Headline links can be dangerous in Japan

U.S. courts, by design or default, have generally taken a laissez-faire approach to the digital republication of printed works as long as it adheres to longstanding brick-and-mortar copyright law. But plaintiffs in other lands don't always agree with American law, of course, and some are taking action to stop what they believe is blatant copyright violation here and abroad.

Earlier this year, Agence France Presse sued Google on charges of unauthorized use of the news agency's photos and stories, a case that's still pending in U.S. federal court. Last week, a Japanese newspaper won a Tokyo court decision against Digital Alliance, a small company that was judged to be publishing its news headlines without permission.

Although the Yomiuri Shimbun was awarded only about $2,000 in damages from Digital, which is also based in Japan, the ruling could have enormous ramifications because it means that unauthorized use of headlines alone could be considered illegal. If this kind of judicial interpretation spreads to other nations, it could jeopardize countless sources of information now taken for granted on the Web, such as blogs, search engines, RSS feeds and a seemingly infinite number of sites that provide some form of headline aggregation.

Blog community response:

"Does the first news source to write a headline get to stop everyone else from using it? Think of the mess that would cause after mergers: 'Company X Buys Company Y.' Whoever gets the story out can then stop everyone else from using that headline."
--techdirt

"Copyright law has two expressions: the state's law (the written-down law backed up by the power of the state) and the natural law (the way things work in the absence of state law). Many people don't understand natural law."
--The Angry Economist

"The DMCA is a bad law written by the wrong people with somewhat decent intentions. Though the goal was to update the outdated copyright code for the online world, it's had a million unintended effects that have done anything but protect copyrights and creativity."
--Plagiarism Today