News International have been in touch to complain about me using copyright material in this post.
The material in question was an image of their front page that day, which accompanied the expose of how poor their lead story was.
I'm not an intellectual property lawyer, and don't want to go to the expense of pushing this, so all other News International front pages have been removed from this website.
I will add though that we live in a sad state of affairs where they can be up in arms about further publicity of a front page which has already been seen up and down the country, while there is no recourse on their rank rotten journalism.
UPDATE: Shouldn't grumble too much, we also live in a country where people are prosecuted for telling the public that the government wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera, with no action against those that actually wanted to do the crime.
I would have told them where to go personally. I'm sure that Screws International have more important things to worry about, like making up more stories about non-existent Muslim yobs than picking on bloggers.
Posted by: . | 09 May 2007 at 08:15 PM
These massmedia companies don't seem to mind if the BBC2 Newsnight programme, or The News at Ten on the ITV Network broadcast images of editions of these newspapers on their 'here is what tomorrows headlines say' section.
This seems inconsistent - I know it is up to the authors who they allow to reprint their work - but news and newspapers fall within the domain related to the 'the public interest' - and there is also the issue of 'fair copy' (I think that's the proper term) where it's legal to republish material dealing with news and current affairs.
And these newspaper companies consider themselves as the quintessential champions of the free-market, openness, accountablity, democracy and every other of their fabled, and often written about, western values!
This is a brilliant example of the western corporate massmedia's utterly bankrupt rank hypocrisy in action.
Posted by: joe90 | 09 May 2007 at 08:36 PM
I'm pretty sure that given its a front page image, it is in the public domain and you can use the image as long as its hosted on your own site. They shouldn't have copyright over the image. Take some legal advice...
Posted by: Sunny | 10 May 2007 at 05:04 AM
I would definitely do what Sunny suggests and speak to an IP specialist about this. I briefly covered IPR for a degree, and from what I remember CDPA 1988 allows for a 'fair dealing' exception which includes 'news reporting and criticism'. Whether the front page of a newspaper (in the public domain) is covered by this exception I cannot say; they might argue any photographs on the front page are not exceptions, in which case you can snip out the misleading headline and stick it on your webpage.
Posted by: thabet | 10 May 2007 at 11:29 AM
Its an interesting argument (for law students like me anyway!)
It depends on what exactly you were criticising. You have a strong argument that your use of the work was for the purposes of criticism, under s30 CDPA. Even although you were not criticising the photograph itself, you were criticising the article (a copyright work). You ARE allowed to use a work to criticise "another work" under s30.
As you say, there's no bother wasting the time, effort and cost in pursuing it further.
Posted by: Hannan | 10 May 2007 at 07:33 PM
It's hugely ironic and symbolic (I am not sure if these are the same thing!),
that an article critical of a newspaper which claims to support western value, such as freedom and democracy, open debate and accountability, freedom of the press etc - has seen fit to censor criticism of its own journalism.
The newspaper in question is happy to print and publicise screaming attention-grabbing headlines - but doesn't appreciate it when people use this self-same news material, in an open and democratic manner, in order to promote legitimate informed debate on a subject of importance to the general public and for the benefit of democracy and its supporters.
If a debate about suspect terrorist sympathisers and supporters isn't of huge public concern then I don't know what is!
Why is this newspaper stifling democratic debate I wonder?
I am not sure if this is merely Orwellian or Kafka-esque, or just both!
This belongs more in the realms of Pravda under Stalin, than it does to modern democratic Britian.
And it is Al-Quaeda and its supporters who are the ones, we are told, who hate our freedoms and our way of life, according to Rupert Madman, proprietor of The Sunday Slime - well, all I can say is, that it takes one to know one Rupert!
Here is the
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/fair_use.htm>Copyright Notice - Fair Use Notice
used by Information Clearing House,
which re-prints articles and hosts them on its own website, rather than just providing links to their original website of origin. This page contains links to other sources of info on American copyright and 'fair use' laws and guideline.
Posted by: joe90 | 10 May 2007 at 11:55 PM
I'm sure News International are talking tosh and that it constitutes "fair use". So I've decided to put it up on my own blog:
News International using copyright to intimidate blogger.
BTW Osama - neither pingbacks nor trackbacks to your blog posts appear to be working, sort it out!
Posted by: Mustafa Arif | 11 May 2007 at 12:16 AM