Comments on: Really, Plain Dealer?!?

By: Dana

Dana — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:46:57 +0000

It does seem there are some big questions that were missed.
I loved TechDirt’s points about the sources we use. Without the time and work our sources give us, we wouldn’t have stories to write. Are we then parasites for using them and their information to make money for ourselves? Definitely never thought of it that way before.

By: Mandy

Mandy — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:16:24 +0000

(I hope to write another post about this soon, but who knows when I’ll get time)

Aside from Schultz getting their report wrong, it is flawed nonetheless. The real issue for me is two-fold:

1. All content publishers need to be concerned about protecting their copyright. Calling bloggers “parasites” and antagonizing the very people who could help push the cause (like they did with that horrible story last week) doesn’t help the cause.

2. Who are the Marburgers – or the courts – to determine who gets to use facts from the scene of a story? What if the PD’s reporters aren’t on the scene to get the facts – are they going to refrain from using those facts for 24 hours? Or does it just apply to those media outlets that aren’t as established as metro newspapers? It seems to be designed to rebuild the playing field to benefit large, mainstream news operations and nobody else.

By: Dana

Dana — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:22:15 +0000

I was going to write a rebuttal, but it seems that TechDirt has already revised their analysis after reading the actual report. Schultz’s columns didn’t really represent the facts of the report correctly. A lot of the issues you have posed here are addressed in the report itself, which is actually very pro-linking and makes a distinction between parasitic aggregators and pure aggregators (or “true” as you write here), and definitely does not propose a 24-hour ban be put into law.
Yes there are still some issues with the report, but it’s Schultz that seems to be the real problem in how she portrayed it.