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October 05, 2005
You are on the invidual archive page of The New York Times stole from me. Click Simon World weblog for the main page.
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The New York Times stole from me
One incredible part of the Kissel case post is the varied comments received from those who are intimately involved with it. While there have been disagreements and accusations, for the most part the discourse has been civilised. Having an open forum for people to express their feelings and comment on the case has added a new dimension to the coverage of the case and it demonstrates the potential of blogs as a new medium. During the case I made a simple request to the mainstream media who were making use of the site, especially in chasing interviews from commenters on the post. Firstly on August 12th I said the following: Now would be a good time for me to make a simple request: if members of the media use this archive and/or site to help in their research of the case, I would appreciate an email letting me know of any resulting publication or article.I followed this up on September 4th with the following: I repeat a request that any mainstream media account that relies on comments or contacts found via this site please make a reference to this site as the location where that source was found.It was a simple request for attribution. I was and remain happy for mainstream media to use the site as a reference point on the case. All I ask is the simple courtesy of recognising where these contacts were gathered from, just as the media in question would expect proper attribution and acknowledgement when I or others commented on their articles. I am please to say that some newspapers followed my request, including The Standard. The SCMP obviously obtained interviews and material via this site without attribution, but I let that slide given I was cutting-and-pasting their inaccessable articles into the archive - effectively I called us even. Just today a friend and reader mentioned that this site was obliquely referenced the the New York Times in an article on September 24th. The full article appears below the jump, but here is the key part: Lawyers and family members say they believe she is the author of an item posted on the Web earlier this month by an author identified only as H who described seeing to it that her three young charges had the same fun-filled year as her two children: a year packed with sleepovers with friends, music lessons and weekend ski trips. Although it is ''far from a perfect situation,'' the writer wrote, ''they are doing well, all things considered.''The NYT article is referring to this September 11th comment by "H". Clearly the NYT reporter, Alison Leigh Cowan, googled the case, came across my post and read through the comments. It is impossible that she did not see the two seperate requests for notifcation and attribution. I Update 17:08: Further to this, all work on this site is protected by a Creative Commons licence: attribution-non commercial-share alike 1.0. The NYT has proken the attribution aspect (You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor); they've breached noncommercial (You may not use this work for commercial purposes.). Finally under share alike (If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.) we are theoretically free to now at least use this article and perhaps the entire NYT under a similar licence. So much for Times Select. For 3 Little Millionaires, a Series of Painful Events By ALISON LEIGH COWAN (NYT) 1384 words Published: September 24, 2005
To whom it may concern:posted by Simon on 10.05.05 at 02:50 PM in the Kissel category.
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Comments:
bravo! the whole case is very complicated, isn't it? posted by: doug crets on 10.05.05 at 03:09 PM [permalink]Good, great, you do just that and keep us posted on what happens. I'm sure you wouldn't even think of contacting NYT's competitors and pointing out this little, er, pecadillo of theirs. posted by: Martyn on 10.05.05 at 03:32 PM [permalink]Ming you, I hope "H" wasn't posting somewhere else...as well as here. Boing boing linked to my dog post earlier today. I'm now glad I calmed down before writing it. posted by: Martyn on 10.05.05 at 03:33 PM [permalink]Doug - it is a complicated case, and a tragedy to boot. Martyn - did you get my email? I'll wait for any response from NYT before going wider with this. As for the BB link, well deserved and I hope this does get wider publicity. Maybe the NYT could write about it? posted by: Simon on 10.05.05 at 03:39 PM [permalink]Email? No mate but it depends where you sent it. Let me check. posted by: Martyn on 10.05.05 at 04:56 PM [permalink]I emailed your yahoo address re your potential upcoming changes. Drop me a line again and I'll reply to that email. posted by: Simon on 10.05.05 at 05:18 PM [permalink]Tragedy, yes. Even more so because it involves family and small children. posted by: doug crets on 10.05.05 at 06:02 PM [permalink]We have you linked, Simon: http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=3304 posted by: A.M. Mora y Leon on 10.06.05 at 05:21 AM [permalink]Fumier and I discussed this last night in the FCC and we don't think you have much of a case here. You claim in your disclaimer that the comments made by other people come under the creative coments license and then in the same paragraph say you take no responsibility for them at all. You cannot take copyright because you want to then take no culpability for the content. If they had quoted something you wrote you would be in the right but in fact they quoted H and attributed the person who actually wrote it which fulfills any arguable copyright requirement. This is only my opinion but from what I can see, the Time stole nothing. You did not own it because you did not write it. posted by: Phil on 10.06.05 at 09:28 AM [permalink]I had thought about that. However the disclaimer is really quite clear. The comments still fall under the CC licence. I do not take responsibility for the content of the comment, but I do claim the CC licence operates. It's exactly like opinion pieces in a newspaper like, say, the New York Times. When someone publishes an opinion piece it is clearly the NYT's copyright but the contents are the responsibility of the writer. I can absolutely claim copyright over something without having culpability over the content. Another example is the letters to the editor page. I cede my copyright when I send in the letter, but it's my opinion, not the paper's. Further I reserve the right to change the rules as I go along in my disclaimer. In the case of that Kissel thread I clearly twice asked for notification and attribution for any stories that resulted, and that clearly covers the comments thread as well. How is Fumie? posted by: Simon on 10.06.05 at 09:36 AM [permalink]I think your comparison with the letters and opinions page of a newspaper has one problem. The letters are edited and screened as are opinion pieces. The publisher may decry the opinion but they make a decision to publish or not and almost all letters (comments) are edited for content, grammar, etc. Indeed a publisher IS liable to defamation suit for something they choose to publish regardless of who owns the opinion. There is a difference from ownership of the opinion and legal liabiity for the publishing of the opinion. It is untested ground legally when it comes to blogs. You do not assume that liability and indeed have no active control (nor want any, if you remember what nearly happened to me) over a comment except to take it down after it is published when it may already be in an internet archive and remains retrievable. With this in mind, I think my original point stands. Because you can differentiate a blog comment from a published letter you cannot therefore use it as an example or case precedent. In fact, re reading your creative commons license.. --All content, including comments, on this site operates under a Creative Commons Licence.-- ..does not say you assume copyright to anything anyone leaves as a comment. It could just as well be protecting the rights of your commenters. Which could mean nothing has been stolen from you. Arguably. This is an issue worthy of more exploration beyond this case. posted by: Phil on 10.06.05 at 11:11 AM [permalink]Oh - Fumi is fine! A good few beers was quashed and many topics were runinated on beyond your legal woes :) posted by: Phil on 10.06.05 at 11:14 AM [permalink]It is a legal gray area. My disclaimer also says I may, at my sole discretion, moderate, alter or remove comments. Anyway, my point remains that it was simple friggin' courtesy for the NYT to recognise the site where the comment was found. If I cut and paste a bit from say the NYT, even under fair use rights I need to acknowledge the source. I agree this needs more exploration. I'm away next week, so let's explore over a pint or three once I'm back. In the interim, if anyone is actually qualified enough to talk about this, chime in. posted by: Simon on 10.06.05 at 11:23 AM [permalink]Sounds like a plan. Give us a shout when you return this side of Chep Lap Kok. posted by: Phil on 10.06.05 at 12:24 PM [permalink]I know very little about the legal side, but can point out that the NYTimes does include both references and links to blogs it uses in articles. So the NYTimes was also acting against its own precedent in neglecting to reference its source. posted by: Ex-HK on 10.06.05 at 03:38 PM [permalink]1) The problem for Simon is this: the Kissel relatives could have supplied Cowan with the quoted material from Simon World. If this is true, then Simon does not have a leg to stand on. It is not necessary when citing material to cite the original source. It is only necessary to cite A source of the material. 2) But, since it is probably the case that Cowan directly lifted the quote from Simon World: Suppose that H had spoken to the NYT reporter herself, who then quoted H in print. Suppose further that I then lifted that quote and put it on Simon's Blog without saying where it had come from. Could the NYT object in principle? Yes. Have we not all learnt that if something can be argued, it has a chance of success in a court room? There is indeed scope for Simon to argue his op-ed analogy to good effect. The fact that Simon is not a heavy-handed editor (as we imagine an editor at the NYT to be) does not mean he couldn't be, hence he could still be regarded as comparable to an NYT editor, which would help to generate a claim on Simon World's part to "ownership" of sorts. If I lift all of my own contributions to Simon World and give them over to a writer like Cowan without saying I posted them on Simon World originally, do I commit a wrong? I think so. In the academic setting, anytime I want to make the same point I have already made in print, I have to write something like: "I first made this point in this way in..." to avoid copyright problems. Not many people realise it, but a person can be easily guilty of breaching copyright even when the material emanates from him/her. Consider a scenario in which Simon put a book together of all of the postings on the Kissel case, without asking me et al if we agreed to our own being included. I doubt we could sue him because posting on his site would be regarded as a transfer of sorts from us to him.
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