Singaporean bloggers might worry about being sued for defamation or charged with sedition but not that many seem at all concerned by the possibility of being hauled up for copyright violations, merrily cutting and pasting text and photographs from The Straits Times or posting video excerpts taken from CNA reports.
Could media owners make use of the Copyright Act to selectively strangle and silence the blogosphere? Some blogs or websites could be told to remove numerous posts and to cough up royalties and legal costs. Given the ostensibly commercial nature of such actions by SPH or MediaCorp, it could seem a much less heavy handed way of cutting some up-and-coming websites down to size.
Why haven't they done so yet? Could it be that the fair use provisions in the Copyright Act actually provide bloggers with sufficient protection? I am not a lawyer and don't really understand how various parts of the Act will be interpreted in a court of law.
For example, some of the considerations involved in determining fair use include:
- Whether it is 'of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes' [35(2)(a)] - does having ads adversely affect your defence even if it isn't enough to pay for hosting?
- What determines if a blog is part of 'research or study' [35(3)]? Is being a student enough?
- Or will the defence that 'it is for the purpose of criticism or review... a sufficient acknowledgment of the work is made' [36] be allowed if one cuts and pastes a ST Online article and appends it with: 'What a load of nonsense from the States Times again. LOL'?
- How about 'if it is for the purpose of, or is associated with, the reporting of current events... in a newspaper, magazine or similar periodical... or by means of broadcasting'? [37(a) and (b)] Interestingly, Ganga has pointed on his post about Films (Amendment) Bill that 'reporting of current events' to be changed to '...reporting of news by a broadcasting service licensed under any written law'. Does it mean that a current affairs blog could still be covered WRT copyright issues?
But at the end of the day, it may not be in the interest of SPH/MediaCorp to clamp down on the blogosphere using copyright. It's not entirely clear how much profit bloggers cost them, given the relatively small reach of Singapore blogs.
More importantly, the dependence on material from the mainstream media allows it (and its political masters) to continue to set the agenda for what is newsworthy. It is true that online discussion of that Hougang rally photo or French cooking lessons has made news in the MSM but these seem to be reactive rather than proactive and the exception rather than the rule. You may disagree with it, but they still get to choose what you can disagree with.
Comments (3)
That's an excellent question that has come up to my mind every now and then, when I see blogs "re-publish" articles wholesale. I always thought that there's some copyright issues involved, but then again, after seeing Mr Wang Say So do it, I thought it should be in the clear because Mr Wang is a lawyer, and he ought to know his stuff...
Anyway, I think the main issue is that they will have face backlash if they force people to remove their articles, as you've mentioned.
By the way, does SA: Perspective have a feed? It's kinda hard to keep track of updates, which explains why this reply is so late.
Posted by Jackson Tan | February 13, 2009 7:30 PM
I very much doubt that Mr Wang's lawyerly powers are why he, and others, happily cut and paste. My guess is that it's probably more down to most assuming that SPH would not know for sure who (as in a real name rather than a pseudonym) to serve the infringement notice to.
Thanks for your interest. Here's the feed (it's also available via the right column on the SA main page): http://feeds.feedburner.com/SingaporeAnglePerspectives
Posted by ringisei | February 13, 2009 10:39 PM
Thanks for citing my blog entry - I read this article for its content and only realised I was referred to after reading - thanks for the pleasant surprise.
As for the issue of copyright infringement, I would think the (lazy) mainstream reporters are having a dearth of ideas and have resorted to trawling our very blogs for fodder to spin (to their advantage of course) in the print paper(s).
That being the case, allowing bloggers to cut-and-paste ST material would be a necessary evil (from their perspective) that enables them to feed on the content we create.
In any case, the backlash of throwing the Copyright Act at bloggers might be a significant drop in (free) material for the ST to use through the postings on STOMP as well.
So I think the blogosphere is safe - for the time being....
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Posted by Ganga | February 14, 2009 11:23 AM