Be Excellent To Each Other

Hullo you fine figure of a man, or most beauteous woman, I come baring the gift of something to chew over. A mere morsel, but a tasty one.

Somebody asked a question about a site called [urlhttp://www.clipclip.org/]Clip Clip[/url] on a group that I moderate. People there sem to have already reached a conclusion of sorts, but I thought it might interest you guys here.

The 'learn more' link makes it out to be something akin to bookmarking sites, but actually it is something different. Basically, it is a site that lets you copy and paste content from the internet (websites, blogs) and re-post them on your own Clip Clip page. Social bookmarking is, as far as I am aware, a way to direct friends/other users to content that you find interesting on the internet, but the actual content remains on the writer's own website. Clipclip copies the web content from blogs and websites and hosts it on their own webspace, therefore taking the traffic away from the author of the content. There is a link t the original source, but content is copied in whole and with pictures, etc.

So, is this legal? I can't see how it is any different from someone coming to my blog, copying the articles and then posting them on their own site. I can't see how it is any different from a user-lead blog-scraper.

I think a line in their terms of use is telling:



(bolding mine)

I love the 'we may all judge' bit. I'm pretty sure the majority of end users aren't doing this because they think that copyright law is bunk, but because they are unaware that there is an issue.

Anyway, is this a legitimate use of web content, or are they doing something wrong? Is this the obvious progression of the sharing of web content? Will this be the 'next big thing'?

Google (and others) make a copy of your entire web site each time they crawl it (this is the 'cached' bit of the search results).
A legal case a while back about this decided that Google were free to do this as long as they didn't change anything to make a profit (like add their own adverts, etc).

Would you say that this is the same thing? I'm not challenging you on your point as I have absolutely no idea. I'd wonder if that was different as the content still comes under your site, whereas on Clip Clip you can just cherry pick the content you want to post on your page, (so a page with a family story and an explanation of how to build a bus could re-post the entire thing or just the build-a-bus instructions).

I had never considered Google cache-ing to be them making a copy of your content before, but I guess you are right. I always just thought of the cached copy as being part of your website, if I thought of it at all.

No, nowhere near. The copyright allowances made to search engines (which very much don't work without caching of course) wouldn't allow this ClipClip service to function, I'm fairly sure.

It could fall foul of s20 (2)(b) Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, infringement by making the work available to the public by electronic transmission in such a way that they can access it where and when they choose.

Unless they are claiming it's fairdealing for research or private study, criticism or review, reporting current events, or it's an artistic work on public display, then I would consider their ground to be shaky.

It wasn't their right to cache the sites, it was their right to display said cache.

But - having nosed around Clipclip, I suspect you are right.

I'd hope they are on shaky ground doing this, I wouldn't like to have my work ripped off