Legal side of pasting news articles on your site?

[phil marciniak]

Hello,

So whats the deal with copy and pasting articles from news websites onto your blog or site. I see this a lot, with credit to the author and website of course... but still.. =S ?

Do they have to get permission first? Or is it generally okay as long as the author and site are mentioned... if the article creates find out and they dont like it, can these blogs get in any trouble before they are asked to remove it? Or do they have to be asked to remove it first?

I see this a fair bit, still dont understand the rules tho.

Thanks!
Peacelove.

Phil

[Istvan Horvath]

"news websites" is a bit vague... usually, all the important news sites have their own copyright notice - available from the footer.

For example, the BBC site has this:

All copyright, trade marks, design rights, patents and other intellectual property rights (registered and unregistered) in and on bbc.co.uk and all content (including all applications) located on the site shall remain vested in the BBC or its licensors (which includes other users). You may not copy, reproduce, republish, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, download, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use bbc.co.uk content in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use. You also agree not to adapt, alter or create a derivative work from any bbc.co.uk content except for your own personal, non-commercial use. Any other use of bbc.co.uk content requires the prior written permission of the BBC.

Find the similar statements on other sites you had in mind and act according to what you find. The general answer would be: NO, you cannot paste their news into your site... cf.: "You may not copy, reproduce, republish"

[marciayudkin]

Just looking for help in clarifying the legal side of copy and pasting interesting articles from news websites onto your blog or site. With credit to the author and website of course...

Do you have to get permission first?

How about print media? Can you rewrite interesting articles you find in magazines onto your website? As long as you mention the author and magazine/news paper?

Pasting whole articles onto your site - NO! Not without permission. Giving credit is not enough - it's copyright infringement without permission.

Summarizing a 20-paragraph article in one paragraph of your own words - YES. This is fine.

Linking to the article - YES. Not a problem.

Using a newsfeed that is provided for that purpose (for example, these are available from press release web sites) - Generally YES. Check the terms of service to be sure.

I am not a lawyer but I've been in the publishing world since 1981.

Marcia Yudkin

[LegitIncomes]

Perhaps you could post the first paragraph or so, and then link to the full article.

[phil marciniak]

Hey, thanks pension guy.
Yeah it makes sense, this is what i figured.
But still dont totally get it.

Why is it that so many bloggers do this?
Are they asking permission? Or they just to small a site for anyone to care?

[VegasGreg]

You can take articles from most "article directories" as those are designed for the articles to be pasted around as long as the resource box is maintained with links. Of course check with each directories terms of service for exact conditions. Copying from "news sites" not good as mentioned above.

[pizzatherapy]

I use news articles all the time, for my blogs and websites. I just rewrite them. Change the words around, use different language. You cannot copyright facts, but you can copyright words.

If I am using a news article, however, I always cite the source.

[diro]

Hi Phil,

Just about 2 weeks ago (I believe +- a few days, memory is starting to go sometimes!)...what were we...oh that's right, attributions and articles.

A short time back, on Law.com, there was an article about how the AP and some of the big newspapers are starting to issue Cease and Desist letters to some of the blog owners you're talking about. Apparently they've even sued a couple of them to try to make an example out of them! If I can find the article again, I'll post a link to it.

And every attorney I've ever talked to about this tells me that you can use parts of the article as "reference" or to "rebut what they said", but a vast majority of your article must be your own and not from their work. I've heard anywhere from 70% up to 90% needs to be yours, not theirs. I always shoot for 80 - 85%, and have not had any problems yet (knock on wood/head).

Hope this helps a little.

Good luck and take care,

Rog

[IdeaLady]

I sometimes reference news articles in blog posts, but I do not copy and paste from them. Typically I will summarize the news (or at least the point important to my readers) in my own words, add some commentary, and link to the source to credit them and provide additional information for readers who want to click through.

As was pointed out, you can not copyright facts (or ideas) only the words used to express them.

[phil marciniak]

Hey wow! thanks so much everyone!
Absolutely perfect.
Definitely paying my 37 bucks.