Fitzroyalty

Hyperlocal news about Melbourne's first suburb: Fitzroy 3065

Archive for the category: Intellectual property

media corporations don’t understand the importance of attribution to user generated content creators

29 April 2013 | 0 comments

Attribution of authorship in the reuse of copyrighted content is important because it recognises the moral rights content creators have in their work, which is basically the right to be identified as the creator of the work regardless of who is licensed to republish it.

The importance of attribution is poorly understood by the general public, as this example demonstrates, like much of copyright law. The importance of attribution is not only misunderstood, but deliberately and egregiously violated, by media corporations on a daily basis.…

an open letter to Sky Sports from an Australian F1 fan

25 April 2013 | 13 Comments

I am an Australian who loves F1. I attend the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne each year and am there for every minute of every session. Practice 1 on Friday is my favourite session of the year. As the Australian Grand Prix has been the first race of the season for many years, I get to see the new driver / team combinations for the first time live, rather than on tv, which is very exciting.…

why is this a crime?

27 April 2012 | 3 Comments

Publishing nude photos of your ex partner on the internet as a form of revenge for them dumping you is terribly unethical behaviour, but apparently it’s not illegal. Nonetheless, in a recent case a man was convicted for publishing an indecent article in the form of nude photos of his former girlfriend that he uploaded to his Facebook profile. He then contacted her to taunt her about it. He violated her trust and her privacy, but this is not a crime either.…

just a blogger

3 February 2012 | 30 Comments

According to Wikipedia, journalism is ‘the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion’. The definition describes a behaviour, a process, a method. It matters not who undertakes this behaviour.

The act of engaging in journalism occurs regardless of whether individual journalists are paid to perform journalism or do it on an unpaid voluntary basis. It happens regardless of whether they are employed by corporations or organisations or work for themselves.…

News Ltd and Fairfax are content kleptomaniacs

12 December 2011 | 2 Comments

Thanks to @HughRundle for pointing me to the quote where media robber baron Murdoch claims that various internet content aggregators act as ‘content kleptomaniacs’. This is ironic when you realise how often News Ltd and Fairfax steal social media content created by citizen journalists. They republish video content without permission, attribution or recognition of creators’ moral rights. In doing so they also breach their own editorial guidelines, which make attribution mandatory.

Below are two screenshots showing how News Ltd and Fairfax stole this video from Youtube, which was created by Ryn Christoph.…

art rage and visiting galleries

19 November 2011 | 2 Comments

I’ve written previously about the inconsistent directions given to art gallery and museum visitors regarding permission to take photos of works of art and artefacts. I love visiting galleries and museums and on my first visit to a new city they are often the first thing I want to see.

As an experienced and ethical visitor, I take the time to check the venue’s photography policy on their website before I visit. I then look for further information in their visitor information brochures.…

Expedia and Melbourne Gastronome’s plagiarised food blog content

12 October 2011 | 5 Comments

Melbourne Gastronome, published by Claire, is one of the best food blogs in Melbourne. It is widely read and influential. If you wanted to steal and republish some good Melbourne restaurant reviews, complete with photos, this is one of the sites you’d choose to steal from.

A site called Melbourne Tips, which links to expedia.com.au (an Australian domain version of a terrible American travel site) and uses a template adapted from another Australian Expedia site, publishes text and images plagiarised from Melbourne Gastronome.…