Dow Jones Files Idiotic 'Hot News' Lawsuit Against A Service That Sends News Alerts
from the opening-a-can-of-worms dept
For a few years now, we’ve been covering the troubling return of the “hot news” doctrine. This is a non-copyright concept that was mostly considered dead and buried, but was suddenly revived a few years ago. Technically, it’s still considered “law” in New York, and it involves the idea that there’s some sort of “protection” in news, such that others can’t re-report the news that others have reported if it’s “too soon.” Under basic copyright, of course, facts are not copyrightable, so it’s always been considered fair game to repeat factual news information (so long as you’re not copying specific expression). The whole hot news concept had basically become defunct before the Associated Press brought it back up in a lawsuit about five years ago. Of course, there are all sorts of troubling implications of creating a new form of intellectual property such as “hot news” — especially in an age of Twitter, Facebook and other methods of sharing news and information. Already, some have sought to stretch the definition of hot news. So far, thankfully, most recent hot news lawsuits have failed in court, though many seem to end in “settlements.”
One of the “settled” cases was brought by Dow Jones a few years ago, and apparently the company has decided to try again. It has filed a hot news lawsuit against a company almost no one has heard of (until Dow Jones just gave them a ton of free publicity), Ransquawk.
In Dow Jones’ initial cease and desist letter, it claimed that Ransquawk violated its copyrights, but apparently the lawyers at Dow Jones finally figured out how copyright works and realized that wasn’t true. The lawsuit only makes use of the hot news concept.
In its defense, Ransquawk explained to Dow Jones that it does not have an account from Dow Jones’ DJX service, which Dow Jones says Ransquawk is illegally copying, but rather that it finds the information from Twitter, Dow Jones reporters themselves and various other services who often share the same headlines. Since Ransquawk is a UK company, it also rejects the copyright claims, pointing out that news reporting is considered fair dealing under UK law.
The actual lawsuit makes some brazen claims:
How does Ransquawk provide such a popular service? Its business model is as simple as it is illegal: Ransquawk’s audio and text services are based on the systematic unauthorized reproduction and redistribution of news content published by Dow Jones, and undoubtedly other news content providers as well.
But, again, repeating a news headline is not illegal. The complaint also insists that Ransquawk is lying in claiming that it’s obtaining the news from other sources, noting that sometimes Ransquawk is repeating the DJX news within five seconds, which suggests it has access to a direct feed, despite denying it. It’s entirely possible that someone is violating DJX’s terms of service, to allow Ransquawk to have access to the feed, but that’s a completely different matter than hot news.
While Ransquawk may follow in the footsteps of others and settle this case to be done with it, this remains a really stupid move by Dow Jones — a company that quite frequently has its own staff repeating and sharing news first reported elsewhere. It’s not difficult to see how any precedent Dow Jones might set with this lawsuit will almost certainly come back to bite them when others realize that Dow Jones does the same exact thing. News is news: it’s factual and sharing the news is just a part of how the world works today. Rather than freaking out about it, Dow Jones should focus on adding the kind of additional value that it claims to add, such that mere headlines from Ransquawk won’t make a difference. Seriously, if the only value that Dow Jones provides is somehow “misappropriated” by Ransquawk then it makes me think that Dow Jones really doesn’t provide much value at all.
Filed Under: hot news, intellectual property, news alerts
Companies: dow jones, news corp, ransquawk
Comments on “Dow Jones Files Idiotic 'Hot News' Lawsuit Against A Service That Sends News Alerts”
Dow Jones could find whoever is sending their feed to Ransquawk by putting out slightly different feeds to half their base, then repeating in a binary fashion. That would give their lawsuit a lot more punch.
Re: Re:
Binary Search!
Re: Re:
Twitter is pretty fast at spreading news.
If I were Ransquawk owner (really, what did he smoke to come up with the name?) I’d send Dow Jones an open letter with a big, hearty thank you for the free publicity for added lulz.
There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
It’s direct grifting, simply having a machine copy text and re-format it. Not activity that involves any effort. Taking someone else’s work product and getting income from it is simply sleazy, it’s what copyright is to prevent, so I’m pretty sure this will be stifled. The “hot news” notion is not chiseled in marble, it’s definitely under attack, but old stick-in-the-mud Mike suddenly values precedent whenever the new grifters can’t get free content.
There isn’t any other way to look at this than that the evil Dow Jones puts the money in to grab the facts first, and should be able to keep evil little grifters from using it. Just ain’t right, even when both are evil.
As someone else wrote first, when your “business model” is simply stealing content that others put the effort in to make valuable, it’s neither moral nor workable under the law.
Here’s a more relevant week of March 23 case that I don’t see in the links (Google it yourself for here):
) Meltwater loses against AP: scraping headlines is NOT “fair use”: it gainsmost of the value of a work without returning any benefit to the creator.
Every “new business model” here requires first getting valuable products — from money to movies — for free.
04:11:24[f-122-6]
Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
AND this is commercial for-profit use, it’s not people passing on news. Mike never sees that distinction because he’s a corporatist throughout.
Mike’s notions are all get-rich-quick schemes by using products someone else made. His continued defense of Megaupload shows his ideal “business model”: neither pay to produce nor royalties on any of the files hosted so costs are just above bandwidth, and able to avoid legal liability so long as pretend ignorance of infringed content.
Any damn fool can copy. Copyright was put in statute to prevent greedy damn fools from profiting off what others made.
04:18:54[f-325-0]
Re: Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
Dearie me – ol’ OOTB does seem to be getting more and more paranoid as time marches on. We can only hope for a complete mental breakdown.
Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
Where was is demonstrated that they are doing this? Ransqwuak denies it, and a prudent person would want some sort of evidence before declaring a something is a fact.
Yes, we know how much you hate service providers.
Well, first, no, its’ not what copyright is to protect. And also, this is not a copyright violation in the US or the UK, and nobody is alleging that it is, so this certainly won’t be stifled under copyright law.
Not only that, but it barely exists as a matter of case law. Most judges rightfully see that it isn’t their place to invent new laws wholesale.
It seems that your argument boils down to the idea that objective facts, rather than expression, should be copyrightable. I think this makes you be most maximalist of all the maximalists I’ve seen!
In your world, there would be no possibility of a free exchange of ideas at all, because it would be a copyright violation to actually report any facts, unless you were the very first person to come across it.
Re: Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
And here’s a thought — what if a blogger breaks the story first? If hot news is a valid rule, would the big media outlets be barred from reporting breaking news if the blogger got there first?
Re: Re: Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
Why of course not, don’t you know, bloggers aren’t ‘real’ journalists, and so therefor don’t count! /s
Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
You just stole a headline in your rant whining about stealing headlines.
Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
Facts are facts. If it is the same headline, which is usually minimized, the essential facts are still there. Copyright does not have anything to do with it, which may be why the lawyers are not talking copyright. The “hot news” concept is more written in sand than marble, since it has not stood up in court. Please read the article instead of making up your mind when you read the headline.
Re: There'll be wide agreement that copying is simply unfair competition.
FACTS ARE NOT COPYRIGHTABLE
EXPRESSION OF THOSE FACTS IS
Which part of that do you not understand? Sheesh!
Not anymore
“? then it makes me think that Dow Jones really doesn’t provide much value at all.”
That ended shortly after Murdock bought it.
BTW, there's 2 "Dow Jones" companies now
FYI, there’s the “Dow Jones & Company”, controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, a sister company to the Wall Street Journal, and the idiot company of the article. They do financial news reporting but don’t produce the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Then there’s “S&P Dow Jones Indices”, usually called DJI or Dow Jones Indexes, that operates as part of McGraw Hill Financial and is jointly owned by McGraw Hill, the CME group, and News Corporation. They produce the DJIA and a bazillion other financial indices as well.
Just another legacy company trying to sue it’s way back to profits. The world would be a better place if we break up every corporation once it hits a certain age.