Update this article has dissappeared from Lockergnome but is referenced on The Mortuary Portal we have the full story as it was originally posted on the extended entry.
Give me a break if Cnet is so paranoid that they have to send out Cease and Desist letters to tell sites to quit linking to their content then I think they have lost sight of the medium of which the publish news in.
I used to get all of the print magazines and there are still a ton of them but the news arrives a week late so I quit subscribing. You don’t think that by reading there data on the web and then commenting on it and then providing a link to the article isn’t driving traffic to there site.
I would not even be reading Cnet news if it wasn’t online. Very interesting to say the least. I bet they got pissed when someone was criticizing and taking a opposing view. I just wonder how long before we get our letter in the mail. [Lockergnome]
Article pulled in it entirety from The Mortuary Portal
Kevin Christley
TheMortuary.org Senior Editor
An editor of one of the sites that I closely work for has informed me that CNET.com has issued a cease and desist notice citing that linking to their publicly published articles is in direct violation of U.S. Copyright Law and fails the “Fair Use” provision.
The site in question has a policy in place just like TMP does… Excerpt no more than three paragraphs and always provide a direct link to the article in question. In no instance have they (or our site) ever mis-represented the authorship of any article, but have sent traffic to their site in an attempt to educate the public on the issue.
In our search to uncover relevance in copyright law, we checked out a recent article at Patents.com:
“…Under US law, for example, even if the copyright owner has not given permission, it is still okay to copy something so long as the copying falls within what is called “fair use”… and the use to which the copied matter is put (quoting for use in literary criticism or for educational purposes is more likely to be fair use than some other uses).”
“…The designers of the World Wide Web intended that it would be precisely that — a web. One of the hopes and goals of the designers was that after the passage of some years, a meaningful fraction of the sum total of human knowledge would be on the Web, and that it would be fully cross-linked.”
While I can fully understand their zeal to protect their “intellectual property”, brief quotations and linking to an article for educational purposes falls squarely under “fair use” in the United States.
A little known fact to the CNET lawyers, a full copy of all viewed web pages are stored in the internet cache of most popular browsers. This is a full copy of their work. Does that mean that everyone who views their web pages is breaking the law? No. It simply means they are ignorant of the technology behind the web.
Their arguement is capricious and breaks the fundamental ideas behind the world wide web. In providing a brief excerpt and link to their publicly available (and viewable) content, we are simply guiding people to their site to learn more about the subject. This gains CNET (and other sites) more potential new readership that find CNET is a pretty interesting source of information on the web.
I hope that CNET’s Legal Staff changes their mind about this and ceases and desists from making a mockery of the basic functionality of the WWW. If you wish to lodge a written protest of their actions, feel free to contact them via the following snail mail address:
General Counsel
CNET Networks, Inc.
235 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
Tel: 415.344.2000
And just in case you were wondering, feel absolutely free to republish this article in it’s entirity, or simply link to it from your site (we love the traffic). ;)