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Judge Issues $5 Million Award To Dow Jones In Hot News Case… But It's Meaningless

from the hot-news? dept

In January, we wrote about Dow Jones suing Ransquawk, a UK-based service that sends out news alerts to clients. Dow Jones used the antiquated and obsolete concept of “hot news” misappropriation, since there was no actual copyright claim to be made. For years, we’ve discussed the problematic nature of the hot news doctrine, which some news companies just can’t let go of using. In May, we noted that Ransquawk basically ignored the legal process (though it had publicly commented on the lawsuit), leading to a default judgment against Ransquawk. That’s what happens when you don’t show up in court. This week, the judge officially awarded Dow Jones $5 million in the case, which is again fairly meaningless. In theory, Dow Jones can go after Ransquawk for the money, but it doesn’t appear that it has any US-based assets to attack.

While some who don’t follow the details and don’t understand the nature of a default judgment may make a bigger deal of this, the ruling is kind of meaningless since there was no actual adversarial process here. But, really, the bigger issue is that hot news is just a concept that needs to go away. In an age of social media sharing, retweeting, forwarding, reposting, etc., the idea that someone can claim some sort of exclusive ownership over “breaking” news is just silly and pointless. If your entire value is wrapped up in being a few minutes ahead of the competition, and you can’t stand someone repeating the news that you were still first in getting out, you’ve got other, much more serious problems with your business model.

Filed Under: default judgment, hot news, misappropriation, news, squawk services
Companies: dow jones, ransquawk

Dow Jones Wins Default In Questionable 'Hot News' Case

from the please-make-hot-news-just-go-away dept

For years, we’ve been covering the dangerous “hot news” doctrine, a court created form of intellectual property protection that had been considered almost entirely dead, but which is technically still the law in New York, relying on a century old court ruling, that allowed a publication to claim that another publication couldn’t report the same news when it was still “hot.” About five years ago, a few legacy media players tried to revive the hot news doctrine after online competitors were getting attention for spreading the news that those legacy players were too slow (or too expensive) to help spread. Earlier this year, we noted that Dow Jones had filed a hot news lawsuit against Ransquawk, a so-called “squawk” service that provides near-real-time news updates, often to stock traders.

While Dow Jones had initially threatened the company with copyright infringement, someone realized that there’s no copyright in headlines or factual news, which is basically all Ransquawk was sharing. Ransquawk had responded to initial threats from Dow Jones by pointing out that it got its information from a variety of sources, but apparently decided not to respond at all to the lawsuit. Because it didn’t respond at all, the court found Ransquawk in default and has now granted an injunction against Ransquawk, saying it can’t get someone with lawful access to Dow Jones to share their account, it can’t pass on any Dow Jones content prior to that content being published on the web or in print, and it can’t market its products to suggest that it will help people get access to Dow Jones content (even if it’s true…).

Ransquawk responded to the ruling by noting somewhat accurately:

Ranvir Singh, the chief executive and a co-founder of the London-based Ransquawk, said in an emailed statement Friday that Dow Jones’s case against Ransquawk is unconstitutional because it precludes free speech.

“Hot news misappropriation is an antiquated law, recognized in only 5 U.S. states and completely unrecognized in the U.K. and [European Union]. If we are guilty of it, then so are a multitude of other news aggregators,” he said. The decision “truly flies in the face of modern practicality where news is transmitted across the globe in seconds, irrespective of who initially published it.”

He added that fighting the claim would bankrupt Ransquawk as a company, and in the U.S. the company wouldn’t even be able to claim its costs back.

That explains why he didn’t respond to the lawsuit… but it also explains the result. Most US courts will simply give the party filing the lawsuit exactly what it wants if the other side doesn’t show up. That’s what a default judgment is. In this case, though, it’s extra problematic because it may inspire others to think that hot news is a legitimate doctrine, even though the issue wasn’t fully adjudicated here, but was rather decided on default.

It would be nice if we could just make it clear that the hot news doctrine violates the First Amendment and stop having to see these kinds of cases altogether.

Filed Under: default, free speech, hot news, journalism, squawk service
Companies: dow jones, ransquawk

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

UK Continues To Censor The Press: Orders Wall Street Journal To Pull Details From Already Published Story

from the no-freedom-of-the-press dept

The UK’s fight against a free press continues. As we’ve discussed in the past, the UK has this bizarre rule in which courts issue broad injunctions that try to silence the press from naming names of people accused of crimes. Given that, a court apparently ordered the Wall Street Journal to remove the names of bankers the WSJ had noted were expected to be named as being involved in the criminal manipulation of the LIBOR rate:

A British judge ordered the Journal and David Enrich, the newspaper’s European banking editor, to comply with a request by the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office prohibiting the newspaper from publishing names of individuals not yet made public in the government’s ongoing investigation into alleged manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

The order, which applies to publication in England and Wales, also demanded that the Journal remove “any existing Internet publication” divulging the details. It threatened Mr. Enrich and “any third party” with penalties including a fine, imprisonment and asset seizure.

Except, as the Journal notes, it had already published the story out on the wire, and while it took down its own web story, and is protesting the injunction, it’s not at all difficult to find other stories that published the names:

In Friday’s U.S. edition of the newspaper, 11 names were printed, including former UBS AG (NYSE:UBS) and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) trader Tom Hayes; his former boss at UBS, Michael Pieri; and two former brokers at R.P. Martin Holdings Ltd., Terry Farr and James Gilmour.

And, of course, anyone who got the print version, which had already gone to press, could see the names as well:

And, in the end, all this has really done is draw that much more attention to the names.

Filed Under: censorship, freedom of the press, injunctions, libor, press, super injunctions, uk, wall street journal
Companies: dow jones

Here we go again. Less than 24 hours ago, content-protection bots killed a livestream of the Hugo Awards, thanks to the brief appearance of fully approved clips from an episode of Dr. Who. The whole situation was completely absurd to anyone harboring the tiniest vestige of common sense, but IP-protection software isn’t built on common sense: it’s built on algorithms.

This time, content protection via crawling bots have taken down another approved, perfectly legal stream. The victim this time? The Democratic National Convention’s official stream, hosted at YouTube. As Wired reports, if you’re looking to catch up on last night’s activities, including a speech by Michelle Obama, don’t bother:

The video, posted by the official YouTube account for the convention, DemConvention2012, was blocked, according to YouTube, for ostensibly infringing on the copyright of one of many possible suspects:

This video contains content from WMG, SME, Associated Press (AP), UMG, Dow Jones, New York Times Digital, The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA), Warner Chappell, UMPG Publishing and EMI Music Publishing, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. Sorry about that.

When contacted by Wired for comment, Erica Sackin, an Obama campaign staffer who works on digital outreach, had no knowledge of the outage, asked this reporter for the url and then upon seeing the takedown, said, “I’ll have to call you back.”

The video has since been updated to state that “This video is private.” There’s probably quite a bit going on behind the scenes at the moment, but fortunately Wired snagged the complete list of claimants for future reference.

Take a good, long look at that list. There’s a few of the usual suspects in there, including AP, UMG and Warner, entities not known to be shy about claiming content that isn’t theirs.

Now, these entities aren’t directly responsible for this takedown. This is more of an automated match situation, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the inherent stupidity of the action, automated or not, does absolutely nothing to lock down stray, unmonetized content and absolutely everything to highlight the ridiculous nature of copyright protection in a digital age.

If Google can work with copyright holders to produce content matching software, it seems like it might be possible to designate certain accounts or entities as “off limits” from the wandering killbots. If the stream is authorized by, I don’t know, the party of the current President of the United States, maybe, just fucking maybe, everything’s “above board.”

Sure, defining legitimate, pre-approved accounts may prove to be as difficult as determining which content is infringing and which isn’t, but this should be the sort of thing that content holders should be working toward, rather than simply moving from disaster to disaster, smugly secure in the knowledge that filthy file sharers are getting content-blocked thousands of times a day.

Nice going, huge list of content holders. Your boundless, maximalist enthusiasm is just another nail in the coffin containing what’s left of copyright’s reputation.

Filed Under: automated takedowns, contentid, copyright, dnc, live streaming, youtube
Companies: a&p, dow jones, emi, harry fox agency, ny times, sme, umg, umpg, warner/chappell, wmg

Dow Jones Sues Texas; Says Taxing The Wall Street Journal Is A First Amendment Violation

from the tax-the-ink dept

Apparently Texas has a bizarre tax law, in which newspapers don’t have to pay sales tax, but where newspapers are very specifically defined as “being printed on newsprint, distributed in short intervals, disseminating the news, with an average sale price that doesn’t exceed 1.50.”Havingthatpricepointinthereseemslikeareallystrangestaticnumber.Ofcourse,duetoinflation,theWallStreetJournalandtheNYTimeshavebothincreasedtheircoverpricesuchthatthey’reoveranaverageof1.50.” Having that price point in there seems like a really strange static number. Of course, due to inflation, the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times have both increased their cover price such that they’re over an average of 1.50.”Havingthatpricepointinthereseemslikeareallystrangestaticnumber.Ofcourse,duetoinflation,theWallStreetJournalandtheNYTimeshavebothincreasedtheircoverpricesuchthatthey’reoveranaverageof1.50, and the state government, so desperate for tax money, declared that both newspapers are no longer newspapers, and must now pay sales tax. Dow Jones paid the tax, but is now suing the state, claiming that the tax code represents a First Amendment violation.

While this may sound silly, there is a pretty strong basis for the lawsuit. There have been a few Supreme Court cases that cover similar grounds, including Minneapolis Star v. Minnesota Comm’r which found that a tax on ink for newspapers was prior restraint and a violation of the First Amendment and Grosjean v. American Press Co., Inc., where the Court found that a tax on newspapers that had a circulation of 20,000 was similarly a restraint on the First Amendment. It seems like the Texas tax is pretty similar to both of those situations…

Filed Under: free speech, newspapers, prior restraint, texas, wall street journal
Companies: dow jones

Murdoch Gets His Feet Wet In Bringing Hot News Lawsuit Against Briefing.com

from the and-here-we-go dept

Well, you had to know this was going to happen. In the last year, there had been an awful lot of talk about a previously considered obsolete concept of “hot news” — which created a copyright-like protection for factual information, without any statutory basis. It’s a very troubling concept that shouldn’t have any real basis in the law, but does exist due to a nearly century old Supreme Court case. Lots of news publishers have started making noises about “hot news,” and in March we had the first ruling that blocked a publication from reposting factual information under a “hot news” claim. Once that ruling was made, you had to know that more lawsuits would follow pretty quickly.

And off we go. What’s interesting here is that it appears that it’s Rupert Murdoch testing the waters this time. Murdoch, of course, has been making odd claims about Google “stealing” content, while also suggesting that fair use doesn’t exist. But rather than take on Google in court, it looks like Murdoch is targeting easier prey. Murdoch-owned Dow Jones is suing Briefing.com for copyright infringement and hot news appropriation. You can read the full complaint below:

Basically, the complaint is similar to TheFlyOnTheWall complaint from last month that successfully claimed “hot news.” Dow Jones claims it puts out info over its wire service, and minutes later Briefing.com seems to put out similar news, often using the same headline. Of course for the most part, headlines are not copyrightable, but are they covered by hot news? We may find out soon enough. The whole thing is silly of course. If Dow Jones can’t compete against some company copying its headlines and summarizing its stories, it must not be adding very much value. Suing over this is basically an admission of that very fact.

Either way, my guess is that this particular lawsuit has little to do with Briefing.com — or even Dow Jones and its newswires. This is Murdoch testing the waters on hot news. Of course, he may come to seriously regret doing so, given how many of his own sites probably violate the same hot news concept.

Filed Under: hot news, rupert murdoch
Companies: dow jones

According To WSJ, Google Not Just A 'Thief' But A 'Digital Vampire'

from the oh-please dept

There’s an absolutely huge business out there of folks trying to get more traffic from Google, called Search Engine Optimization. It’s a big deal. Traffic to your website is the lifeblood of most internet business models, and so any way to get more traffic is a good thing. Except if you’re in the newspaper business for some reason. Lately we keep seeing odd stories of newspaper business folks complaining about the fact that Google sends them traffic. The latest? Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton, who called Google a “digital vampire” claiming that it’s “sucking the blood” out of the newspaper industry (found via Mathew Ingram). He then goes on to suggest that at least some of this is the newspapers’ own fault for giving “Google’s fangs a great place to bite.”

So, uh, Mr. Hinton, here’s a suggestion: there’s a little thing called robots.txt. You can block Google from indexing your websites. Then everyone’s happy, right? That stops the bloodflow right there.

Except, perhaps the real issues is that, as everyone in every other business seems to recognize, traffic is important, and it’s up to the website receiving that traffic to capitalize on it. So, either Hinton doesn’t know this, or he’s simply lying. Neither one makes Dow Jones look particularly smart.

Filed Under: journalism, les hinton, newspapers, search engines, traffic
Companies: dow jones, google

Singapore Fines The WSJ For Editorials It Considered Contempt Of Court

from the opinions-not-allowed dept

The Wall Street Journal is running a story about how it’s been fined by Singaporean courts for two editorials the paper published over the summer. The story notes how nearly every foreign publication distributed in Singapore has been sued in court at one point or another, and the article goes through detailing the specific charges against it by Singapore. Obviously, the WSJ’s story can be seen as biased since they were a party in the lawsuit, but from the description, it sounds like Singapore was upset that the WSJ accurately reported on a defamation lawsuit by a former government official against an opposition party candidate, and later a critical study by the International Bar Association on the rule of law in Singapore. It’s difficult to see how those reports can be said to be “contemptuous of the judiciary,” but in a country that isn’t known for taking criticism well, perhaps it’s not that surprising.

Still, what’s most interesting is that in response to this, the Wall Street Journal has chosen not to publish this particular story about the decision in the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal — though, the story is obviously available online. Apparently the WSJ recognizes, probably accurately, that if they published the story about the decision, where they are somewhat critical of that decision, they would probably be in for yet another “contempt” charge. To some extent, this decision makes you wonder how effective suppression of the press can be going forward. Yes, countries can build filters and block out certain publications, but online content can always be filtered through eventually. The very fact that the WSJ is purposely leaving the editorial out of Asian editions of the paper seems more likely to draw more attention to the story from within Singapore as well, accomplishing exactly the opposite of what the country thinks it’s doing in fining the paper.

Filed Under: contempt of court, freedom of the press, singapore, wall street journal
Companies: dow jones, news corp

Dow Jones Execs Talk Murdoch Out Of Dropping The Paywall

from the short-term-revenue-vs.-long-term-relevance dept

For months there had been a lot of buzz about how Rupert Murdoch was interested in dropping the WSJ’s paywall. However, as we noted, execs at Dow Jones were quick to hit back, and said they would convince Murdoch otherwise after the acquisition was completed. It appears that’s exactly what’s happened. Murdoch today admitted that he’s going to keep the WSJ subscription offering and maybe even increase the price. Amusingly, this news is available for free on the WSJ’s site. The truth is, it’s still not entirely clear what’s going to happen to the Journal’s website. While Murdoch said there will always be a subscription offering, he also said that more content will be free. It sounds like he’s trying to straddle both solutions here, picking the “most valuable” content to remain locked up. Of course, that was the NY Times’ strategy — which failed.

The simple fact is that news reporting content is incredibly difficult to monetize directly anymore — due to a variety of factors, mostly having to do with the nature of trying to sell content. There are models (even subscription models) that work, but they will be not for the content directly, but for advanced services, such as personalization or analysis. The risk in locking up your best content is that the WSJ will continue to lose relevance, as the next generation of readers won’t even bother to sign up, as they won’t be able to understand why it’s worth paying for this content, no matter how good WSJ execs claim it is.

The next generation of content users have learned something important: it’s no longer reasonable to take it on faith that content they don’t have access to is good and worth paying for. They need to have access to the content itself, and will figure out for themselves if it’s valuable — and if it is, they’ll want to do more with it than just read it. They want to share it, vote on it, discuss it, analyze it and many other things. Locking up the content makes it a lot more difficult and takes away much of the value. Taking away value from consumers isn’t exactly a strategy for success these days.

Filed Under: business models, free, newspapers, rupert murdoch, wall street journal
Companies: dow jones, news corp