Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Current News
Steal This Article . . . Please!
2/1/2006
So, yet one more information dinosaur, fat reserves dwindling, wakes up from its long nap, looks around and is startled by change. Of course it then begins trampling around with its weight's worth of lawyers, trying to put the pieces of its broken eggs back together by legal force.
You guessed it. The dinosaur is the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and its cohorts. They claim that search engines and news aggregators are stealing their content, and they want to be paid for it!
Many old business models do not work well with the Internet. Rather, they may work okay, but the Internet allows for new products and services that often compete more efficiently with the older products and services.
Some of the first efforts to restrict linking and posting of information on the Internet came from newspapers. I recall the first big case as having been in Scotland, where someone created a local newspaper but had no reporting staff and, instead, just published an online-only newspaper that linked to the previous newspaper's online articles but "framed" them in the new newspaper's look and feel.
The courts eventually held, in that case, that what is now called "deep linking" is okay, but that you cannot deep link to the information of others and try to present it in a way that consumers might be tricked into thinking that it is your own content.
This kind of "confusion as to content" is quite common. It's a long-standing, cyclical issue here at the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) that as soon as we publish a new issue of Planning for Higher Education, we start getting telephone calls and emails from people who want to buy from us the books--published by others--that we reviewed in the latest issue. (That actually may someday soon be a possibility, but it certainly never has been thus far, and this has been happening since before the Web existed.)
After the Scottish case, things were quiet on the deep linking front, but then public broadcasting entities and some other organizations decided to start putting user license agreements on their web pages stating that users swore not to deep link to any content past their front page without first getting written approval. Public opinion and good sense beat that effort down rather quickly.
Now, the latest: WAN, which represents 18,000 newspapers and 73 national newspaper associations, is smarter than most dinosaurs. It is, at least, beginning its efforts in Europe, where the principles of free speech and fair use are not as deeply embedded in the collective psyche as in the United States.
It's talking tough: "We need search engines, and they do help consumers navigate an increasingly complicated medium, but they're building [their business] on the back of kleptomania," says Gavin O'Reilly, president of WAN.
Recommended Reading
- Campus Security :: November 14, 2008
:::::: SECURITY SPOTLIGHT
: Smart Phone Security: New Challenges for Road Warriors
:::::: CAMPUS SECURITY NEWS
: SMobile Releases Antivirus To Protect Google Android Phones
: Blue Coat Integrates Network Appliances
: e2Campus Provides Twitter Integration in Emergency Notification System
: Moodle Gets Student Verification Capabilities
: Rave Wireless Adding BlackBerry Devices to Notification Service
: U Miami Trades IPS for Top Layer Security System
: Cornell Hardens Campus Network with Gigabit Wireless Radio Links
: U Pittsburgh Turns to Verizon Business for Automated Notification Services - IT Trends :: Thursday, November 13, 2008
:::::: CASE STUDY
:: Cornell Takes Visual Approach to Data Analysis
:::::: IT NEWS
:: Panopto Launches Hosted Lecture Capture System
:: Microsoft To Add Smooth Streaming in IIS7
:: Agile Solution Provider Rolls Out Java SDK
:: Salem CC To Enhance Self Service with Unified Digital Campus
:: Parallels Desktop 4.0 Get Performance Boost, DirectX 9.0 Support
:: Brandon U To Automate Employment Processes with EmpCenter
:: SMobile Releases Antivirus To Protect Google Android Phones - C-Level View :: November 12, 2008
:::::: EXECUTIVE VIEW
: Delta iTunes U Enhances Learning in a Familiar Web 2.0 Environment
:::::: WORTH NOTING
: Caltech Completes Parking Structure Solar Array
: Schools Take Recruitment Virtual with Online Education Expo
: Blackboard Managed Hosting Rolls Out Virtual Operating Environment
: Higher Ed Help Desk Platform Adds Web 2.0 Tools
: Moodle Gets Student Verification Capabilities - SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, November 12, 2008
:::::: TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
: Microblogging and Relevancy
:::::: NEWS and PRODUCT UPDATES
: Open Source Java Libraries Debut for uPortal
: Dimdim Launches Hosted Virtual Classroom
: ASU School of Engineering Posts 10,000th Lecture with Mediasite
: Lyon College Plans Student Laptop Rollout
: Moodle Gets Student Verification Capabilities - News Update :: Tuesday, November 11, 2008
:::::: NEWS
: Caltech Completes Parking Structure Solar Array
: Schools Take Recruitment Virtual with Online Education Expo
: Salem CC To Enhance Self Service with Unified Digital Campus
: Brandon U To Automate Employment Processes with EmpCenter
: Open Source Java Libraries Debut for uPortal
: ASU and Obsidian Collaboration Seeks to Boost Long-distance Bandwidth
: Blue Coat Integrates Network Appliances
: e2Campus Provides Twitter Integration in Emergency Notification System
: Plagiarism Detection System Adds URL Filtering, Reporting Groups - IT Trends :: Thursday, November 6, 2008
:::::: CASE STUDY
:: Small College Makes Big Leap in Wireless
:::::: IT NEWS
:: Washington U Healthcare Researchers Turn to Virtual Storage
:: Cornell Hardens Campus Network with Gigabit Wireless Radio Links
:: BYU-Idaho Turns to Web-based Facilities Management System
:: U Pittsburgh Turns to Verizon Business for Automated Notification Services
:: Universities Turn to Oracle for Web-based Services
:: Delgado CC Expands Outsourced Support Agreement with Presidium Learning
:: Security Concerns May Slow Cloud Computing Adoption
