Last week's content-theft complaint (Huffington Post) was interesting, because it raised a legitimate question about how much aggregation is too much. This week's is just pathetic:

David Kaplan, Paidcontent: The New York York Times Company is being sued for copyright infringement over its Boston Globe local sites linking with headlines and ledes to another publisher’s articles. GateHouse Media, which publishes 125 community papers in Massachusetts, filed suit in U.S. District Court there Monday. The company claims that the Globe sites lifted headlines and ledes word-for-word and therefore infringed its copyright, even though the items were credited to and linked back to the Gatehouse pubs, according to Boston.com, which is owned by NYTCo (NYSE: NYT)...

In the complaint, Gatehouse says it wants NYTCo to shutter Your Town Newton, one of Boston.com’s new local sites, reports GateHouse’s Newton TAB. GateHouse says that Boston.com’s month-old Newton site used content belonging to The TAB’s online counterpart—called WickedLocalNewton.com—and its sister pubs. Specifically, GateHouse charges that Boston.com both through advertising and its direct aggregation is confusing readers about where the articles actually originated. And even though Boston.com does link back to GateHouse sites, the publisher is frustrated that the links do an end-run around the ads on its homepage... Read More >



Does GateHouse Media understand that NYTCo is sending it traffic? That NYTCo is alerting readers who might otherwise have no knowledge of or interest in Gatehouse articles to their existence? That NYTCo is helping to improve GateHouse's Google ranking? That headline and excerpt linking has been common practice since the dawn of Internet time (and is usually beloved by both parties?)

We hereby give the New York Times permission to aggregate any or all of our headlines and ledes anytime they feel like it. We'll even give GateHouse Media the same permission. We can't wait to welcome their readers to our sites.

See Also: Huffington Post Blasted For Stealing Content