Is Curation Legal? The Law Says...

Don't have an opinion on whether or not curation is legal. I have curated sites myself, but using any Righthaven cases as an example is not a good example of law that would pertain to curation. Righthaven "purchased" rights to sue for copyright infringement from several newspapers and then got a big can of whoop a** from the courts. Most of the decisions said that the copyright holder can sue ... not someone suing because they purchased suing rights to the articles. Righthaven is a just a copyright troll and is now about out of business.

I've never heard of anyone saying curation is illegal. That's ridiculous.

Thanks. Along with Peter Spaepen, you are the expert authority on the subject. I recently attended a webinar with you and Jason Fladlien and was blown away by how fast you got a post to rank high on google.

Harlan, The first document you pointed us to is very interesting, as it may affect some folks who could become targets of Rightshaven, and will possibly reduce their ability to play with the courts. It does not, however, say anything that I can even make sound like what you've said it does.

The second one speaks on the same principle.

Are you sure you didn't just link to the wrong documents?


Paul

PS: I deleted the link to your dog site...

Harlan, That is welcome news. But it doesn't support your claim that the courts have ruled that quoting an entire article is legal. Do you have any cites to support the original claim?

The Business Insider piece is just their statement of how they want other people to quote them, and how they'll quote others. Fair enough, but not really relevant to the original point. Same problem as with any other such linking within posts: It's self-promotional, and that expands to fill exactly the space available. In a forum, that's a pretty huge space.


Paul

Venue is probably one of the most important things to consider here, as well the over all case law is something to consider one adjunct, in one district does not a consensus make, consider this,

What’s the law around aggregating news online? A Harvard Law report on the risks and the best practices » Nieman Journalism Lab

I find this an interesting topic, one that I am certain will be effectively adjuciated in the future, for now, I think the best thing is to follow the best practices of publishers for say the last 40 years, which is much different than the opinion expressed.

Legal or not, ok or not ethical, morality, does not really matter if someone with more money and more lawyers, than you have gets sand in their craw over usage issues, it could come back to bite you in the butt,

I trust Harvard Law, over a few obscure, references any day.

Harlan, I don't think your post has as much to do with curation as it does have to do with the legality of quoting large blocks of text.

Curation doesn't necessarily involve quoting large blocks of text.

As far as the legality of quoting entire articles, I think a person who plans to do that should be prepared for some future legal friction. I don't think quoting an entire article from say The Wall Street Journal falls under fair use. You can't quote a chapter of a book on your web site either.

Edit: Looking at the dog site in your sig, I see what you're doing with respect to your original post.

On this page, you've quoted an entire article from Fredericksburg.com, whose usage policy states:

Whether or not what you're doing is legal, one thing's for sure, you're going to piss some people off. You're quoting way more than is necessary.

Again, this has little to do with the nature of curation itself, and wrapping an entire article in quotation marks and providing a link back does not magically make any usage of an article legal.

"Blog Curation" is a new buzz word and one that you will not likely see in court documents. If you really want to know how the courts feel about copying other people's articles, then you should look for cases that involve fair use. In these cases, courts will consider four factors:

• the purpose and character of your use
• the nature of the copyrighted work
• the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market.

A blanket statement that blog curation is legal or not legal is not recommended.

I suggest anybody that is interested in using this tactic ask a lawyer. Chat forums are good for business advice, but when it comes to legal matters, stick with the legal gurus. Many IM gurus will give you an answer that is most likely geared to benefit them somehow.

Let me add, when talking about taking and using content from someone else, the nature of the material, the amount used, the purpose, and overall context are extremely important.

For example, a very small snippet taken from one site could lead to a copyright violation. Yet, a much larger copying from another site is fine.

Two people using identical content taken from a another could face different legal rulings.

For instance, an attorney could get in trouble for taking parts of one of my articles and putting it on their site to promote their legal services (just sent a C&D to a Los Angeles firm for this very issue).

But Google could take the same material and not have an issue because it is being used for a new and entirely different purpose (search: the finding of information).

The basic legal principles of copyright are easy to understand, but yet the complexities of copyright law can be mind-numbing - especially since so much can turn on the particular facts and circumstances of each case.

.

This was a very good article and goes into the issues in a lot of detail. In regards to how much of an article that could be used, it says this

The section on whether or not the use is "transformative" is also interesting. Good read.

What’s the law around aggregating news online? A Harvard Law report on the risks and the best practices » Nieman Journalism Lab

The Drudgereport.com is still up and running...

PS. Who cares about curation

It sounds like "content aggregation" is the name more commonly used for this practice. But if this practice, whatever it's called, is deemed illegal, where will they draw the line? Wouldn't that imply that you couldn't even put a link in a blog post without permission?

My take on this is, I don't think so......(Curation is Google friendly and Panda LOVES it.)

What's the phone number.

Here's a little tidbit about Righthaven:

On September 7, 2011, Legal Wings Inc., a process server used by Righthaven between May and October 2010, filed a lawsuit against Righthaven in Las Vegas Township Justice Court for unpaid bills valued at $5,670.[20]

On September 8, 2011, the MediaNews Group, which is the publisher of a number of newspapers including the Denver Post, announced it was terminating its deal with Righthaven at the end of the month, and called it a "dumb idea". The new CEO of the company, John Paton, said he would not have entered into such a deal, had he been CEO at the time of the decision.[21]

On October 26, 2011, Righthaven was ordered to pay $119,488 in attorney's fees and court costs in the case of Righthaven v Thomas DiBiase.[22]

On October 29, 2011 the defendant from Righthaven v Wayne Hoehn asked a Nevada court to award the seizure of the company's bank accounts and property to provide for the payment of the $34,045.50 fee from the August 2011 ruling. The company had previously delayed the payment to avoid bankruptcy.[23][24][19]

On November 1, the Nevada court authorized the US Marshals Service to use reasonable force to seize the debt in cash and assets from the company. The total amount of outstanding debt had ballooned to over $63,000, with the additional costs and fees from the delay.[6] When it was discovered that the company bank account held less than $1,000, the court issued an order for Righthaven to turn over its intellectual property to a court-appointed receiver to be sold at auction. Righthaven did not comply by the December 19 deadline, and filed an emergency appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to stop the auction from going forward,[25][26] a motion which was rejected on January 10, 2012.[27]

On December 21, the righthaven.com domain name was transferred to the receiver for auction.[28] On January 6, 2012, the righthaven.com domain name sold for $3,300 to a Switzerland-based hosting service with the stated goal of protecting clients against "frivolous or overly aggressive take-down tactics".[7][29]

There are many other class action lawsuits pending against Righthaven.

Source: Righthaven - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, curation is legal and i never hear anyone about curation is illegal...

Exactly so.

Given how much time we spend here urging people not to take or to offer legal advice in the forum (I'm not talking about Brian, obviously!), I find it pretty alarming that Harlan, who has himself a financial interest in promoting "curation", but isn't a qualified lawyer, should even be allowed to start off threads about it, here, under titles like "the law says", and making statements like "the courts have recently ruled that citing an entire article is legal".

In fact, to be honest, I find some of this thread worse than just "alarming": I can think of another four or five much stronger adjectives that could go into that space, too.

It gets better... I just took a look at "his dog site" and what I found was, well, appalling.

The use he is making of other people's articles is ANYTHING BUT FAIR OR REASONABLE (to my judgment, the courts will get their chance to weigh in soon enough).

First, the entire article is wrapped, not even an effort at abstracting or truncating it... Second the supposed "link" to the source is tiny and way at the bottom. Third... I could go on and on, but really, the only thing that makes this "fair use" in his mind is that he hasn't been slapped with a big lawsuit / judgement.

YET. Because it's only a matter of time.

If I were the owner of ANY of those articles, the blizzard of DMCA notices would be immediate. In fact, in his case, DMCA may not go far enough... he may just serve as the "test case" for a suitably motivated lawyer to sue for damages due to the willful nature of his infringement. I suspect it's only a matter of time.

Were I a lawyer looking to make a test case, I might be contacting the owners of these articles and offering to pursue damages on contingency. 15-20 plaintiffs at a 5 grand a pop goes a long way towards making a point. Particularly when he shamelessly flaunts his infringement as being "legal".

Hope those huge brass ones work out for you. Well, actually, as someone who sometimes produces content, no, I hope they don't.

Any issues with the OP aside, I fail to see how curation could possibly be illegal. Quoting a reasonable segment of another site's article, along with credit and a link to said site, in the course of discussing the same subject in one's own words, seems like a textbook example of fair use.

This site is one of the biggest Politics sites in the UK, the blogger Guido Fawks is famous. And it's a great example of how to do Curation properly. He takes a salient pargraph or two from a source, then adds his own comments and interpretation to it, and gives a link back to the source. He adds value, this is how to do Curation properly:

Guy Fawkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy

One thing to keep in mind about issues like this is that even lawyers and the government are not yet clear about it. It's all relatively new territory. So we're a long way from being able to make any blanket statements about what's legal or not. It could be interpreted differently by different judges, and it could all change next week.

Personally, I'm not worried (yet) about using the "curation" model, meaning links to other sites (not using entire articles without permission). But it makes sense to pay attention to which way the wind blows on this matter.

Looking at that dog site, this doesn't even look like curation in the way that I understand curation. It looks like ripping other sites articles in full or nearly in full.

I understand curation to be:
The curated site adding a significant amount of context, followed by excerpt and link to supporting site.

This is the way my curated site is. Some paragraphs of my own text, followed by a couple of paragraphs with link back to supporting site.

You are copying full articles. You think that's ok, but I doubt it seriously.

Most of the internet is built this way. without such sites most information would not be disseminated. There are no sites that are popular enough that everyone goes to, barring perhaps facebook, twitter and google.

I was under the impression that the Fair Use doctrine said something about not for profit.

So, if I take an excerpt from an article (long or short excerpt) and put in on a curation website that is earning revenue (banner, cpa, adwords, whatever), have I run afoul of the intent of the law? Am I using this content, even though it might be a small excerpt with generous original commenting, for profit?

A few people here and on other threads have said that Google likes Curated sites. What exactly does it like about them? Knowing this would enable bloggers to maximise the fact ? Does anybody know or is this an urban legend? LOL I, for one would really like to know. Anybody?