“If successful, a lawsuit against the New York Times Co. brought by Gatehouse, a chain of local newspapers, could radically change the way information is distributed on the Internet. The suit challenges the widespread practice of reproducing samples of text with links to original published content on other sites.” Source: http://ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/65638.html
This seems to amount to three main points:
- Deep linking to content and bypassing ads on the index page.
- Not getting prior permission to link.
- Needing to pay for the right to link!
This is all very interesting. When I started blogging, I was actually surprised at the way in which people could simple quote a bit of text and add their opinion, and post it as a blog. The link back seemed like a way of saying “thanks, and here is something in return”. Blogger even had a browser plugin that allowed you to automatically post a blog based on the text highlighted on a page, which is automatically put in a blockquote. But now this could all change – but only if people found out who is copying.
The thing is, this will likely have two effects:
- people just won’t bother with the link, but will still use the story
- people will rewrite the story as their own – spending a little more time.
If this happens, then people will improve their own content, and not sent link juice to the orginal work, written by those professional highly paid journalists. Blogs will get more traffic, established online papers less. This could actually damage the likes of NY Times in the long term.
