Murdoch's The Times Accused Of Blatant Copying, Just As It Tells The World You Should Pay For News

from the oooops dept

Just this week, James Harding, the editor of The Times (of London), a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch, tried to explain why the news is worth paying for, as the paper starts to put up a new business model to get consumers to pay for news. Unfortunately, Harding apparently didn't get the message himself. As pointed out by Mathew Ingram, just days after making the case for paying for news, The Times has been accused of publishing an article that it copied without permission from a blog.

You can't make this stuff up.

Yes, just as Rupert Murdoch is calling aggregators (sites that simply summarize and link to stories) parasites (even as he owns a bunch of aggregators himself), one of his papers didn't aggregate, it flat out copied, without permission, a blog post that was written by Edgar Wright as a tribute to Edward Woodward, who recently passed away. The Times eventually put up a "clarification" online that had a link to the original site, but that hardly explains the original copying -- especially during the very week that they're trying to convince the world that news should be paid for....

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How The Constraints Of 'Traditional Journalism' Sometimes Lead To A Missed Opportunity To Better Inform

from the experiments-in-breaking-out-of-the-box dept

Recently, a NY Times article about the giant patch of floating garbage in the ocean got some attention, not so much for the contents of the article, but because it was the first time the NY Times had worked with Spot.us to fund some journalism. If you're not familiar with Spot.us, it's an innovative non-profit startup, that helps "crowdfund" certain journalism projects. I'm not convinced it's a great business model, but it is one that's interesting to watch, and a partnership with the NY Times is definitely a big win for the organization.

However, I think Mathew Ingram really highlighted the most interesting thing about the whole project. While the NY Times article that came from Spot.us was somewhat mundane and didn't add much to the half a dozen or so other articles that have been written about the garbage patch, the blog written by the reporter who did this project, Lindsey Hoshaw, was a lot more interesting and compelling than the NY Times article itself. But the blog wasn't a part of the NY Times at all.

What Mathew was really showing was how some traditional publications get locked into a certain way of doing things because "this is how we do things." And in that world "the article" is the ultimate goal. It's a "deliverable." The process and the journey seem less important -- even though they're quite often the most interesting parts, to a wider community that wants to feel more and more a part of the journalism process itself. The NY Times is pretty good about doing certain topic blogs, and even brought in the Freakonomics blog under its own brand, a while back. But Mathew makes a really good point that this sort of thing probably would have worked better if the entire blog was seen as a part of the NY Times process. It could have ended with a big "story" -- or not. It's not even clear that's needed here. In the end, the real point is that the old structures don't always make sense. And while it was already a big step for the NY Times to create this story using such a new and different process as Spot.us, the end result might have been even better if they'd gone even further and highlighted the journey of the story, rather than just the endpoint.

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Obama Open To Helping Newspapers, To Avoid Reporting Becoming 'All Blogosphere'

from the oh-really? dept

Mathew Ingram points us to the news that President Obama has indicated that he's at least open to hearing bills that would help bailout the newspaper industry because he's afraid of reporting becoming "all blogosphere":

"I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding."

That seems like an odd way to characterize things. First, it seems odd to lump the medium in with a certain type of reporting. There are plenty of "real reporters" who do plenty of "serious fact-checking" within the blog world too. Blogs are just a publishing medium. Yes, because there's a lower barrier to entry, you do end up with a much larger absolute number of bloggers, many of whom are just giving opinion. But the idea that there aren't blogging reporters is pure folly. In fact, I'd argue that the serious blogs on certain subjects to a lot more to "put stories in context" than your average newspaper reporter, who writes up a quick take and moves on to the next big thing. Topic-specific blogs are often much more accurate, much more detailed, and much more willing to focus on context than newspaper reporting. So why rescue one bunch of reporters, just because they happen to print on paper?

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Are Reporters Looking For Information... Or Ammunition?

from the more-the-latter,-it-seems dept

We recently noted that a tiny percentage of the news coverage about healthcare were actually about the healthcare system. Instead, most articles were about the politics and the protests. On top of that, we've noted the silly games used by cable news hosts to draw attention to stories when there isn't anything behind them. Romenesko points us to a story, by Mark Bowden in The Atlantic, that combines both of these things, talking about how journalism today often seems to mean the quest for ammunition, rather than the quest for information.

The article focuses on the news coverage of Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court -- and how most of the news focused on two out-of-context quotes that Sotomayor made in addresses to college students years ago. Bowden does a decent job noting that much of the work that digs up these sorts of things is done by political operatives, not journalists, but he doesn't do much to actually fault the mainstream press for making those hit pieces "the story." Instead, he oddly talks up the fact that pretty much all of the news coverage (both cable and network news) focused on these same pieces dug up by bloggers, and then spends a lot of time suggesting that the problem here is the bloggers:

I would describe their approach as post-journalistic. It sees democracy, by definition, as perpetual political battle. The blogger's role is to help his side. Distortions and inaccuracies, lapses of judgment, the absence of context, all of these things matter only a little, because they are committed by both sides, and tend to come out a wash. Nobody is actually right about anything, no matter how certain they pretend to be. The truth is something that emerges from the cauldron of debate. No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement. There is nothing new about this. But we never used to mistake it for journalism. Today it is rapidly replacing journalism, leading us toward a world where all information is spun, and where all "news" is unapologetically propaganda.

In this post-journalistic world, the model for all national debate becomes the trial, where adversaries face off, representing opposing points of view. We accept the harshness of this process because the consequences in a courtroom are so stark; trials are about assigning guilt or responsibility for harm. There is very little wiggle room in such a confrontation, very little room for compromise--only innocence or degrees of guilt or responsibility. But isn't this model unduly harsh for political debate? Isn't there, in fact, middle ground in most public disputes? Isn't the art of politics finding that middle ground, weighing the public good against factional priorities? Without journalism, the public good is viewed only through a partisan lens, and politics becomes blood sport.

I agree with most of that last paragraph entirely -- but it strikes me that this issue is seen much more commonly in the mainstream press than elsewhere. Elsewhere, I often find thoughtful discussions and debates and compromises. I see discussions aimed at getting to truth, rather than just "winning." So why not explore where those conversations are happening, rather than complaining about the fact that it doesn't seem to be happening in post-journalistic news? I would think that the missing piece to the article is that there's a real void in the mainstream press coverage where reporters (bloggers or paid professionals) actually present things fairly and look for reasoned argument and facts -- rather than hit pieces. Unfortunately, we're not seeing that at all.

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Why Don't Newspapers 'Parasite' Themselves?

from the hello,-competition... dept

With all the misleading claims about blogs and other sites acting as "parasites" or ripping off the news, there's a really good question that the big media properties don't seem to want to answer. If these sites are really attracting so much traffic... why not build one yourself? Over at E-Media Tidbits, Amy Gahran discusses how that might work:

While many journalists are attached to long-form stories delivered in a traditionally detached and serious tone, that doesn't necessarily align with how more and more people actually consume media and news.

So why not offer both approaches on a news site? Rather than wait for (or actively solicit) popular venues such as Gawker or "The Daily Show" to imbue labor-intensive, in-depth reporting with mass appeal, news organizations could instead present their own briefer, more lighthearted takes on longer stories and increase the chances of driving traffic and engagement to the original stories.

If those other sites really get all the attention, then come up with a way to bring the attention back. That's what we normally think of as competition. If the car dealer across the street is having a blow out Labor Day sale, you don't complain about them "parasiting" your customers. You come up with a promotion yourself.

Now, to be fair, my guess is that the response to this is that would only add more expense on top of what's already being done, without a guaranteed payoff. Also, part of the complaint (at least from the Marburgers) isn't so much that these sites get all the traffic, but that they drive down ad rates for the long form journalism. Of course, if that's true (and it's not clear it is), then the answer is again to focus on coming up with creative ways to expand your audience/community or to make them more valuable to advertisers. And, certainly building a better community around more "webby" type content wouldn't hurt...

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Mainstream Newspapers 'Rip Off' Blogs Too, You Know...

from the it's-not-just-one-way... dept

Last month, we wrote about a new study that basically showed that independent bloggers and the mainstream press had a rather nice symbiotic relationship, with different stories flowing back and forth across the two. Oddly, the NY Times misinterpreted the study to claim that it showed that bloggers were "behind" the mainstream press on stories, but the details showed a very different story. It's no surprise that a mainstream publication would portray the study this way, but it makes it even more amusing when that same publication is then caught using a story from a blog as well, without doing any additional reporting.

Now, before we get into the details, I want to be absolutely clear: I don't think there is anything wrong with this at all. You can't (and shouldn't be able to) copyright facts, and having multiple versions of a story written up from multiple perspectives is a good thing in my book. But with some, such as the Marburgers, insisting that its these independent sites acting as "parasites" and you have Ian Shapira and his editors at the Washington Post complaining about Gawker supposedly "ripping off" one of Shapira's articles, it's worth noting that this happens all the time in the other direction as well.

Eric Goldman alerts us to a blog post by writer/blogger Kashmir Hill, where she talks about how the NY Times did the exact same thing that Shapira accuses Gawker of doing to a blog post she wrote for the blog AboveTheLaw. The story is actually one that we blogged about as well (and linked to the AboveTheLaw version, along with two other blogs that led us to the original story), concerning a professor who gave his class an assignment to see what sort of private info they could find online about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (following Scalia's claim that there was no need to protect privacy online).

It was an interesting story that got plenty of attention, and involved real reporting by Hill, including talking to both the professor and actually getting a quote from Scalia via the Supreme Court. From there, a bunch of mainstream sources, starting with ABC News, but also including the NY Times wrote up their own versions of the story. They did no real additional reporting. They did cite AboveTheLaw as the source, but also used quotes directly from Hill's piece.

Again, this seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do -- but according to Shapira, this is the NY Times "ripping off" Hill and according to the Marburgers, this is the NYTimes acting as a "parasite." Does it occur to either of them that this is just part of how news is written about these days? Stories originate in all sorts of places, and then go through a variety of different sources.

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Why The Story That Bloggers Are A Few Hours Behind Mainstream Press Is Wrong

from the oh-so-very-wrong dept

I have to admit that the most amusing part about this following story is how the players all act out their exact roles in proving the point. It starts with a NY Times article over the weekend, which opens with the provocative claim that "the traditional news outlets lead and the blogs follow, typically by 2.5 hours." That certainly plays right into the claims of some old school news journalists who want to insist that "bloggers are parasites" on the news. The only problem? It's not true. First of all, the whole idea that there's a real distinction between "blogs" and "mainstream media" is a bit misleading. Most mainstream publications have their own blogs, and certainly some "blogs" have built up followings bigger than some major newspapers. Blogs are just a platform. What people do with that platform is a totally separate question. It can be journalism. It might be commentary. It might be conversation. It could be something else altogether. To lump them all in as one homogeneous group because they all use a similar underlying technology doesn't really make much sense.

But the problems with the NY Times description of the report goes much deeper than that. First, Zachary Seward, at the Nieman Journalism Lab, digs into the actual report rather than the summary of it at the NY Times, and finds that the conclusions put forth by the Times leave out a few of the important details, which suggest not so much that the mainstream media beats less mainstream media, but that the two have created a neat symbiotic relationship, where they often feed off of each other -- and it's not so much that a mainstream publication "leads" with the story, but that a story bounces back and forth between sources before rising to a peak.

Even more important to understand is Scott Rosenberg's deconstruction of the methodology of the study. Jon Kleinberg, the professor who led the study, is one of the sharpest folks out there, so I tend to trust his work more whenever I come across it, but this particular effort seems to have some gaps in methodology. For example, the method for choosing what is a "blog" and what is a "mainstream" publication is whether or not the publication is included in Google News. Except that plenty of blogs are included in Google News, so it's not quite a fair breakdown, and basically hands over many of the true journalists who use blogs as their platform to the "mainstream press" side of things.

More importantly, it doesn't actually track the path of news stories, but the path of specific quotes by politicians during an election season. Can you spot the problem with extrapolating from that? The "mainstream press" are the folks following these politicians around, scribbling down their every word -- so it's no surprise that they would get those quotes out first. They're also given more access to those politicians, allowing them to get quotes first. But, the real issue is that the "quote" often isn't the real story. And, as Rosenberg notes, tracking just the quote doesn't follow the real story or see who's provided more analysis, originality and value -- things that the non-mainstream publications often value over immediacy.

In fact, the trajectory of this particular story does a beautiful job highlighting the point. Kleinberg and some grad students publish the report -- and the NY Times reports on it, summarizing it (incorrectly) as saying that newspapers "beat" bloggers by 2.5 hours on stories, lending credence to the idea that bloggers are somehow "parasites." But then folks like Seward and Rosenberg actually dig into the details of the study to point out why it's flawed and why the NY Times' summary is incorrect. Who actually added more value? Did Seward and Rosenberg parasite the story? Or were they any worse off for having it "later" than the NY Times? I'd argue not at all, and they actually provided a lot more value than the original news piece. Yet, as Rosenberg worries: "I fully expect to see it taken as conventional wisdom from this point forward that 'news starts with the traditional media and then moves into the blogosphere.'" Hopefully not..

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What's The Guinness World Record For Morons In A Hurry Sending Bogus Takedowns?

from the just-wondering... dept

I think we've set a new world record for any particular story being submitted to us here at Techdirt. I'd actually ask the folks at the Guinness Book of World Records to verify that... but I don't think they really want to have much to do with this story. You see, there's a wonderful blog out there called the Fail Blog. If you don't read it regularly, it's like you're not really online at all. It's quite amusing. It usually involves pictures of random (hilarious) "failures" of some kind or another. Last week, it had a great one. It involved the website of the Guinness World Record book, where it had an entry on the "most individuals killed in a terrorist attack." What was the failure? Well... it appears that the Guinness records' web template includes a link on each record for "break this record." Not quite the sort of thing you would think that GWR folks wanted to encourage when it comes to the most people killed in a terrorist attack.

So how does Guinness respond? Certainly not by fixing the screwed up template. And, apparently not by taking some time to think it over while drinking a tall glass of Guinness. Instead, it released the legal hounds on the Fail Blog and threatened the site with a totally bogus trademark infringement claim, saying that because the screenshot included the Guinness World Record logo, it was a trademark violation. Of course, that's preposterous. Still, Fail Blog complied, took down the original, but posted Guinness' letter, its own rather direct response, and a new version of the screenshot with the Guinness World Record logo pixelated. Nobody will ever figure it out now:

Oh, and it looks like the Guinness folks have finally taken down the original world record page...

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Music Fans And 'Amateur Musicologists' May Impact Coldplay/Satriani Copyright Battle

from the here-comes-everyone,-entertainment-law-edition dept

In the April 2009 issue of Entertainment Law & Finance, three partners in the Intellectual Property Group at Kilpatrick Stockton LLP take a look at the role that "amateur musicologists" have played thus far in the copyright battle stemming from Satriani's lawsuit against Coldplay for copyright infringement back in December. I'll include relevant quotes from the article, since you need to register for a free account in order to read the PDF.

What makes this case unique is the lively debate that it has prompted, which will likely impact how this action and similar infringement cases will be prosecuted and defended going forward. Within days of the suit's initiation, the popular Web site YouTube was inundated with postings in which fans freely offered their opinions concerning the merits of Satriani's claims (or absence there-of). Some of these submissions were supported by surprisingly detailed analyses of the works.

We saw this in the comments on Techdirt, as there was a lively debate and people were quick to mention a variety of other songs with the same melody. The article also mentions a Canadian guitar teacher who uploaded some videos to YouTube with a detailed analysis.

The parties should take note of the prior art works that have surfaced as part of the public debate. Such works could prove to be helpful to Coldplay in defending against Satriani's claims, as they could reflect that Satriani himself may have "unconsciously copied" from an earlier work.

This was written before Cat Stevens claimed that Coldplay was actually infringing his song, the "Foreigner Suite," which was one of the similar sounding tunes people had noticed online. Anyone monitoring the online discussion about the copyright battle would have had this on their radar. Also, it was Cat Stevens' son who brought the song to his attention, my guess would be as a result of discussion about the similarities online.

Or [prior art] may simply reflect these oft-quoted words from the Second Circuit: "It must be remembered that, while there are an enormous number of possible permutations of the musical notes of the scale, only a few are pleasing; and much fewer still suit the infantile demands of the popular ear. Recurrence is not therefore an inevitable badge of palgiarism." Darrell v. Joe Morris Music Corp., 113 F.2d 80, 80 (2d Cir. 1940)

This quote reinforces the idea that there are only so many ways to combine chords.

What makes the Internet commentary regarding the two songs particularly interesting is that much of it replicates the type of expert analysis that both sides will likely use if the case goes forward. In music copyright infringement cases, it is rare for parties to rely solely on bare assertions of copying or independent creation. Instead, they frequently engage "musicology" experts to undertake detailed analyses of every element of alleged similarity between the two works and conclude whether all or portions of one work were copied from the other. The parties and their experts in [this case] should consider the analyses of the "amateur musicologists" that have weighed in via the Internet and other media, if for no other reason than they may be informative of how a jury might ultimately view the case...

While Satriani v. Martin may not go to trial for a variety of reasons, it is clear that user-generated content sites like YouTube have the potential to alter the way music cases -- and other types of copyright case -- are developed. Because advances in technology allow the public to participate in real-time infringement debate, future parties would do well to monitor this "chatter" as it could uncover evidence and theories that may be helpful to the case of the copyright owner, the alleged infringer or both.

The online discussion is largely what has made this case so unique. There have been successful copyright infringement lawsuits over melodies in the past (most notably Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs), but never has the public been able to participate so much in the debate. I think it's likely that Cat Stevens' son wouldn't have known of the similarity between the melodies if not for all of the other people who noticed and highlighted it online. If the case does go to trial, the internet commentary may influence the strategy on both sides and serve as a preview of the arguments. If it doesn't go to trial, the online discussion may influence any sort of negotiation as a means of assessing opinion on the merits of the infringement claim.

The melodies are undoubtedly similar, but the legal question is whether or not Coldplay copied from Satriani. It's not just Coldplay's word against Satriani's, but music fans and "amateur musicologists" are gathering evidence and providing theories which are having a noticeable impact on the proceedings.

Blaise Alleyne is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Blaise Alleyne and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Perhaps The Major Record Labels Will Discover Twitter In 2015

from the a-bit-slow-on-the-uptake dept

Wired's Epicenter blog notes that a division of EMI has announced the first major record label blog. While it does appear to be true that this is the first such blog, the very fact that it's only happening now is somewhat stunning. What's even more amazing, really, is that EMI is promoting the fact that they're so far behind the times. Yes, they beat the other three major record labels, but just starting to blog now isn't exactly something to hype up. In fact, prior to this, I'd never even thought about the fact that the labels had no blogs -- but in calling that fact out, it simply reminds everyone how the major record labels are so far behind in embracing any type of modern technology. It's sort of like a horse and buggy manufacturer putting out a press release that it had installed telephones in its office decades after such things were common.

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Can A Link, By Itself, Be Copyright Infringement?

from the someone-please-explain dept

A report in Billboard Magazine mentions that the IFPI and the MPA (the global versions of the RIAA and the MPAA respectively) have successfully been able to get ISPs in Mexico to take down 35 blogs which they say contributed to music and movie piracy. Specifically, they charge that the blogs had thousands of "infringing links." Of course, that leads to a rather obvious question: what the hell is an "infringing link"? Is it a link to infringing content? If so, then Google and pretty much any search engine is equally guilty. Simply linking to something, by itself, is not and should not be considered infringement.

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Google Accused Of Invisibly Deleting Blog Posts On The RIAA's Say-So

from the how-not-to-promote-yourself dept

The fight between music bloggers and record labels reached its most visible point when a guy who uploaded a leaked copy of the latest Guns N' Roses album to his site got arrested by the FBI. But many music bloggers are now fighting a much more invisible menace, with posts they've written suddenly disappearing from their sites (via Tyler Hellard) hosted on Google's Blogger platform. An RIAA source says that the group sends Google a list of URLs it doesn't like, and Google "then deals with the problem." Google says that it notifies bloggers after their posts have been taken down, in accordance with the DMCA. But it should hardly be surprising that many of those affected say they've gotten no such notice, nor that the offending material was either legally posted and/or supplied by the labels themselves. So two possibilities emerge: the RIAA is filing false DMCA takedowns, and/or its legal right hand doesn't know what the labels' promotional left hands are doing. The upshot of this is that lots of music bloggers say the threat of landing in legal trouble -- particularly for posting music supplied to them by labels and artists -- is having a chilling effect on them, and could eventually stop them from blogging, shutting down a valuable promotional tool for the labels. That sort of shooting itself in the foot, though, seems to be the record industry's specialty.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Is It Defamation If A Commenter Libels The Owner Of A Blog In That Blog's Comments?

from the legal-questions dept

Well, here's an interesting legal question brought about by modern technology. If a commenter on a blog "defames" the owner of that blog, and the blogger does not delete those comments, is it still defamation? According to a court in the UK, the answer is no. The court found that, since the blogger had the ability to moderate comments, leaving them up was a de facto consent to having the comments published. This is fascinating, as defamation law was originally targeted at publishers who used their publications to spread false claims about someone. Yet, today, with the internet and comment systems, the tables are turned somewhat.

On the whole, I tend to agree with the ruling -- though, these days I'm fairly skeptical of most defamation suits. It's difficult to see how the guy suffered any "harm" since he left the supposedly damaging comments up when he had every means to delete them. Of course, you could flip that around -- and note that, in deleting those comments, you might only draw more attention to them (hello, Streisand Effect!), and so perhaps you could argue that leaving the comments as they are, and responding to them rather than deleting them, was your way of minimizing the "damage." Either way, it's yet another example of how modern technology sometimes doesn't mesh well with existing laws.

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Vietnam Continues Online Censorship; Outlaws 'Subversive' Blogs; Puts Liability On ISPs

from the define-subversive dept

Vietnam has a long history of online censorship and suppression of dissent. Back in 2002, a law was put in place requiring registration with the government before creating a website, and soon after that there were reports of arrests of people for putting "questionable" material online. Given that, it's hardly surprising to find out that the country has now officially banned "subversive" blogs. Of course, I'm sure the definition of subversive is left open to whoever is enforcing the law. But what's really bad about this law, is that it puts the liability on internet service providers -- saying that they'll be held responsible for any subversive blogs that are hosted by them. It's not entirely clear how this will impact foreign blog hosting companies, but it can't be a good thing. Apparently, the Vietnamese government is specifically planning to talk to Yahoo and Google to get them to "cooperate" in "creating the best and healthiest environment for bloggers." There's been plenty of controversy for both Yahoo and Google for how they've dealt with government censorship in China, so the last thing they need is another such controversy.

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Australian Filtering Boss: Turning Off Blog And Comments

from the but-listening...-we-swear... dept

With the story earlier this week about Australia's Broadband Minister, Stephen Conroy, considering adding BitTorrent filtering to the country's ISP filtering/censorship program, it was notable that Conroy said he was paying close attention to the commentary about the program online -- including various blogs and social network systems like Twitter. That was actually a small glimmer of hope mixed in with the ridiculous policy -- but it appears that Conroy has decided he'd really rather not listen to the conversation on his own blog. While that post about BitTorrent filtering got a lot of attention, it also got a ton of comments, and now Conroy and his team are turning off their blog and closing down the comments. Way to communicate with the people...

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Wait, You Mean Homeland Security Isn't Already Scanning Blogs & Forums For Terrorists?

from the uh,-yikes? dept

USA Today is reporting that Homeland Security is looking to start scanning blogs, forums and message boards to try to track terrorists and terrorist activity. My first reaction to this, honestly, was shock. Shouldn't they have been doing this already? As in, for many, many years? To be fair, the article suggests that the real difference here is that in the past Homeland Security has done static searches that they check on every so often -- and now they're hoping for a more real-time solution. Even so, it strikes me as odd that Homeland Security didn't already have something that was at least close to real-time in alerting them to certain things online. For all the talk of sophisticated monitoring on internet activities, could it be that we're really that far behind in internet terrorist monitoring?

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Whether Twitter, Blogs Or Mainstream Media... Breaking News Can Get Facts Wrong

from the it's-what-happens-in-the-heat-of-the-moment dept

There was a silly debate soon after the awful tragedy of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month, where people started questioning whether or not Twitter was a legitimate news source. There were many reports from people on the scene via Twitter, and it was a fascinating (if somewhat depressing) "real-time" way of keeping up on some of what was happening. But some criticized the reliance on Twitter-as-journalism by complaining that it wasn't journalism because Twitter reports got facts wrong. That sounds good, but if that's the actual standard, then, well, pretty much nothing is journalism. As Slate is reporting, early reports from the mainstream press seemed to get much of the story wrong as well.

In the heat of an ongoing crisis, it's no surprise that details and facts are somewhat cloudy, and sources aren't (and often can't be) checked, but in the rush to get the news out, information, whether or not it's accurate, is going to get reported anyway. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- so long as it's clear that the information hasn't yet been confirmed. It's better to get the information out there. However, as the Slate report notes, what newspapers could do, is do a much better job cleaning up after the fact -- as we suggested in our story last week about a newspaper's incorrect report that quickly spread around the internet. Rather than put up a correction, the newspaper simply deleted the wrong article and pretended it never happened.

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Former Malaysian Prime Minister Now Blogging His Opposition To Press Restrictions He Set Up

from the what's-good-for-the-goose? dept

We've written an awful lot about the rise of political blogging in Malaysia. The government there has had something of a love-hate affair with blogs for quite some time, starting with a plan to force blogs to register, to later telling various candidates for government they were requiring them to blog, to having a special agency set up to respond to bloggers. More recently, though, things have taken a very negative turn, as various opposition party bloggers were able to use their blog popularity to catapult themselves into office, the ruling party began cracking down, even sentencing leading bloggers to jail.

The good news on that front, however, is that a court has decided that the arrest was illegal and the blogger is to be freed. Though, you get the feeling that the government will continue to try to punish him.

In the meantime, one of the most interesting political bloggers in Malaysia may be the former Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who apparently championed many of the free speech restrictions that allow the crackdowns. We had mentioned his embrace of blogging about a year and a half ago, and now the NY Times has written up a more detailed article, claiming that now that he's no longer in power, he's had quite a change of heart concerning restrictions on freedom of the press. Of course, much of it seems to come off as whining that people won't listen to him any more:

"Where is the press freedom? Broadcast what I have to say! What I say is not even accurately published in the press!"

While it is a good thing that he's realized how problematic free speech restrictions are, there is a bit of karmic justice in having him find himself stymied by rules that he championed and used to his own advantage when in power.

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Perhaps Turkey Should Just Ban The Entire Internet

from the adding-another-one dept

It would appear that the Turkish government and courts are a bit trigger happy when it comes to flat-out banning websites for almost no reason at all. In the past, we've reported on Turkish bans on YouTube, Slide, Wordpress.com and Google Groups. Now, via Slashdot, we see that a Turkish court has banned all of Google's Blogger service including all of the blogs hosted at blogspot.com. Unlike the bans of the other sites, which happened after people who were offended by content found on each complained, it appears that the Blogger ban was due to a Turkish TV service, Digiturk, which was upset that some Blogger users were posting links to unauthorized streams of Turkish football matches.

Yes, you read that correctly. Because a few bloggers had linked to (not even hosted) some unauthorized streams of a sporting event, Digiturk was able to ban all of Blogger. At this point, you have to wonder why Turkey allows the internet at all.

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Reminder: Defamation Still Applies To Bloggers

from the in-case-you-thought-otherwise dept

There's this odd belief among some bloggers that defamation and libel laws don't actually apply to bloggers. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Some of the confusion may stem from court rulings about comment liability, suggesting that a blogger is not liable for defamatory statements made by others in their comments. Unfortunately, many have taken this to mean that there is no liability for blogging defamatory statements. Others believe that since it's their personal blog, they can say what they want and there shouldn't be any liability, because it's not like a newspaper. While I tend to think the entire concept of defamation laws should be rethought in an era when everyone is a publisher, that doesn't change the fact that they do exist and they do apply to bloggers. At least, that's what one set of bloggers is finding out after a court refused to dismiss a defamation suit against them, when the bloggers insisted their statements weren't defamatory because they were just their opinions. But the claim was pretty seriously undermined by the fact that many of the potentially defamatory statements weren't just made as statements of fact, but were posted on a blog that exclaimed across the site: "OUR STORIES ARE TRUE." Oops.

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