Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE GREEN PARTY has urged the government to abandon its plans to legislate against illegal downloading – urging it to follow the lead of the White House.
The White House has pledged not to support the SOPA and PIPA acts currently making their way through Congress, saying any legislation to block piracy must not inhibit genuine innovation.
Today the Greens’ leader, former communications minister Eamon Ryan, called on the government to follow that example – and not to proceed with plans ordering ISPs to disconnect users who are ‘committing digital copyright theft’.
“We do need to protect copyright for our creative industries but the Government is going about it in the wrong way,” Ryan argued.
Rather than infringing on basic privacy rights, they should look at measures which would curtail the search, payment and advertising capabilities of those companies and websites that profit from piracy.
Ryan said the government was introducing legislation as a result of a legal case from music publishers, who claimed the government’s failure to legislate was in breach of their European rights – and that this case was “very questionable”.
“The Government should re-assert the right of the Dail rather than vested interests to decide on what laws we need to pass,” he said.
Ryan called on the public to contact innovation minister Seán Sherlock to share their opinions on the proposals before they are issued.
Sherlock said last month that he would issue legislation in January, filling a legal void created by a High Court case which found that courts could not allow injunctions to block access to filesharing websites.
That case had been taken by EMI music – which is now suing the state for its failure to legislate in accordance with EU law.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
What do they consider personal use exactly?
I’m not a company but if i post a link to a newspaper on eircomsucks.com will they want payment from me?
What if i post as a user on http://www.boards.ie and say xyz about a story and post a link, will they want payment from me and/or boards.ie/daft media?
The newspapers here are just trying to somehow protect their dieing business model, rather then evolve and try and compete in a new online world like thejournal.ie or even the likes of bbcnews.com they want tp protect the old business model for as long as they can.
The sad thing is, they are fools and the old business model is dieing a death.
Just to add, what if I’m a company and a newspaper does a story about my company. Am i not entitled to link to something about my company.
Isn’t that exactly what Women’s Aid did?, they simply linked to a story about them!
Are the newspapers looking to create some crazy world where they want company’s and people to charge THEM (the newspapers) a fee for writing a story about them!
They want you to hit the share button to post to your Facebook/Twitter whilst also having the power to sue Boards.ie etc. for allowing you to post it there.
Basically they want to do as they please.
I would actually love if they took on Google over sharing of links. Let’s see how far they go if Google decide to exclude them from their search engines
Just to add,
Are the NNI members going to pay message board users for content they effectively steal from them?
Not a week goes by where papers throughout Ireland use content posted by users on boards.ie, sometimes they mention its from boards.ie other times they “claim” its from somebody writing to the paper.
Thing is the letters etc match word for word when compared to the posts made on websites like boards.ie, often the stories include photos that the users have posted on boards.ie as well.
OK, this is not a problem. If they publish an article on me or my then I expect to be paid, they use photograph of me, my product or my home/factory then they can pay me or my company for the privilege.
Can’t see them winning this one.
I’d love to share this with my friends, but I’m confused about whether I’m allowed :(
Just go for it, now im pretty sure journal.ie won’t bite your toes off.
I’d say Share, Tweet, Share, Email & Facebook buttons are a bit of a giveaway.
The Personal Use issue is a red herring.
They actually have said, in this and other earlier statements, that there is no legal difference between links- no matter what kind of use is being made of them
“the same legal principles apply to both” as they say.
The statement is therefore a restatement of the assertion (still not supported by citing any statutory basis) that newspapers have the power to grant or withhold permission to link to their sites.
What’s going to happen next? PS well done on making everyone so aware of this nonsense.
I’m glad to see this absurd matter is getting some coverage, if you don’t want you articles linkable – stick up a paywall. Links are the whole point of the world wide web.
No problem. Nobody post links to any of their sites and it wont be long before they change their minds. Advertisers will start pulling out when they see traffic is down. In summary they can go and shite.
+1 & Spot on!….. We should all be ignoring them anyway as all they are is propaganda rags.
The NNI members have probably realized they’ve shot themselves in the foot after the article on mcgarrsolicitors.ie. If they insists on charging per link used, Google would drop them from their database like a rock in the water, as would every other search engine.
NNI probably also finally realized that anyone sharing links drives traffic TO their sites by way of FREE ADVERTISING. I share links around quite frequently. If I got hit up for fees, I’d send a few back of my own for advertising fees.
Standard industry practice allows a person or company to use quotes based on a ‘fair use’ basis. This means a small percentage of a total work can be quoted without having to pay fees, and as long as the original source is quoted. One is not meant to take a full article, such as this one, and post it in its entirety onto a blog or other website, regardless if they’re claiming it’s their own or the property of TheJournal.ie or the author, Susan Daly. That’s not just copyright infringement, it’s also plagiarism (if claiming the work as one’s own).
However, one can pull the first paragraph or two of this article and post it on their site and link back to this original page under ‘fair use’. This is what most people do. The previous days discussions about this issue have pretty strongly insinuated that the NNI members want fees for doing this.
If this becomes law, I can see most of these papers going out of business fairly rapidly. Not just from readers no longer sharing content, thus losing readership and advertising sponsors, but also from search engines no longer catering to their sites, which is actually a free service for the NNI members.
Personally, as a business owner, if anyone wants to share pages off my website with friends, go for it. I just ask that you credit us for the content by linking to our pages. It’s all free advertising for us and I thank you! :-)
NNI are claiming even more than any “fair use”. They are claiming it’s copyright infringment to *link* to the article even if you quote NONE of it: “a licence is required to link directly to an online article even without uploading any of the content directly onto your own website”
I know, Rory. Is that insane or what? I wonder if the papers are in such dire straights at the minute that they’re thinking of doing this to generate some revenue. I mean, why by the paper if you can get it online for free, right?
An easy solution would be for all the papers to have a nominal annual subscription. It wouldn’t work for just one or two papers. They’d all have to do it, even the likes of TheJournal.ie. I know I’ll get red thumbs, but it makes sense. The fee would not some over the top fee the Irish Times brought in a few years ago and no one subscribed. The annual subscription rate would take the place of the license fee for using links casually. Any links wanting to be used in a professional or commercial way would obviously have to get permission and pay more unless the two parties could come to an understanding.
Hmm . . . I wonder how it works when you take a link and feed it into bit.ly to spoof/shorten the URL.
If they keep this up The Journal and the rest will make a killing. You’re watching the dying days of traditional Irish media. We should do everything in our powers to help Irish newspapers get this through. Keep it up..the sooner the better.
Nonsense. It’s logical to charge a fee for linking to someone else’s site – that’s advertising. The IT would justifiably charge a large fee for a banner ad on their site, linking to a page on mine. For me to expect a fee FROM them to link to a page on my site would be just ludicrous. If the newspapers don’t want a site linking to stories on theirs, let them make it pay per view (and see how long they last). They can’t have it both ways: freely available on the web, but nobody’s allowed to link to it. That’s now how the web works. That they think they can get away with this may be just another symptom of the underlying problem: even though it’s in common use for over 15 years now, they have failed to adapt to the reality of the world wide web.
So by NNI’s logic, if a librarian points to a book on a library bookshelf then he or she is infringing the copyright of that book.
Who controls NNI? Would i not be correct in saying Denis O’Brien? Pat Rabbitte refused to limit his ownership rights and control of media in Ireland. This is what you get in return. We also had FFG supporting ACTA when the rest of Europe said it was censorship of media and therefore voted against it. We are being controlled more and more. For years, Irish Press and the Indo/Sindo were the mouth pieces of the political establishment. With newspaper sales dwindling and only being read by older generations, these new measures and controls are being put in place to limit freedom of speech, to suit the Political establishment and their very wealthy media oligarchs. Shameful, and its no surprise the rest of the world media are laughing at Ireland.
Hi Cal, No, it wouldn’t be right to say it is controlled by Denis O’Brien – the full list of members is visible on http://www.nni.ie/v2/broad/index.php – it includes Thomas Crosbie Holdings, Irish Times, Rupert Murdoch-owned papers and others, as well as Independent News and Media publications. Just for clarity.
Thanks, Susan.
Thanks for the clarity Susan, but at the end of the day, Denis O’Brien controls the Indo, Today FM, Newstalk and others. His undue influence is felt across all of that media (Look what happened to Eamonn Dunphy, when he voiced his concerns about O’Briens control of media in Ireland.
I agree Murdoch controls a lot of media also, but Murdoch wouldn’t even dare attempt to support such a move in the UK, he doesn’t have that Government in his pocket… We need to learn a lesson from them. We have a couple of Oligarchs who can do what they want in this country, and our Government supports them.
In fairness Carl, Rupert Murdoch practically owns the Conservative party. He had Thatcher deregulate the entire sector in the 80s, Andy Coulson was appointed Cameron’s PR man, Rebekah Brooks is closely tied to the Tories and if the News of the World hadn’t been caught out for tapping phones Cameron would have dismantled the BBC by now.
We need to stay far away from Britain’s example
I obtain all my news on the Internet and use the Journal on a daily basis and I am in my mid seventies.
Blatantly copying chunks of content on to your webpages one could understand as infringement but trying to restrict linking to content is just silly…a link is no more than recommending/referencing and actually strengthens their website and sends referral traffic….greedy shower of toerags!
Well their logic concerning hyperlinks also dictates that the NLI should be storming local noticeboards and slapping fines on those who tack up clippings from newspapers.
“The display and transmission of links does constitute an infringement of copyright”
Total nonsense.
There is no unique content under the standards of what is copyrightable in a url.
Even with the content itself ‘fair use’ is a standard of copyright so a small extract is perfectly allowable.
If you wanted to go stricter you could re-write the article title in your own way, but you could not copyright the URL itself. There is no copyrightable content in a url.
This would only fall under copyright if, let say you, used that URL in your own personal (paid) advertising. It also falls under misrepresentation were you to do so.
Quite a bit of what you see in pressn is direct PR from groups such as Women’s Aid (for example).
If they send that out to 5 media outlets and they all publish it on their website then who owns the copyright? NNI haven’t thought this one through at all
I stopped buying the IT since Xmas eve when despite in a reducing market and in the middle of a severe recession they increase their price to their customers in the Republic. The Law of Diminishing Returns never seem to cross their minds nor the fact as to why it is still referred to as a Law.
I stopped buying it when I first read the Guardian about 12 years ago and realised what a newspaper could be.
Have occasionally felt bad on missing out on Irish commentary, pick up a copy and realise again why I love the Guardian so much (G2, sports, international & comment section)
Belgian newspapers have been through all of this, and it didn’t turn out to well for them…
If they don’t want it shared, stop putting “Share this” buttons under the articles.
I recently told somebody where to find an old copy of the Indo, thus inadvertently sending the paper a new reader without first asking permission.
I hope their bill for my mistake won’t be too high and I promise never to recommend them to anyone again.
This is such a trivial action. to copy and paste a link wrap it in some HTML and post it on your own website. That very act should not require licencing. its a Joke and whats more It needs to get as much air time as possible to show how silly this is…
I haven’t bought a newspaper in five years, I get all my news on my smartphone,nThe only time I miss the Irish times is when I have caught a few trout and need to gut them?
Newspapers should be paying people to link to their online articles, that’s how the generate traffic and therefore make money out of having these articles online. By their logic I should start charging Facebook for the privilege of hosting my content?!
Yes I agree. I am completely bamboozled by their stupidity and of all the organisations they decided to test this out on!
And yet they’re charging advertisers on the basis of a given amount of web traffic, which, without links will come from…???
I look forward to aggregated news websites charging The Irish Times for linking to their news articles and thus generating more money for them in their banner advertising revenue. That must be worth a 15% cut I’d imagine?
Considering most off the print media now use “lifting” copy and paste from the web I find it quite strange that they would be concerned about copy right infringement
While the argument for stopping online news aggregators inserting links to articles on “established” and “reporter employing” newspaper sites is obviously fatally flawed and cannot be justified in the context of the basic function of the worldwide web, what is the case for or against the “scraping” and rebranding of news by framing the third party content within an aggregator site while keeping the reader within the confines of the referring site? Surely this is not justifiable or fair use?
This is just crazy, by creating a hyperlink to an article you are generating traffic to their site and in-turn increasing their readership. Also, most of them have social sharing buttons???????????????????????????????
have your say