Law Ratchet: New Dogs, Old Tricks

There's a new scraper in town.  When the word came in, I strolled over to Bob Ambrogi's Law Sites to see who it was.  The name is Law Ratchet, and no, I won't make the play on its name because it's too easy. If this seems like deja vu all over again, it is. Scraper USLaw, run by some kid who goes by the name Gregory Chase while sitting on the couch in his mother's basement hoping to earn enough off his website to pay for his Cheetos fix, tried to get away with this years ago. It failed.

So naturally, someone new comes along thinking they've discovered an untapped resource, someone else's content, and can parlay that into cash in their pocket. The mechanics are simple: Take a blawg's RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed and use it to recreate someone else's content on your website. Maybe there's a link back to the original, maybe not. Maybe there's acknowledgement of the author, maybe not. Regardless, they glom the full content created by someone else, add nothing to enhance its value, and offer it up.

The day after Ambrogi noted its existence, the obvious question was asked.

Afterwards, a reader emailed me asking a key question my post did not address — that of whether Law Ratchet is violating the copyrights of the publishers and bloggers whose stories it is picking up.

For many of the articles Law Ratchet picks up, it is republishing them in full on its own site, complete with images.

The posts included Bob's. Volokh's. Mine. Bob, calling it a grey area of law, notes that in 2005, Eric Goldman wrote that by allowing readers to access a blawg via an RSS feed, it might be acceptable for scrapers to steal it:

In my mind, there’s no question that a blogger grants an implied license to the content in an RSS feed. However, because it’s implied, I’m just not sure of the license terms. So, in theory, it could be an implied license to permit aggregators to do whatever they want.

Just to be sure, I checked with Eric yesterday to see if this was still his view, and it is. He notes an Israeli court reached a similar conclusion, though in Associated Press v. Meltwater, the Southern District of New York held scraping to be copyright infringement.  On the other hand, IP lawyer Marc Randazza says it's a copyright violation, without any doubt whatsoever.

Ambrogi asked the babies in charge of Law Ratchet, Derek Chau, a 2006 Harvard Law grad, and  Will Mouat, who were Ropes and Gray associates before they weren't, about their scraping. They responded in marketeer fashion:

On the issue of copyright law, we did invest a fair amount of time researching the matter. I would hazard to guess that you are familiar with the copyright issues given your experience with media law. We carefully analyzed the issues and suffice it to say that we believe that Law Ratchet is well-positioned on the merits of the legal issues.

Suffice? No, "you say so" doesn't suffice. In fact, what you "believe" is worthless.

Will and I embarked on this venture to create a better experience for lawyers to consume and discover legal news. In doing so, our goal has been to work with content providers and to forge mutually beneficial partnerships with authors and publishers. In fact, we believe that the only way Law Ratchet will succeed in the marketplace is with their cooperation and partnership.

And so the bullshit flows, because if you wrap up scraping in pretty bows, it's not like it's really stealing and nobody will call you out. Except I am.

Much as I respect Eric Goldman, he's completely wrong on his imputation of an implied license as to RSS feeds. RSS is merely the tool by which individual readers view content. There is a facile assumption by some that because it's easy to grab off an RSS feed, it must be free for the taking. That's like saying if someone leaves a potted plant outside their front door, it must be okay to walk over and take it. Because, you know, if they didn't want you to take it, they would have locked it up in the safe. It's absurd.

It's true that some blawgers, particularly those with fewer readers or who subscribe to the "all information should be free" philosophy, don't mind being scraped. Others overlay their personal sense of propriety, that it's okay with them provided they get attribution, or maybe a link back. That's fine, if they don't care whether someone scrapes their stuff. But that's not the law, and their sensibilities don't dictate what's permissible for other people who don't share their willingness to be scraped.

On twitter, Mark Lyon asked whether it was okay if it was just someone curating interesting stuff. The question missed the mark. The details of how a scraper uses someone else's content, or how someone who might want curated content, is irrelevant. The point is that it's not their content to sell, whether curated, tied in a bow or any other way.

It's copyright. It's someone else's content, and without permission to offer it, they can't. Even if its easy to scrape or readers might enjoy the ease of someone else curating it for them. It's just not theirs to offer. And as for readers wanting someone to chew their food for them, USLaw tried it already, and nobody wanted it. The business model is not only wrong, but bad.

As for me, I added a footer (that I got from Mark Bennett) to my RSS feed that makes my position clear.

© 2007-13 Simple Justice NY LLC. This feed is for personal, non-commercial & Newstex use only. The use of this feed on any other website is a copyright violation. If this feed is not via RSS reader or Newstex, it infringes the copyright.

If you want to see it in the wild, it's right there on the Law Ratchet scraping of my posts. As for Chau and Mouat, can you say "statutory damages"?  I bet you can. As of this moment, there are 134 posts of mine on Law Ratchet. Do you still believe?


© 2007-13 Simple Justice NY LLC. This feed is for personal, non-commercial & Newstex use only. The use of this feed on any other website is a copyright violation. If this feed is not via RSS reader or Newstex, it infringes the copyright.

Source: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2013/05/28/law-ratchet-new-dogs-old-tricks.aspx?ref=rss

traffic attorney traffic lawyer traffic ticket lawyer absolute power of attorney