The parable of the blogger who cried ‘stealing’
I fear that the charge of “stealing” intellectual property is starting to get thrown around just a little too often — and sometimes without cause. It reminds me of the boy who cried “wolf.” I refer in this case to this post on TheAtlantic.com.
The charge stems from a job posting for Dow Jones Newswires “seeking an editor to join its equity markets team and mine publishable scoops and intelligence from the world of blogs.” You can read more of the details on the blog item. Suffice to say that in my view, Dow Jones is doing a smart thing. Bravo! Reporters will read blogs — and maybe develop story ideas from them. What a great idea!
The blogger writes that her friend asks: “Is Dow Jones advertising for someone whose job will be to steal blog posts?” And the blogger’s answer: “Quick answer: yes. Only please to call it ‘research‘.”
Seriously?
Was this stealing? On Tuesday, one of the people I follow on Twitter noted that Google’s “street view” maps had launched in St. Louis. I pounced on it, blogged about it on my Post-Dispatch blog, gave credit for the tip to the guy who mentioned it. And it got a ton of page views when it was featured on STLtoday.com.
I’ll answer my own question: Of course it wasn’t stealing. It was listening. It was keeping my eyes and ears open to the world around me. And that world happens to include the tweets that cross my computer screen.
Oh, we’re fond in newspaper newsrooms of accusing television newsrooms of “stealing” when they read the paper or our web sites, report the stories and put them on the air — though we do the same thing when they have something we missed. Bottom line, it’s not stealing.
As an education writer years ago, I often read trade journals and specialty publications looking for news tips I could localize for my readers. If blogs had existed then, I’d have read them, too. And I’d have looked for story ideas. That’s not stealing. And it’s exactly what Dow Jones is seeking to do.
The tip on this item, by the way, came from Dave Mastio, the proprietor of BlogNetNews. His site, when it launched in St. Louis a few months ago, created its own local controversy around the notion of “stealing” bloggers’ content. His site aggregates RSS feeds and points to full blog posts, with ad positions on his site and a search engine built around it all. A group of St. Louis-area bloggers objected and the debate raged for weeks in the local blogosphere.
You be the judge.
Oh, and for the record: Bloggers could certainly have a legitimate claim that their content is being stolen. I know of cases where that’s the case. But the Dow Jones job posting isn’t it.
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View Comments on The parable of the blogger who cried ‘stealing’
Before we can go around saying that what Dow Jones is doing is or isn’t stealing we have to look at how they’re going to be using the content that’s being mined. If the new hire uses posts from blogs to get ideas and follow items that could use a greater focus and/or spotlight in the mainstream media, and then (and here’s the important part) write their own posts/articles on those items with link backs and credit given where credit is due, AND if they use any comments from the post from which they got the information and it is licensed in a way that their words can be used (i.e. Creative Commons Licenses) by outside parties, AND if Dow Jones follows those licenses’ and other copyright rules (most notably, getting permission from the original writer to use their words), then no, it’s not stealing.
It’s all about following rules and playing nice. Your post on the street maps thing wasn’t stealing because it was in your own words even if you did get the idea from someone else. Also, you played nice by giving credit where credit was due. You weren’t taking someone else’s words, putting them on your blog with no credit, saddling them next to a bunch of ads, and calling it yours. It really was yours. That’s original content, which then becomes your intellectual property to protect from others who might mine your words without your permissions, with copyright violations, and bring in revenue for themselves off your work, all while not giving you credit or compensation.
And I’m not even going to get into the BNN crap again, except to say that most peoples’ Creative Commons licenses or their copyrights clearly state their words cannot be used by someone else to make money for that someone else. That’s where the BNN site runs afoul.
I agree with everything you said, Andrea. But I think Dow Jones gets the benefit of the doubt. All they did was post a job. For that, this blogger presumes they are hiring someone to steal content.
[...] You say stealing, I say listening. Here. [...]
You might also check out today’s NYTs story: http://twurl.nl/vj0cd0 The essence of the story is how the Associated Press has asserted that 20-70 word excerpts of its stories on blog and citizen media sites are violations of copyright.
Anyway, Buzz Machine, Arriington, Techmeme and many others have weighed in to trash the AP’s heavy-handed assertion of copyright in a way that clearly tramples fair use. The fact is that bloggers need broad interpretation of fair use to thrive.
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