Quoting and Linking

Funny. I tried to put this as a comment on a friend’s website (http://the270.com) in response to an argument that occured yesterday between the author of Fine Repast (not willing to link) and the Columbus Underground (http://columbusunderground.com). So this is long and may sound a little out of place because it was meant to be a comment but The 270 wouldn’t allow it (too long). Full disclosure is that CU uses my content and I’m obviously totally ok with that.

Response

As I tried to post on Fine Repasts site but it never made it past moderation (another clue to the site’s understanding of interactivity) is the fact that all the lawyers in the world (no offense directed specifically at you Wyliemac) need to think about what is best for society instead of what is best for the few. IP law has gotten so out of control and so far from what our founding fathers prescribed that I’m surprised that anyone can learn, share or create anything.

All of the major traditional media’s were born out of some sort of technology sharing (often piracy). At this point however companies can even claim IP on the very foundations of life  (like DNA) – see Monsanto for examples.

I would agree that from a pure legal standing you could make strong arguments on either side of this. I think more important though is what hyperlinking and free sharing of knowledge means. I subscribe to the efforts of the Free Culture movement (good, short book available free online here: Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig). Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said it best, (paraphrasing) “Imagine a time when the whole of the world’s knowledge is available to everyone for free…”

I’m going to assume (it was sorta said but not quite) that Fine Repasts upset because Walker makes a living with the CU website and does so, in part, by aggregating content (such as from Fine Repast) and thus feels he should be paid for that. As was pointed out by several other people Fine Repast should consider a long list of other people to sue for payments before getting to CU (because they are much better funded) such as Yahoo!, Google, Digg, etc. All of these sites do exactly the type of thing that CU/Walker do.

At this point in our history we have the ability to put our content into a digital format (as opposed to creating a physical ‘zine – Fine Repast could choose to do it that way) and by putting that digital content online we set it free. At no point has Walker or Google, etc. claimed that they created the content. These people/companies have simply found a way to monetize what people are giving away for free. Fine Repast could certainly charge users to view the content and could also try to cut all of their connections to the rest of the online world but that isn’t what they have chosen to do. So, by opting in to the way that the digital world functions they have taken away their argument for people quoting and linking them. More importantly is the fact that Fine Repast wouldn’t have any readers (or an extremely small number) if they were inaccessable through the websites I mentioned above (particularly Google/Yahoo).

There is a strong divide over IP “protections” which generally come from the fact that people are upset when they aren’t the first to figure out how to make money off of their amateur work. The other source of IP protectionism comes from large corporations who understand the effectiveness of bullying and hope to maintain control over distribution channels.

Interesting to me is that the question has been raised as to why the local traditional media outlets haven’t sued CU over its aggregating and linking of their content and I think it is clear that they are starting to “get” it. CU has an audience that otherwise doesn’t pay attention to traditional media so CU manages to capture and bring some of that audience over. Audience that goes directly to the Dispatch.com, etc. would do that anyhow but audience that finds the Dispatch.com through articles posted on CU may not have gone there otherwise. By not cut/pasting the full story Walker forces readers who are interested to go to the original site – I don’t think that is necessary but I think it is nice that he does that.

Ok, so I’m going to guess that no one has read my rant all the way to the bottom but if you have then feel free to take me to task…