Aggregated or aggrieved?

As a freelance writer who touts the majority of my musings to Web-based publications, the digitisation of the media has been my meal ticket. And while I am fully aware that a writer's personal success within the online publishing space is about increasing the number of people who are reading your writing, I don't know how comfortable I feel about someone else cashing in on my creativity. And I am not alone.

Accompanying the rise of the Internet as a source of the latest news has been the ascent of news aggregators; platforms that bring together bits and pieces of news and information from various sites and present them to audiences in a new way.

For more traditional media, news aggregators present a very real threat because they repackage and resell the work produced by others at little to no cost. Currently, there are various grey areas around media and copyright law and content aggregation as the parameters remain unclear as to what differentiates fair use and the lawful sharing of information from actions that could be considered copyright infringement and plagiarism.

In 2013, Moneyweb argued that Media24's financial Web site, Fin24, had unlawfully reproduced its content; offering it as its own. Moneyweb accused Fin24 of infringing copyright based on the use of elements pulled from seven articles it published in 2012.

Judgement in this local legal battle was announced recently, finding that the use of just one of the seven articles constituted copyright infringement. According to Joburg High Court judge Daniel Berger, two articles did not qualify for protection under copyright legislation. Berger noted Moneyweb had failed to prove the remaining four articles were original works.

The copyright judgement has been described as a landmark for online publishing. And according to Media24, a victory for aggregators. But what about the one article it was found to have plagiarised? Surely being found guilty on even a single count makes one, well, guilty.

Not only has the ruling been met with consternation from well-established media houses, the case has also highlighted the fact that SA's decades old Copyright Act may need to be updated to better accommodate the complexities of the ever-changing digital media landscape.

This seems obvious as we look at where the media industry, and journalism, are headed. Today, anyone with a smartphone can cover a story - and it is these citizen journalists who are often the first people to respond to an event. This has drastically changed how journalists do their jobs and has forced the industry to adapt to technological advancements or run the risk of being left behind.

So, as social networks and citizen journalism eat away at the media industry's margins and aggregators utilise content created and paid for by others to make a few bucks, one has to wonder how these news outlets are going to survive? Or survive in their current form at least.

The issue comes down to who is going to foot the bill at the end of the day?

Media outlets hire and pay journalists to capture the latest happenings and disseminate this information to others. At the opening of a new school in an under-resourced area, they will tell of a community's glee at the possibilities offered by the fledgling facility. In the aftermath of a service delivery protest, their stories will detail the desperate actions of a group of forgotten people. And in the weeks running up to a nation's elections, they'll document the promises each candidate has made to garner support. The controversy around aggregators is the fact that these people then repurpose and resell the narrative without having to make any investment in its creation.

Imagine, for example, that your next-door neighbour was using your Internet connection to run his small business. You're paying the bill and he is using your resources, at no cost to himself, to make a profit. For most of us, this scenario would probably be the catalyst for some neighbourhood nastiness. And this is exactly the media industry's issue. Why should they be paying for others to make money?

In 2009, the godfather of US mass media corporation News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, likened news aggregation to thievery, stressing that no content is free. As the likes of the Huffington Post, Flipboard and Google News - all of which bring together information created by others - grow in popularity and more traditional media houses falter, conversations around how the Internet is affecting news businesses are becoming increasingly contentious.

For more traditional media, news aggregators present a very real threat because they repackage and resell the work produced by others at little to no cost.

Having expressed my concerns about aggregators using my intellectual property to pocket extra profits, one has to look at this conversation from another perspective. The reality is that many of us quite like Flipboard and Google News because they bring together everything we're looking for without having to exert too much effort to find it. Essentially, they may not be paying for the content to be created, but they are compiling it all in a neat little package that suits each individual's unique preferences. I'm playing the devil's advocate here but is that not a service in itself?

Despite Murdoch's assertions, and the industry's concerns, most of the media organisations that have attempted to prosecute these "content criminals" have ended up settling their cases out of court. With only a small number of lawsuits actually reaching a conclusion, the legal precedent on this topic is murky at best.

In a 2009 article for The Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggested that a partnership between creators and aggregators would be the best way to ease the conflict between the two parties. Schmidt suggested that aggregators could help publishers to reach greater audiences, using technology to more fully engage with their readers and ultimately, make more money.

Sounds good to me. But the question of who will be paying whom is yet to be answered. And the partnerships suggested by Schmidt will undoubtedly be framed by the outcomes of the legal sparring currently under way in courtrooms across the globe.

"Just as there is no single cause of the industry's current problems, there is no single solution," noted Schmidt in the article. "I believe it also requires a change of tone in the debate, a recognition that we all have to work together to fulfil the promise of journalism in the digital age."

* A former ITWeb journalist, Joanne Carew now resides in the Mother City, where she is admiring the mountain and completing her Masters studies at UCT.