Has the revolt begun?
Are there murmers from The Rulers to crack down on those peasants?
Is there a revolt brewing in Publisher/Editorland?
Pennywit carries the story of a Tulsa blogger who has been battling the local newspaper — which has threatened him and some other bloggers with litagation if he excerpts their articles or links to them. “A newspaper threatening to shut down publications that disagree with it? There’s enough irony to press a week’s worth of shirts,” Pennywit writes.
The blogger, Michael Bates, obviously has a lot to say about this on his blog lively blog Batesline. Read his WHOLE post, but here is a portion:
Why would a big ol’ daily paper, with over 100,000 daily circulation, send a nastygram like this to someone who gets about 1,000 visits a day? And why now? Here’s a little background, especially for you out-of-towners:
And he gives it to you (ahh, read it yahseelf…). Then there’s this:
The empire is striking back….I am not concerned for myself. I believe I have respected the World’s copyrights within the fair-use exemption. Let the World name the specific articles in which it alleges that I have exceeded fair use. I have violated no law by directing readers to the Tulsa World’s own website to read the Tulsa World’s own content as the World itself presents it. I am seeking legal advice for dealing with the matter.The World deserves the scorn and ridicule of the blogosphere for using bullying tactics against its critics. Let’s give it to ’em.
Michele Malkin has written and linked a lot on this. She notes:”If the MSM can’t beat bloggers, they’ll sue ’em….Can you spell U-N-H-I-N-G-E-D?..Bates is looking for legal help. If you are a lawyer with knowledge in this field, please drop him a line: blog -at-batesline.com. I’ve just put a tip in his tip jar. Please do the same if you can!”
And then there’s this item on Daily Kos which was apparently told by Roll Call not to run one of their columns on the site. Declares an angry Kos: “Column pulled at the request of Roll Call. I’m going to stop linking or discussing their content until they learn to be better web citizens. Even the Wall Street Journal offers free web content for blogger access.”
Do we see the rules of the game slowly changing? Stay tuned…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.