Copying an Entire Article Can Still Be Considered Fair Use

Techdirt reports on Berkeley law professor Jason Schultz’s amicus brief, in which he explains why reproducing an entire article within your article can still be considered fair use (and thus, legal):

Indeed, the Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit, and this Court have all found the use of entire copyrighted works to be consistent with the fair-use doctrine. Those rulings recognize that copyright law balances two important public interests: promoting creative expression and encouraging the use of copyrighted works for socially beneficial purposes.

Looks like I should start cutting-and-pasting more frequently for my blog posts…

For a good primer on fair use, especially as it relates to bloggers, check out Rachel Sklar’s detailed analysis.

Movie Websites Are in a Race to the Bottom

Nick Nunziata, editor-in-chief at CHUD, has written his take on how the role of movie websites has changed over the past decade or so. It rambles a bit, but there are some genuinely good insights about how studios have been increasingly selective about who they grant access to and how they distribute their information to the masses:

There are amazing reps at the studios who have legitimate relationships with some webmasters that aren’t a front and are actual relationships. The same goes for a lot of the filmmakers, though there are a few big names who are ‘friends’ with webmasters mainly as a means on promoting their product. It’s a weird, ever-changing dynamic but it works. It works because the smaller film companies still have a more natural relationship with the internet. The studios have won the war but the sites have won the key battle: Shining a light on the great movies. There’s always room for the balance to exist as the websites find the gems that aren’t getting forty million dollar ad campaigns. But I think we as a whole have become marginalized.

There’s also a great deal of thinly-veiled contempt for sites (which I assume includes /Film) whose purpose is, at least partially, aggregation:

The thing I’ve noticed now (it’s good to get the point in paragraph six, FINALLY) is how many of the sites are covering stuff that previously would have had no place in our editorial visions. Viral videos. Homemade spoofs. Minutia that is at best tangentially connected to what the sites are intended for. The kind of things we’d typically run on our message boards or link from our Facebook accounts. There’s a part of me that feels it’s cheap and beneath many sites (and we’re guilty from time to time with stuff in our ‘Watch it Now’ section) but it’s also survival. It’s just plain survival. It’s cheap content and people respond to it, a fact that incenses me.

I think Nunziata is primarily responding to the nagging feeling that the internet is both getting dumber, and making us dumber. It’s hard not to sympathize with this point of view; when some 20-year old is raking it in by posting a photo of a cat who looks like Hitler, while the 2,000 word essay/interview you just slaved over is getting 10 pageviews per hour, the whole of humanity loses something.

But I think Nunziata makes a number of wrong turns in this piece, even if they’re not made explicitly. First, there’s the unspoken conflation of film news and film criticism, a conflation that seems to occur time and time again in the discourse on this topic.

I have a great deal of respect for the concept that there are experts in certain fields, and that art and culture can be serious areas of study. And while I think we are all learning, some people have clearly been learning for longer than others. We should all revere film expertise, whether we disagree with it or not, and we should all respect the concept that some people may be more equipped to expound about film than others, and that there can be true cultural value in this act of expounding (even though I’d argue there’s still some value to throwing around lay-opinions).

But many film websites also choose to write about film news as well (/Film included), and the “news” moniker raises the parallel idea that film websites do “journalism.” To quote Maude Lebowski, I think writing about film news can be a fun, zesty enterprise. It can entertain people and stir up lively debate and discussion. However, only in certain instances should this be considered seriously as journalism. What those instances should be is probably worth another post. But will the world really lose out if it doesn’t know what your take is on ____ being cast in _____ movie? I’m not so sure.

What I’m trying to say is that film criticism is not the same thing as covering film news. And even though many websites do both, these two things should not be viewed as equals or equally valuable.

The second thing I take issue with is the implication (again unspoken – and maybe I’m incorrect in how Nunziata feels about this) is that there’s something wrong with aggregation. Setting aside the fact that some of the most successful websites on the internet started out as aggregators: I don’t know about Nick, but a lot of us got into this because we love films, and we love geeking out about them. Go to slashfilm.com and you’ll see film news and movie reviews, but also viral videos and posters. Sure, some of the latter might get more traffic than some of the former. But does that mean our site should be looked down upon? What I love about /Film is that, at its best, it restores in me the joy and excitement of movies. If that’s all that a site aspires to, does that make it worthy of scorn and derision? I say no.

Finally, there’s the idea in Nick’s piece that somehow, external forces have conspired to marginalize movie websites. But it is nowhere written that those with the best writing or the best ideas or the best content should expect to rise to the top. In the wild west of the internet, those that are most successful have been able to combine these elements with business and technological savvy, which allows them to reap page views and revenue. Just because you are old does not mean you have to be irrelevant. Likewise, just because you are the best does not mean you should expect that to be enough.

Update: Nick has responded to this post via Twitter:

Thus, I take back the relevant parts referring to /Film that I’ve written above. Any misconstrual is my fault, though I think that many of my points still stand.

Gaming The New York Times

Thomas Weber has written an account of how he used the Mechanical Turk to game the New York Times’ “most e-mailed” list:

What could have propelled a stale, bone-dry story to the top of the Internet’s importance arbiter? I can tell you: It was me. More precisely, it was a group of people under my direction who all, at my request, emailed that particular story within a relatively short timeframe to learn exactly what it takes to make the most-emailed list. How we did it—and how many people it took—reinforces a lesson of our viral media age: Even at the biggest newspaper website in the world, the content that is spotlighted as most engaging reflects the judgment of a group far smaller than the overall audience, and can even be gamed by those motivated enough to do so.

Just as interesting as his methods is the fact that he chose to publish the article at all. By revealing his methodology, Weber makes it increasingly likely that the Times will take action to prevent this kind of gaming in the future, hence rendering the specifics of his article irrelevant. And while the idea of the few dictating the consumption of the many is fascinating, haven’t we always known about this? Still, you gotta admire the brazenness and the methodology on display here.

Julian Assange’s Lawyers Upset About Leaked Police Reports

In a shocking lack of irony-awareness, Julian Assange’s lawyers are all upset that the Guardian published leaked police reports detailing Assange’s past sexual escapades. From The Australian:

Bjorn Hurtig, Mr Assange’s Swedish lawyer, said he would lodge a formal complaint to the authorities and ask them to investigate how such sensitive police material leaked into the public domain. “It is with great concern that I hear about this because it puts Julian and his defence in a bad position,” he told a colleague.

Not that Assange has any experience with putting people/governments in bad positions or anything.

This Wedding Announcement Troubles Me

Today’s NYTimes has a wedding announcement that prominently features lives that have been destroyed as a result of the happy couple:

So Ms. Riddell was surprised to find herself eagerly looking for Mr. Partilla at school events — and missing him when he wasn’t there. “I didn’t admit to anyone how I felt,” she said. “To even think about it was disruptive and disloyal.” What she didn’t know was that he was experiencing similar emotions. “First I tried to deny it,” Mr. Partilla said. “Then I tried to ignore it.” But it was hard to ignore their easy rapport. They got each other’s jokes and finished each other’s sentences. They shared a similar rhythm in the way they talked and moved. The very things one hopes to find in another person, but not when you’re married to someone else. Ms. Riddell said she remembered crying in the shower, asking: “Why am I being punished? Why did someone throw him in my path when I can’t have him?”

Needless to say, Ridell and Partilla divorced their their spouses and wound up together. These sorts of things happen all the time, but it is unsettling to see it detailed on the NYTimes wedding announcements page (whose existence I’m not a big fan of to begin with). But I guess, if you’re going to write about weddings in the first place in a national publication, you might as well feature them in all their messy, hurtful glory.

Fox News Makes You Dumber

A study [PDF] conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org (managed by the University of Maryland) has shown that greater exposure to Fox News was associated with greater levels of misinformation. Quoting the NYTimes:

“Almost daily” viewers of Fox News, the authors said, were 31 points more likely to mistakenly believe that “most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit;” were 30 points more likely to believe that “most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring;” and were 14 points more likely to believe that “the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts.”

This association held even in instances when the person voted Democrat (i.e. regardless of party affiliation). Fox’s response to the study:

Asked for comment on the study, Fox News seemingly dismissed the findings. In a statement, Michael Clemente, who is the senior vice president of news editorial for the network, said: “The latest Princeton Review ranked the University of Maryland among the top schools for having ‘Students Who Study The Least’ and being the ‘Best Party School’ – given these fine academic distinctions, we’ll regard the study with the same level of veracity it was ‘researched’ with.”

It should go without saying that some silly Princeton Review rankings should have absolutely no bearing on the accuracy of the study or the issues that it raises. That being said, this is the most prominent instance of a large corporation issuing a response that amounts to “Bitch, please” that I can think of.