Copyright on news articles

[Flightmapping]

Tweet

I am expanding the news section of my website, primarily because this gets me on a regular routine for creating "Google fodder".

Although I can get a fair bit of news from the airlines themselves, I also get quite a lot from other news websites - who themselves often share information from various news agencies.

AFAIK, it is perfectly acceptable under "fair use" to cut & paste a whole news article, providing the source is quoted?

Is this correct, do I need to go round asking permission, or should I only quote in part.

With regards to unique content, my general strategy is to quote the article, and then make an "editorial" comment below (typically 50% of the article length).

[jrisby]

James,

Fair use normally implies a paragraph or so, not the whole article.

Yes, agencies provide the same copy to multiple news publications, but the publications pay a lot of money for the right to publish the articles. The don't "share" for free.

Still interested in what we talked about on the boat? If so, PM me and we can sort it out.

John

[Flightmapping]

John,

Thanks for that. I'll go through and should be able to replace most sources with the original - airports, airlines etc all issue press statements by the bucket load.

Yes, I am interested in what we talked about - see pm

James

[matbennett]

Not sure if this helps at all, but British law holds that a headline is too short to copyright.

You could always pinch the headline and link to the original story if you wanted to keep the job work-free.

[jrisby]

Thanks for that. I'll go through and should be able to replace most sources with the original - airports, airlines etc all issue press statements by the bucket load.

yes, get yourself on the press release list and you'll soon find you need an extra recycling bin !

[Dynamoo]

Headline and a snippet should be OK under copyright laws.

Re-publishing the entire article would need permission of the copyright holder. If you ask them the general question if you can republish their press releases, then you won't need to ask them each time.

There's a slight difference between a press release and a news article though. A press release is generally meant to be distributed as widely as possible (i.e. the main purpose is to get information out) - a news article tends to exist to attract site visitors (in which case they'd probably not allow you to copy it).

[Flightmapping]

Local paper has asked me about copyright, after I printed an extract from one of their articles, which I subsequently rubbished with a letter to the editor (which presumably is still my copyright?).

So where's the boundary between extract and copyright abuse?

and can a website's own t's&c's override the national law?

From http://www.intellectual-property.gov..._criticism.htm

"In each case the exception is limited by the condition that there must be "fair dealing". It is therefore very unlikely that more than a short extract of a work could be used for the purposes of criticism, review or news reporting. Use of more than this will need the permission of the copyright owner. Slightly different conditions apply to criticism and review and news reporting:

Fair dealing with a work for the purposes of criticism or review of that or another work must include a sufficient acknowledgement and the work must have been made available to the public.


I have used 4 ex 15 of the paragraphs in the article - perhaps I should cut one or two back?

[jrisby]

james,

4 out of 15 seems high.

rather than quote the paragraphs directly, why not state the assertions put forward in the paragaphs.

ie, instead of quoting

"After research by our reporter we have concluded that the sky is green"

say

You claim in your article that the sky is green when, quite clearly, it is blue.

john

[Flightmapping]

Thanks John. I've reworded it to just quote the headline and just one sentence, with a bit more background info about why the article is wrong (it claims that an observer on the ground "spotted a near miss" between two planes several miles away, something which is just technically not possible.

I'd rather get on with arguing the point over accuracy, distortion and sensationalism (Rupert Murdoch doesn't have a monopoly on this), than having to defend myself over any trumped up copyright issues.

James

[cjl586]

Hi James,

I once read that 50 words is generally seen to be about as many as you can use, and you should always source. Some publishers might be happy to let you have more if you're prepared to link to them, for the obvious SEO benefits, but I'd ask first...

Cheers,

Chris