Miami Herald bullies Florida blogger

Remember a year or so ago when the Associated Press went after the guy who runs the parody news aggregator, the Drudge Retort, and threatened to sue him for linking to excerpts from AP articles on his website (and in at least one instance, for use of an AP excerpt by a commenter)? There was a bit of hubbub for a short time, but eventually the AP figured out that they had a complete loser of an argument, in light of the Fair Use doctrine (as cited in the disclaimer at the bottom of this very blog), and the controversy went away quietly.

You'd think that mainstream corporate media organizations would learn from the AP's experience and therefore refrain from threatening bloggers with frivolous litigation, wouldn't you? Well, you would be wrong ... and, as it turns out, the Next Big Scary Newspaper Threats are happening right here in America's Wang™.

There's one executive at the [Miami] Herald who's apparently so satisfied that everything is running smoothly that she took some time out of her busy day to fire off a threatening email to Random Pixels over a few Miami Herald photos I posted yesterday.

Suzanne Levinson, whose title is Director of Site Operations for the Miami Herald, sent me an email this morning with the ominous subject line, "Use of Miami Herald photos on your blog‏."

Here's part of her email:

It has been brought to our attention that the web page located at http://randompixels.blogspot.com/2009/08/random-pixels-recognizes.html has content reproduced from The Miami Herald and MiamiHerald.com.

Please remove these photos and any other Miami Herald content present on your site immediately.
[...]
[We] do not allow reproduction of complete stories or full-sized photos.
[...]
Please reply with confirmation of action taken within 5 business days or this matter will be forwarded to the McClatchy Company's legal department for further action.

My first reaction was "what took you so long?" My second was to ignore her.

But after thinking about it a bit more I responded that I didn't use full-sized photos; rather I resized them. I also pointed out that because the post was meant as a parody, it was in my opinion, protected under the fair use doctrine, an area of the law that many lawyers can't agree upon.

I also pointed out that my blog is a non-commercial blog with a limited audience and I didn't see how posting a few small photos posed a threat to the business interests of the Herald.

This is exactly the kind of dick-swinging tactics that the AP tried -- unsuccessfully -- last year, and it's not going to work this time, either. The big papers -- which are barely keeping their collective heads above water because most of them can't report the news for shit anymore -- get angry because we bloggers call them on their shit far too often for their liking, and they look bad in the process. So they throw around a few Latin phrases and get an executive or one of their high-powered (and expensive) lawyers to write a strongly worded email and think that we'll just back down and say "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" like ... well, like Democrats in Congress when challenged by the minority party.

But short of out-and-out plagiarism, like taking someone else's work and reproducing it as one's own without attribution, the papers don't have a legal leg to stand on. Bloggers -- at least the ones I know -- are scrupulous about linking and citing and attributing properly -- to my mind, if I make an assertion on this sucky blog, I want to back it up with whatever support I can in order to bolster my credibility*. So I link and I cite and so do most of us ... and that's why the Herald's legal position is dead in the water.

Simply put, "fair use" means that we can quote and excerpt and cite to our heart's content -- with proper attribution, of course -- so long as we do so "in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.," as the disclaimer below explains. Fair use, in short, is a settled aspect of U.S. copyright law, and unless media bullies like the Herald can show that a blogger has used an outrageous amount of their material, or has done so for commercial purposes, or has caused egregious damage to the value of that material to the original source, they are, in layman's terms, fucked.

Blast Off! fully supports Random Pixels in fighting back against the Herald and its lawyers and, provided I passed the Florida Bar exam (I find out a month from today; I'm already licensed in two other states), I'll be happy to provide legal counsel as appropriate (pro bono, naturally) to defend against any potential litigation. In the meantime, I encourage media outlets whose material is used or linked or cited here to send me a threatening email ... just so I can have the immense pleasure of telling you where to stick it.

(h/t South Florida Daily Blog)

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* I feel compelled to note that right-wing blogs are far less likely to provide attribution, given their notorious aversion to facts, but that is well beyond the scope of this particular post.