Meltwater is a Norwegian clipping service that monitors news
about its clients on the Web. These paying clients include companies and
governments that fork out good money to outsource trolling the internet for
news items themselves. Meltwater provides them with news alerts, newsletters
and access to a searchable database.
Those newsletters include introductory sections of news stories
(aka “ledes”) that were taken from the Associated Press (AP) and other sources.
AP promptly demanded that Meltwater buy a license to distribute news story
excerpts. Meltwater refused, pointing out that lifting those ledes from the
internet is covered by the fair use rules. AP then sued Meltwater for copyright
infringement.
In court, Meltwater argued its activities are identical to
those of search engines such as Google (which is showing headlines and text snippets
in search results and is covered by the fair use rules. Meltwater would
therefore be allowed to clip and display news stories that were found on
internet.
U.S. District Judge Denise Cote disagreed and ruled that
there are limits to the amount of content an internet scraping service such as
Meltwater can lift from internet without payment stating: “Instead of driving
subscribers to third-party websites, Meltwater News acts as a substitute for
news sites operated or licensed by AP.”
This ruling is also based on the “click-through” rate of the
news stories that Meltwater dissipated. According the judge, Meltwater had lifted
more than was necessary for a search engine and that is therefore harmed AP
stating: “Paraphrasing James Madison, the world is indebted to the press for
triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and
oppression [...] Permitting Meltwater to take the fruit of AP’s labor for
its own profit, without compensating AP, injures AP’s ability to perform this
essential function of democracy.”
Reactions to the ruling were mixed. According to Techdirt’s
Mike Masnick, the judge misinterpreted the “fair use” rules, while AP and the
New York Times were happy.
Needless to say, Meltwater appealed - so stay tuned!
