p
a href="http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/huffpo-slammed.html" target="_blank"Wired/Epicenter/a alerts us to the controversy swirling around the a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/" target="_blank"Huffington Post/a's a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chicago/" target="_blank"new Chicago edition/a. Last week, Whet Moser of the a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/" target="_blank"Chicago Reader/a caughtem /emthe emHuffington Post /ema href="http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/chicagoland/2008/12/18/grand-theft-huffpo/" target="_blank"using an entire emReader/em concert preview/a without permission. Later in the day, he a href="http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/chicagoland/2008/12/18/grand-theft-huffpo-pt-2/" target="_blank"discovered/a that the emHuffington Post/em's a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/chicago-concerts" target="_blank"Chicago Concert's page/a was stocked with full-text appropriations from a href="http://events.chicagoreader.com/events/Event?oid=845618" target="_blank"the Reader/a and other sites like a href="http://www.timeout.com/chicago/events/jazz-cabaret/260277/3817576/fred-anderson" target="_blank"Time Out Chicago/a, a href="http://www.centerstagechicago.com/events/music/detail.cfm?ID=197313" target="_blank"Centerstage/a, and a href="http://chicago.decider.com/events/mercury-rev-and-the-duke-spirit,17121/" target="_blank"the emOnion's /emDecider/a. Moser was a href="http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/chicagoland/2008/12/18/grand-theft-huffpo-pt-2/" target="_blank"understandably irked/a:
/p
blockquote
p
emYou want to do a post that says, quot;According to Jessica Hopper, Bon Iver
rules, check 'em out, go here for the info,quot; fine. But taking an entire
concert preview is bush league. Doing it emas a practice/em is
just beneath contempt. If the future of journalism--which everyone
keeps telling me the Huffington Post represents--is a bunch of
search-engine optimization scams, we have bigger problems than Sam
Zell's bad investment strategies./em
/p
/blockquote
p
Wholesale copying like this is not just ethically suspect and terrible for public relations; it is also copyright infringement. Although not a lawyer, Moser's quote reveals a pretty good sense of what a href="/legal-guide/fair-use" target="_blank"fair use/a allows under the circumstances -- a link with a short summary or quotation is no problem, but taking the entirety of someone's work is rarely legally justified.
/p
p
To its credit, the emHuffington Post/em has already corrected the a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/chicago-concerts" target="_blank"Chicago Concert's page/a so it no longer reproduces entire articles. Co-founder Jonah Peretti told a href="http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/huffpo-slammed.html" target="_blank"Wired/a that quot;the complete re-printing was a mistaken editorial call and that The
Huffington Post's intention in aggregating other publications' content
is to send traffic their way.quot;
/p
p
Still, some aren't happy with the a href="http://gawker.com/5100334/huffington-post-raises-incredible-amount-of-money" target="_blank"well-funded/a news site's aggregation strategy more generally (putting aside any issue of wholesale copying). New Orleans journalist Kevin Allman a href="http://kevinallman.typepad.com/kevin_allman/2008/08/write-for-free-huffington-post-chicago-d%C3%A9buts.html" target="_blank"captures the sentiment well/a: quot;In
other words: professional newsgathering organizations have paid
professional writers to do professional work, and then Arianna comes
in, creates links to their creations, and sells ads on her own page.
How progressive.quot; Gawker a href="http://gawker.com/5113964/arianna-huffingtons-scuzzy-copying-pisses-off-chicagoans" target="_blank"puts it more bluntly/a, accusing emHuffPo/em of acting like quot;a grubby, Google-spamming AdSense scammer.quot;
/p
p
While I'm no fan of wholesale verbatim copying like what happened with the concert previews, I think these more general criticisms -- which could be leveled at any aggregator -- aren't particularly fair. If the emHuffington Post/em stays within the bounds of fair use and does not deceptively claim anyone else's work as its own, I see no problem with it acting as a selector, organizor, and curator of others' content. Maybe I'm missing something -- don't hesitate to tell me so in the comments.
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