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Back to the topic at hand.

The R-J’s latest actions have provoked much thought by yours truly, and I have come to a few conclusions.

First of all, I think the R-J is seriously damaging their brand with these lawsuits.

In my opinion, these suits are going to be a PR catastrophe.  Sometimes being technically right is not enough, and this is one of those situations.  I don’t care how right you think you are, suing a non-commercial cat blog for $75,000 makes you look like an anus.

This is especially true when you realize that the R-J is unlikely to actually get paid if they win.  How many bloggers have $75K laying around during the great recession?  A victorious lawsuit isn’t worth the paper it is printed on if you can’t collect the judgement, and I’m sure that in some of these cases a $75K judgment might as well be a billion dollar judgment when it comes time to collect them.

I can understand suing Microsoft or Apple for that kind of money, but suing Joe’s Copy-and-Paste Las Vegas Blog is nothing more than legal masturbation.

Second, these suits make the R-J look weak … almost desperate.

Think about it.  If you are a strong newspaper, being quoted by one, or even one hundred obscure blogs is not going to hurt your business model.  Yet, here we have the R-J implying that a Boston “Cat Blog” is cutting into their revenue.  Such a revelation does not bode well for the newspaper.

In order to address the current situation at the R-J, Sherman “Stix” Frederick, the publisher of the R-J outlined his paper’s position in a blog post at http://www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm/Copyright_theft_Were_not_taking_it_anymore.html

In it, he states:

“Look at this way. Say I owned a beautiful 1967 Corvette and kept it parked in my front yard.

And you, being a Corvette enthusiast, saw my Vette from the street. You stopped and stood on the sidewalk admiring it. You liked it so much you called friends and gave them my address in case they also wanted to drive over for a gander.

There’d be nothing wrong with that. I like my ‘67 Vette and I keep in the front yard because I like people to see it.

But then, you entered my front yard, climbed into the front seat and drove it away.

I’m absolutely, 100% not OK with that. In fact, I’m calling the police and reporting that you stole my car.

Every jury in the land would convict you.

Yet, when it comes to copyrighted material — news that my company spends money to gather and constitutes the essence of what we are as a business — some people think they can not only look at it, but also steal it. And they do. They essentially step into the front yard and drive that content away.

Well, we at Stephens Media have decided to do something about it. And, I hope other publishers will join me.”

Oh dear, I just pasted one hell of a big quote.  I’m going to have to ridicule the hell out of it just to keep the law on my side.  Let me see if I can manage.

Now, I appreciate Sherm taking time out of his day to detail his position with the public, but his example is patently stupid.

Car theft is a criminal matter, whereas fair use is civil matter.  This is the reason that Sherman “Tank” Frederick does not call the cops when he finds a website that has quoted his content.  Unlike reporting a car theft, the cops would laugh at him and/or arrest him for filing a false police report, or if he lives in Henderson … walk over to his favorite ice cream vendor and shoot her in the face.

You see, when someone quotes Sherman “Helmsley” Fredrick’s content, he has not been deprived of his use of that same content.

For instance, people steal my photos all the time, but aside from my inability to be a credit whore, it really doesn’t affect me at all since I am still free to use the photos on my own sites.  The plagiarists may be assholes, but they have not really deprived me of anything tangible.  I still have all of my content.  If someone steals my car, however, my car is gone and I cannot drive anywhere.  I cannot use the vehicle I paid for, and I will probably have to pay even more money to get it replaced.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand what “Ask” Sherman “Williams” Frederick is getting at, but the beautiful 1967 Corvette example is a bit ridiculous.  Equating copy-paste with breaking into someone’s yard and stealing their car makes it hard to take “General” Sherman Frederick seriously.

Also, in my opinion, the Review-Journal is going to suffer a backlash against these lawsuits from the Internet community.

As most people are aware, when a mainstream story breaks in the press, it is usually picked up and reported by a wide variety of publications.  Be it the Las Vegas Sun, San Jose Mercury News, or someone else, most bloggers have a pretty wide choice when it comes to attribution.  If people start abandoning links and quotes from the R-J in favor of LasVegasNow or the Las Vegas Sun (as I have done), I’m not really sure how the R-J benefits.

In addition, I frankly do not understand how Sherm can lecture anyone on ethics with a straight face.

Sherman runs a “news” paper that endorses candidates while covering those same candidates.  He runs a newspaper that takes a massive shit on the first amendment instead of protecting its readers.  He runs a newspaper that accepts bribes (they call it “advertising”) from a state-run monopoly in exchange for softball coverage of blatant violations of the Nevada Revised Statutes.

Say what you will about someone stealing Sherm Sherm The Dancing Worm’s hypothetical 1967 Corvette, but when NV Energy is allowed to financially rape every resident of Nevada without even the most cursory expose’ by the checks-and-balance press … the hundreds of millions of dollars that hurting R-J readers have to pay renders the R-J’s copyright losses inconsequential.  In my opinion, the press accepting bribes from a government-run monopoly is a far more heinous transgression than the errant cut-and-pasting of the Boston Catwoman.

Simply put, I don’t know that the publisher of the R-J is in a position to be giving anyone ethics lessons.

In the interest of fairness, I do understand what it feels like when someone copies your stuff, slaps a few ads on it, and calls it a day.  This happens to everyone, from the largest newspaper to the smallest (real) blog, and it can be annoying.

It is not, however, just a problem for the big guys.

Once, a major media company stole one of my photos and put it into print.  I’m talking on a printed paper page being sold throughout the country.  When we confronted them, they offered a very small amount of compensation and basically said “take it or leave it, you’ll never win in court because your photos were not copyrighted”.

After this incident, I began watermarking my photos, and readers started complaining to me that the watermarks ruined the photos.  I informed these complainers that if they wanted to be a free photographer for a national tabloid, to go buy a camera and get to work.

I understand the R-J’s frustration, but I also understand the harsh realities of posting content on the web.  Once you post something, you no longer have control over it.  All you can do is expect the worst and hope for the best.  It’s impossible to take on the Internet, and have it bend to your will.  It is an exercise in futility.  Many have tried, all have failed.  Just ask the RIAA.

When someone apes me or my site, I generally don’t bother them except for when I have a serious philosophical disagreement with the thief.  One time, a site called “God Hates Fags” direct linked to an image on my site, but instead of complaining to them, I replaced the image on my site with a textual jpg that read “God is Gay” in big, white letters on a black background.  Within minutes, my image was unlinked and they never stole anything of mine again.  The Internet is a weird place, but you cannot sue it into submission.

Last but certainly not least, since the R-J Story broke, a few people have asked me if I was afraid that the R-J would sue me.  The answer to that question is “no”.  I mean, I certainly don’t want them to, but if it happens, we will show up in court and vigorously defend our fair-use/parody positions.  Since fair-use would be up to a judge to decide (and it’s almost completely subjective), I don’t have the slightest idea if we would prevail or lose, but we would bust our ass to defend the rights of (real) bloggers to use excerpts for discussion, criticism, and commentary purposes.

Actually, now that I think about it, since the plaintiff would be the largest newspaper in the state, I imagine that the judge would try to please the newspaper.  You never know when you are going to be found passed out in a hotel room with a dead hooker, and it helps to have some favors in reserve at the local mega-paper.

Of course, I would blog the hell out of the case from beginning to end, which in and of itself would be very educational and informative to entire legions of people, and I would let the chips fall where they may.  As a result, perhaps the legal effort could effect change or clarify the rules for alternative media.  Again, I would greatly prefer to not have to do this, but I don’t fear it whatsoever.

With that being said, I should also note that I will no longer be quoting the Review-Journal going forward.  This is not because I think quoting them is wrong, it is because I think quoting them has an unacceptable risk/reward ratio at this point.  When you are aware that a company is aggressively looking for a reason to sue people, making yourself an easy target for that company is extraordinarily unwise.

The only exception to my “no quote R-J” policy will be if they do something extremely stupid, funny, or noteworthy.

Such as publish geriatric porn.

http://www.vegasrex.com/2008/07/10/the-las-vegas-review-journal-finally-sinks-to-my-level/

I’m so getting sued.

Read: When Newspapers Attack (Part 1/2)

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