The New York Times is being sued for aggregating and posting headlines, first-line summary, and links to stories from other news sites. While this is just a suit, and the question is nowhere near settled, it brings up an interesting question: When have you crossed the line between aggregation, commentary, and republishing? It’s an interesting question for the blogosphere, where a lot of the very best content is exactly that — you quote someone’s blog, add your two cents, and then the process repeats itself. “Joe said XYZ on forum ABC. Bob said 123 on his blog, and I think e^-pi*i!” I’m certainly not above quoting a sentence… or three… or a couple of paragraphs, depending on how much it takes to start an informed discussion.
So, what’s the line? A screen? Two? A whole post? What if it was a one-liner?
My Inner Cynic believes that you’ve crossed the line at any point where you might be willing to settle out-of-court for Teh Bling$$$
3 Comments
This would be a good time to reference John Scalzi’s article on the subject:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2008/10/16/when-quoting/
I’ll also point you free examples of his writing:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/about/the-scalzi-creative-sampler/
and
http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780765316981#Excerpt
He’s an excellent writer.
While I don’t read the New York Times, I imagine they are simply copying text without citing where they got it from. That sounds like plagiarism to me.
Whereas providing a link to someone else’s blog, or at least mentioning their name, is giving credit where credit is due.
I didn’t find the links myself, but according to the source article, Boston.com (owned by the New York Times) is aggregating from another site. Each story as posted on Boston.com is a headline and the first sentence of the aggregated story, with a link to the original site.