A big city daily has stared down a blogger in Baltimore over the issue of fair use — and this time the blogger has blinked.
The Tribune-owned Baltimore Sun issued Jeff Quiton of Inside Charm City a cease-and-desist letter claiming that Quinton has been republishing “substantial portions” of The Sun’s content, and because the infringement was willful, Quinton could face up to $150,000 per violation in addition to lawyers fees.
“The Sun does not object to your website linking to The Sun’s website by copying a headline or as much as one paragraph from a Sun article,” the letter which was issued on April 15 states. “But copying anything more than a headline or one paragraph form an article plainly constitutes copyright infringement.”
The fair use doctrine permits the republishing of a minimal amount of content when accompanied by new commentary or criticism (among other purposes) to illustrate a point.
Quinton admits that he has been skating the edge on fair use in the past, linking and excerpting without much commentary since 2007. But he also says he has cut down excerpts since receiving an initial warning email from the paper and, and that he complied after receiving the letter.
“I understand where they’re going with it,” he said. “The thing that I see as possibly being a problem is their little one-paragraph-and-a-headline standard they’re claiming.”
The news comes a week after the Associated Press announced its intent to crack down on copyright violations across the web, and as news aggregators in general are coming under fire from publishers, accusing them of stealing content.
“This is a simple concept around the world. Your creative work is your own. And that’s not to say that we don’t recognize the fact that our content exists in a much broader universe,” said Sun editor Matthew Baise. “We bend over backwards to encourage bloggers to reference our reporting."
He says all of The Sun's reporters are regularly given reports showing referrers from other sites, and are asked to send thank you notes and link back to bloggers that link to or comment on their works.
Baise emailed Quinton a few days prior on April 7, warning the blogger of the copyright violation and asking him to stop lifting content directly from the news site.
But a later post on the blog that used only about 3 paragraphs (or 5 sentences) of a story on an accident at a nail salon (with a link to the source but no added commentary) triggered the legal action.
Quinton says he is also surprised that legal action was taken considering his site is so small.
Inside Charm City has only two main, unpaid contributors and uses
Google Ads, but he says they usually break even, and at most make a $20-50 profit. Traffic averages about 500 hits a day with the highest being about 12,000.
He argues that he has also had a friendly relationship with The Sun in the past, occasionally communicating with its reporters, re-tweeting links and at times emailing the paper when he links to one of its articles.
“I’m definitely wary of doing any excerpting of them now,” he said noting that he will probably try to do more original coverage of cultural events and less news aggregation. He's also looking into joining the Media Bloggers Association to learn more about Fair Use.
“I’m not going anywhere, it’s not going away,” he said.
Baise says in almost every case the blogger is simply unaware of the legal implications, and as a result The Sun
has plans to host a series of seminars for the Baltimore blogging community on copyright issues, as well as courses on video editing and skills in online reporting.
"I think a lot of people are flying blind," he said.
