UK Newspapers Threatening Aggregator: Like Donkeys Suing The Inventor Of The Wheel
from the how-nice-of-them dept
Mathew Ingram points us to the news that some UK newspapers are apparently threatening UK-based news aggregator NewsNow. I’ve used NewsNow in the past, and I can’t see what the complaint is — at all. NewsNow provides headlines and links. That’s it. At least when I was using it, it didn’t even provide summary text. I actually discovered a lot of useful new sources when I used it, and that’s because NewsNow always struck me as one of the best aggregators out there. It found a lot more than most of the others. To be honest, my big complaint with NewsNow is that they limit their free feeds significantly — and there’s no RSS or anything. After a while, I just gave up on using it, because without RSS, it just didn’t fit into my daily method of following the news, no matter how useful the site is. However, it’s really difficult to see what sort of complaint any newspaper could have with such a service whose sole purpose is to drive more traffic. It is, as the link above so colorfully describes:
the equivalent of a herd of donkeys filing a class action suit against the inventor of the wheel….
Unless there’s something more to these legal threats — and, admittedly, only one side is weighing in on what happened here, the whole thing just seems like a stretch by at least some UK newspapers to try to intimidate online sites into paying them.
Filed Under: aggregators, headlines, links
Companies: newsnow
Comments on “UK Newspapers Threatening Aggregator: Like Donkeys Suing The Inventor Of The Wheel”
I’m still amused that AP, Fox, et cetera hasn’t gone after The Drudge Report yet: But the question remains: what does Drudge Report do to deserve a free pass?
Maybe it’s because outfits like Drudge report on an ideology whereas folks like Google report and prioritize news stories against links, and hits. It seems more democratic.
I’m still lost on why Drudge hasn’t seen nearly the same level of legal threats as Google News.
“Drudge hasn’t seen nearly the same level of legal threats as Google News.”
Er… because I suspect Google is a bazillion times bigger and has a bazillion times more money, than the company running the Drudge report…?
I’m reserving judgement on this until someone bothers to specify what kind of controls the newspapers are asking for.
Keep pushing newspapers…
I still buy newspapers – and that’s about to STOP, simply as a gesture of defiance as they push and push about this.
Don’t alienate those who still buy your papers to support you, even though I can get news from the web.
Yes – I buy the local paper 3 or 4 times a week, to read at lunch. I could just bring lunch back to the office and eat here, but sometimes I am just fine with eating out and buying a paper.
I could save gas and money by just bringing in my lunch and reading news on ‘new media’ pages. I don’t so much care for the ‘traditional’ news as much anyway – I read as many articles here and on other ‘rogue’ news sites as I do from my local paper.
I also keep a couple books in my console – just in case I want to read those instead, but I’m happy buying a paper, even if I only read it for 20 minutes.
Do what the RIAA did and I’ll do the same – It was a good 8 years I refused to buy any CD’s because of the principle.
Yeah… call me a crusader or whatever; but I’m still a customer either way.
My local paper – thus far has been innovative and hasn’t complained about it’s content being re-posted. If they keep that up in this coming storm – I’ll subscribe.
I think I’d use a synonym for “donkeys” instead.