ISOC-NY NOTICE BOARD

VIDEO: Content Aggregation: Fair Use or a Use Too Far? @theCSUSA #copyright

On October 24 2013 the Copyright Society of the USA NY Chapter presented: Content Aggregation: Fair Use or a Use Too Far? at the Princeton Club in NYC. Some of the most popular websites are based upon the aggregation of other parties’ published news, photos, television clips and other content. Aggregators who collect and post third-party content tout the utility of their “one-stop viewing” sites and argue that theirs is a fair use of the content. Content owners, however, complain that aggregators profit from their content without providing fair compensation, and that they are not benefiting from the recent surge in digital advertising revenues received by big technology companies such as Google and Facebook. Two recent decisions in the Southern District of New York have re-focused attention on this increasingly important topic: The Associated Press v. Meltwater, in which the court ruled that a media monitoring service’s aggregation of news story excerpts provided to paying subscribers was not fair use, and Authors Guild v. HathiTrust (now on appeal to the Second Circuit), in which the court upheld the creation of an index based on Google’s scanning of millions of books in its library project as fair use. Further, in September Judge Chin heard oral argument in Authors Guild v. Google on whether the posting of book excerpts on Google Books qualifies as fair use, and Fox News recently sued TVEYES, an aggregator of clips from television broadcasts. The panel discussed the evolving law and public policy issues related to these cases and the broader topic of aggregation. Panelists: Bill Herman, Hunter College CUNY; Andy Sellars, Digital Media Law Project and Berkman Center for Internet & Society; and Linda Steinman, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. Moderator was Elizabeth McNamara, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. Video/audio is below.