Tulsa World Responds To Criticism Over Copyright Claims (against bloggers)

http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0205/207667.html


The Tulsa World is responding to criticism that arose from its stance against local weblogs that they allege are infringing on the newspaper's copyright.

The controversy began after Tulsa World Vice President John Bair sent letters to Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock and Michael Bates, who runs an internet 'blog' called Batesline.com

Bates posted a note on his website, seeking help and advice from the Internet community. And, he received it quickly. Bates was asked to join a New York City radio show to discuss the situation. And, later in the day, CNN picked up the story while talking about internet blogs.

But, Robert E. Lorton III, President of the Tulsa World, disagrees. Lorton says Bates is opening a channel to PDF, or Portable Data Files, hosted on the Tulsa World website. Lorton says those files are owned by the Tulsa World and should not be free, but that they cannot lock the files.


http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0205/207427.html


A fight between a Tulsa newspaper and two local 'blogs' has gained the attention of the national press.

It all began earlier this week, when the Tulsa World singled out Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock's blog, alleging copyright infringement. The World says Medlock reproduced articles or linked to articles on the newspaper's website without authorization.

It's unknown how this fight will end. But, New York City radio host Kevin McCullough put the Tulsa World on notice when he wrote of a possible "blog swarm", publishing the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of several Tulsa World executives and asking bloggers to let them know what they think of the situation.

It's not just blogs that are being threatened with legal action. According to Rex Brown, the webmaster of TulsaNow.org, their website also received a cease and desist letter from the Tulsa World.

then keep it off the internet!

The free ability to link to other sites is what the Internet is all about. HTTP is designed for that specific purpose.

You can only directly access their stories if you are a subscriber...my sis lives up there so I used to just punch in her personal/subscriber info into their access page if I thought there was something local going on that ONLY the TW had.

They can't be too smart over there...remember how they screwed up their Black Tuesday stats the day after the election in their newspaper? One of their workers inserted stats/voting results from a cock-fighting vote in 2000 INSTEAD of listing the actual county by county 2004 prez results. When comparing their numbers to the county by county results from CNN it looked like there was some fraud going on in Oklahoma. Bloggers outed them on it, calling them idiots for the mistake and they had to do an "oops, we fucked up" apology shortly there after in their hardcopy of the TW. So the paper probably still has a chip on it's shoulder from that...