan Cell, one can post information anonymously. Freedom of expression is fast becoming a thing of the past.