Omln-copyright

SESSION ONE: Saving Journalism from Itself?

These pages are notes taken by Bill Densmore of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute while attending and participating April 9, 2010, in a one-day seminar at Harvard Law School: "Journalism's Digital Transition: Unique Legal Challenges and Opportunities." The event was organized by the Online Media Legal Network of the Berkshire Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. There are three panels; we'll build a page on each. THE CONFERENCE AGENDA HAS DETAILS ON PARTICIPANTS AND OVERVIEW TOPICS.

• BACK TO TOP OF THESE NOTES
• The hash tag for today's seminar on Twitter is: #jdt

Moderator is Christopher Bavitz, assistant director, Cyberlaw Clinic, Berkman Center

Five panelists are:

• Michael Grygiel, of Hiscock & Barclay LLP, outside counsel to GateHouse Media
• Sam Bayard, deputy director of the Online Media Legal Network at Berkman.
• R. David Hosp, of Goodwin Proctor LLP, outside counsel to The New York Times, and a published novelist
• Bruce Brown, Baker and Hoesteler, Washington, D.C., former journalist at The Washington Post before law school. Would like to see an expansion of the hot news doctrine. Otherwise there is a "systemic free riding." He thinks the Hot News doctrine can be federalized. He thinks that would be consistent with keeping the Internet a vibrant speech area. He's not online.
• Joseph Liu, Boston College Law School professor. "We should rightly worry about the viablity of the news ... but maybe we should be less worried about the viability of newspapers ... only to the extent they are necessary."

Discussion narrative

• Grygiel: There are court cases that make clear the structural importance of the news media. His concern is that "if we don't have ... it is the working institutionalized press that still performs that function . . . ad hoc more off-of-the-cuff commentary is of a different order." To get that news -- training, discipline, hard work, investment of training and effort.

• Hosp: The traditional media had somewhat of a monopoly on distribution. That's receded. How do we protect and monetize journalism where the barrier to entry is low. But there is a new barrier to entry -- "the value is in the accuracy, the value is in the hard work done underlying the reporting itself." He thinks trademarks "will play more and more of a role in terms of adding value to people who produce the news . . . if it is coming from The New York Times are you more likely to trust it? . . . Fox . . . CNN." He thinks there will be more branding in terms of ideology. That's driving viewership and eyeballs.

• Brown: The Gatehouse Media got started the tension between copyright and aggregation. Some thing that codification of "hot news" is a problem because it locks in a test. His partner, David Marburger in Cleveland, has written about the issue. When institutional press pushes these legislatively "we need to broaden how we think about some of these issues and couch them as issues that will protect any industry." He says investment banks are interested in expanding the "hot news" doctrined, and the Motorola case is about a sports franchise.

• Bayard: Is what ails the news industry really -- the economic problem -- aggregation and blogs? Or is there a bigger problem we have to face as a society?

• Liu: Other industries who have faced this -- music industry and BitTorrent -- has been a more immediate problem. But for the newspaper industry the issues are more complex -- pealing away of classified revenue by Craigslist and others, for example.

• Hosp: You can see in how the disputes arise. There are no legacy consensus positions that segments of the industry take. For example in the Gatehouse Media case, New York Times, a pillar of the journalism community were the defendant (as The Boston Globe) in the case brought by Gatehouse Media, another newspaper company, over The Globe website's linking to Gatehouse stories. "The disputes end up being so factually driven that it is sometimes difficult to draw out larger principles from them."

• Brown: In the Washington Post newsroom, among former colleagues, some want to turn off Google from indexing the Post, and others are calling up and emailing Google every day trying to get their stories search-engine optimized.

• Bayard: It's hard to separate the investigative, analytic blog from the free-riding scraper when determining which should be entitled to a Fair Use exception.

• Brown: "When people throw out an example like that it doesn't reflect the reality of how (a "hot news" doctrine) would be used.

• Bayard: A problem with the "hot news" test is there is too many guessing about peoples' intentions and their output.

• Hosp: When you look at fair use and hot news, the big issue is what's the economic impact. Evaluating what that impact is going to be is going to be very difficult on a case-by-case basis. the Fly On the Wall Case is not an example of linking at all. It will be hard to analyze.

Liu: The economic impact of linking is important, but, " ... it's not like you are taking the news and reselling it, you are just linking to a page . . . where is the misappropriation there?"

• Grygiel: The short and long answer to economics, he doesn't think there is anything inherently problematic and unlawful with linking. "But who is making the money now? . . . Google and Google News are certainly making a lot of money. I think in a large, global sense that certainly frames the economic question, if not answering it."

• Liu: Is there a business model that you could sell ads on the individual page that you could make up enough money for the loss of links to your home page?

• Brown: Another consideration -- new aggregators can sell advertising less than newspapers, and that pushes down the cost of advertising. That's a problem for journalism. He thinks someone said there was a study that about 55% to 60% of Google users say they are staying at Google, not clicking through, so the ads they are seeing are Google-sold ads. And even when they do click through, newspapers are having a hard time monetizing.

• Brown: He agrees that if a "hot news" statute surpressed the transfer of news, that would be a disaster.

• Bayard: It might not just be news organizations asserting the claim. What if the political activist who sot the Acorn video could say you can't report this because he originated the video?

• Grygiel: The question Sam is getting at: If you look at the Fly on the Wall case, there is considerable tension on news organizations to report facts. There is a lot in this decision. It doesn't address the accurate reporting of financial information.