| 
del.icio.us
| 
E-mail this | 
Facebook
Holy shit, Huffington Post is taking everyone's concert previews. If you go to their Chicago Concerts page, there's a whole list of concert previews from us, Time Out Chicago, Centerstage, and the Onion's Decider--and they're just taking entire pieces. For instance, here's our Byther Smith preview, and "theirs."
* Time Out Chicago's preview for Devil in a Woodpile, and "theirs." (TOC screencap, Huffpo screencap)
* Centerstage on Kenny Keys, and Huffpo. (Centerstage screencap, Huffpo screencap)
* TOC on Fred Anderson; Huffpo. (TOC screencap, Huffpo screencap)
* The Decider on Mercury Rev; Huffpo. (Decider screencap, Huffpo screencap)
* The Reader on Amanda Palmer; Huffpo (Reader screencap, Huffpo screencap)
* The Reader on Joseph Arthur; Huffpo (Reader screencap, Huffpo screencap)
* The Decider on Rev. Horton Heat; Huffpo (Decider screencap, Huffpo screencap)
Oh, there's lots more.
I'm sure that someone is thinking, "hey, you get lots of inbound links from a popular site, and they link to you directly from their local homepage, which helps your SEO." Whatever--they're still taking other people's content, in my non-expert but reasonably well-informed opinion well outside the bounds of fair use--so that they can get more pageviews and SEO advantages for themselves by taking the entirety of other people's work. They're taking all of it. Real people--my colleagues--wrote those. You can give us the inbound links, which helps you, us, and everyone, without taking entire pieces of work. (I am presuming for the moment that none of the other publications have given Huffpo permission; if they have, that's fine and their choice.)
Update: I heard from people at TOC and Centerstage; HuffPo never asked permission from them, either. No word from the Decider yet. Or, for that matter, from Huffington Post, whom I have e-mailed through their form.
[Update II: I should make my problem really clear. If they'd asked, it might have made sense to let them bury our concert previews somewhere on their site. The Bon Iver refer that was on their homepage today goes directly to our site, and that helps them and us, and that's okay. To find our entire concert preview, or the others, you have to look around--I didn't find all those until I clicked on the "chicago concerts" tag. So it's not like they're trying to take readers from us (provided those readers don't find the full preview through a search engine). SEO dark arts bother me on some level, but it's not illegal. It might screw people who don't know or don't participate in such jazz, but you learn.
What bothers me is that it was done without our permission. Full stop. Perhaps there's no damage to the Reader--perhaps we even benefit--but it really, really bothers me that someone copied entire concert previews, buried though they may be.]
Update III: Heard from the Decider/Onion; they weren't asked permission, either. In comments, Andrew Huff from Gapers Block mentions they've had the same problem as well.
You want to do a post that says, "According to Jessica Hopper, Bon Iver rules, check 'em out, go here for the info," fine. But taking an entire concert preview is bush league. Doing it as a practice is just beneath contempt. If the future of journalism--which everyone keeps telling me the Huffington Post represents--is a bunch of search-engine optimization scams, we have bigger problems than Sam Zell's bad investment strategies.
Hey, oracles of the future of media, you want content?
And the next time she goes on Bill Maher, throw shoes.
Sick of her.
That's eating someone's lunch.
It takes human labor to acquire this content. That's the bottom line. As long as people think they can find reliable information "for free," the foundations of professional journalism -- from calendar listings to investigations -- are undermined.
Nothing automatic about it, people. This stuff come from real people doing real work, and those who lift it without credit or recompense are lying to you -- and cheating those who did the work in the first place.
I'm the editor of the Gambit down in New Orleans (you know, that place with the football team that the Bears love to beat), and we've had it with her brand of "progressive" journalism. First it was not paying her bloggers; now it's taking, wholesale, the work of others without recompense.
I won't blogspam you here, but we wrote up your experience on our blog and said:
"If you or your minions ever copy-and-paste anything out of our copyrighted publication (or from our city’s fine bloggers), you’ll find out just how P.O.’d we can get down here in the 504.
"We don’t need you, we don’t want you, and we’re not scared of you. We’ve got Southern lawyers, we’ve got righteous anger, and we’ve got bloggers with tongues sharper than a Beverly Hills surgeon’s knife.
"And if Chicago wants to lead the charge against your faux-”progressive” politics, we’ll be in lockstep behind them. Just don’t touch our stuff."
Seriously, I'm ready to raise hell over this with any AAN members who want to join me. Maybe we can think of something together.
If so, send Google a complaint. There's a federal law against what they are doing. Google will tell you what to do next to file a complaint, and then Google will send them a note that it is a violation of their agreement with Google.
If thye don't sell ads through Google, you can still take advantage of the federal law. Check out the govts' Web site.
http://tiny.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010905.h...
In happier Googling, the kerfuffle is the No. 1 hit for "straight stole."
As for Web traffic, as someone that sells online banner impressions, and pay per click advertising (not for a newspaper), that really is the future of advertising, and, as much as it sucks you can't have quality, professionally trained, insightful, real reporters on staff without someone funding them, and advertising is obviously suffering right now. What also sucks is that advertisers now want guaranteed ROI, aka sales or acquisitions as a result of their advertising investments, and just think of how impossible that is in this economy?! I heard anecdotally at a marketing event that Chrysler only wants to "buy ads that work." Well, how about making efficient cars first, or loosening up credit so people will buy cars, and carmakers will then buy ads, and journalists will continue to eat?
And, while I know no one wants to hear this part either, I am also going to say that I'm kind of annoyed with the elitism that exists between journalists and the fat cat Zells at the top of the newspapers. There is such a distate for advertising among some writers, yet it is what allows traditonal media to exist. Also, there IS a difference between the men in suits that don't really sell ads, and the very people that are pounding the pavement every day, and convincing advertisers to continue advertising, even as their returns become increasingly diminished, or harder to quantify. It's what we in sales call "a hard sell," and it's getting harder all the time. Kind of makes me want to sit on my couch for 10 hours straight and watch Mad Men!
In my case, I broke the "Sarah Pain nude portrait" story on the Windy Citizen. Our story doesn't even crack the top 10 for results for that search, even though most of the top 10 results are using our photo, text, info and linking to us. ChuffPo is in the top 3.
Admittedly, I sent most of those sites the link to the story in order to get buzz about it. Them's the breaks.
So the HuffPo is violating copyright and profiting from it. Ok.
They are running ads from at least two services on their site: Doubleclick (owned by Google)and something called Adblade that I've never heard of.
The Terms of Service laid out by Google for Adsense prohibit advertising on sites that "infringe on the rights of others."
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer....
However, I just spoke to someone at Doubleclick and he said that Doubleclick has no rules against running their ads on sites that lift content.
His advice was:
1. Go straight to the HuffPo.
2. Hire a lawyer.
He also said that no one had every come to them with this complaint before.
I left a message with the people at http://www.adblade.com but no response just yet.
4. If you are a copyright owner or agent thereof and believe that User Content infringes upon your copyright, please submit notice, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512(c)) to our Copyright Agent with the following information: (i) an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright; (ii) a description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed; (iii) the URL of the location containing the material that you claim is infringing; (iv) your address, telephone number, and email address; (v) a statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; (vi) a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your Notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.
Our Copyright Agent can be reached as follows: By mail: HuffingtonPost.com / Attn: Copyright Agent / 560 Broadway, Suite 308 / New York, NY 10012
By phone: (212) 245-7844
By fax: (646) 557-0803
By email: copyrightagent@huffingtonpost.com
But it was pointed out that YouTube content is user generated and employee moderated while this is employee moderated AND generated. So while YouTube can hide behind the DMCA provisions which protect service providers as long as they take down material that's been deemed illegal, the HuffPo doesn't have that recourse.
Controlling SEO like this does indeed produce an unfair commercial advantage, particularly when it comes at the expense of writers and editors. Fortunately, there are laws in place to prevent this.
And don't confuse "information" with "work." "Bon Iver is playing at the Vic at 8 p.m." is information. A preview of said show is work.
i'm shocked, shocked i tell you...that it has taken this long for anyone to notice.
http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/92124?fp=1
Does anyone know if bloggers wrote Huff's book for her? Were they paid?
No question and for quite some time. It's pretty brazen considering she fancies herself as a sort media watchdog. Huffington Post also stages news and then reports it as an exclusive. She is by no means, or should by no means, be considered the future. She's a full blown opportunist and that's all.
If you had done your job as a reporter, you wouldn't have to presume, and your article would be credible. And most of these commenters aren't questioning your claim, even though you state that you have no evidence whatsoever except for your own publication.
Trevor
www.tynt.com
Dirty trick to all concerned by P.J.