Hey Everyone!
You may notice in the coming days that a few old posts from our blog are missing. There is a simple explanation for why. I'm trying to prevent lawsuits and resulting settlements. You see, this morning I read an article about a lawyer who is now making money for newspapers by trolling blogs and suing for copyright infringement. (Thanks to Matt for bringing this to the attention of the Twitterverse!) According to this article, our local media group is among his clients. So, in a preemptive strike, I thought I would take down any old news articles that might be seen as copyright infringement. Of course, the goal was always to share news about dog events, dogs and anything related to them. And we always gave credit to the author and linked to the source of the article. However, it seems that none of this matters to this particular lawyer, who is aiming not to keep the purity of copyrighted work, but rather to make money for dying newspapers. So, I would rather take the articles down than try to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay off this man. I apologize to those of you who might have been looking for a particular article as a resource.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
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As a former reporter I'm very frustrated that I can no longer find my clips online or even have them on an online portfolio for professional reasons. At the same time, papers everywhere are dying and the biggest stake in their heart is the Internet. Even if the papers and authors are credited through blogs, etc - the papers don't get any revenue when the story is copied and pasted anywhere.
ReplyDeleteI'm still mad that I can't read any of my own stories! That won't change.
@Bellesouth I can understand the need for newspapers to make money, but it seems like hiring this particular lawyer to do nothing more than troll the internet and force settlements is a little lowbrow. If their audience is no longer subscribing, then they need to grow and adapt to their reader's needs to find a profitable alternative.
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