Yahoo! pledges vigorous defense against SPH claim
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Yahoo! pledges vigorous defense against SPH claim
Yahoo! Newsroom – Wed, Nov 23, 2011
Yahoo! Southeast Asia filed on Tuesday a memorandum of appearance with the courts to defend itself against allegations by Singapore Press Holdings that the digital media company had infringed on its copyright.
"We intend to vigorously defend ourselves against this suit," Yahoo! Southeast Asia managing editor Alan Soon said on Wednesday. "Our editorial business model of acquired, commissioned and original content is proven."
In its claim, SPH cited 23 articles which it alleged were reproduced from its stable of newspapers without permission. Yahoo! has denied the allegations in an earlier letter to SPH's lawyers.
Observers in the media industry however were divided in their opinions on the lawsuit.
Media consultant and former newspaper editor PN Balji said the legal suit has to be seen in the larger context of falling readership at The Straits Times. “The drop in readership, if not arrested quickly, will have a negative impact on its advertisement revenue,” he told Yahoo! Singapore.
He also referred to a case wherein MediaCorp had sued RecordTV over copyright infringement in 2007 after the latter, which operates a recording system in its website, allowed Internet users to request the recording of broadcast and films produced by the national broadcaster.
It was reported by Today that MediaCorp initially won the case in December 2009 through the High Court, but the judgement was overruled by the Court of Appeals, which stated that public interest was better provided by allowing, instead of repressing, RecordTV’s recording system, especially when MediaCorp did not suffer any loss due to this. Both sides eventually came to a confidential agreement.
On the other hand, Nanyang Technological University associate professor Cherian George, director of the Asia Journalism Fellowship, said the case raised important questions of professional ethics. He noted that how articles are attributed have been changing as a result of news aggregation.
“So there is an on-going debate internationally about what's the right way to make use of other sites' material,” he said.
He pointed out the case of a top American blogger Jim Romenesko who resigned from Poynter, a leading institute for journalism training, after running its blog for 12 years. Media reports said Romenesko’s resignation came after a dispute with the school’s director over improper attribution in his articles.
George said, “So, leaving aside the issues of intellectual property, intellectual honesty demands that articles drawing on others' work use quotation marks and links.”
Readers comment on lawsuit
Since news of the lawsuit broke out, Yahoo! readers have been furiously posting their thoughts on the comments section.
Among those who posted, reader Useblain said, “Perhaps the national paper is just unhappy about the amount of traffic that Yahoo! Singapore has been experiencing, and the chord it has struck with Singaporeans from all walks of life? Like, grow up, please.”
Another Yahoo! user Law65lee said the lawsuit could be one of the biggest and interesting cases of the decade.
“Two giant media companies locking horns on infringement of news issues. Must be one of the biggest and interesting suit of the decade. Both companies will not be find lacking of news feeds for the public which I think will be awaiting the big outcome,” it said. -
Alamak! è¿™æ ·ä¹Ÿå�¯ä»¥!
Local controllled media B O L E H !
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So if Yahoo loses, we won't get any ST news anymore ?
Less people will be able to read ST news.
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Since when SPH a giant media company, as compared to Yahoo???
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one day, yahoo! may sue sgforums toO!
lol.
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One day the dou Lee Hsien Loong visits Yahoo USA , we will see no more local news in Yahoo website.
That was what happened to the close down of Yahoo Message Board after dou Lee Hsien Loong returned from his visit from Yahoo USA.
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SPH embarrassed at the low quality of its articles?
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Why would yahoo want to copy news from a dumb shit paper? I only read it because daddy is still old school, wanna read ST. Otherwise it's used for the cat litter.
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Originally posted by jayh272416:
SPH embarrassed at the low quality of its articles?
They don't seem very happy that yahoo is helping them bring their news to a wider audience.
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Yahoo! files defence against SPH
Yahoo! Newsroom – 1 hour 0 minutes agoYahoo! Southeast Asia filed its defence and counterclaim against Singapore Press Holdings with the High Court on Tuesday, denying all allegations of wrongful copyright infringement by SPH.
In its defence, Yahoo! SEA highlighted the fundamental principle that copyright law does not protect facts and information and that the public has the right to be informed of news and current events in Singapore.
The internet company also filed a counterclaim which alleges that on at least two known occasions over the last year, SPH had itself substantially reproduced Yahoo! content on its citizen-journalism site STOMP.
On 18 Nov, SPH filed a copyright infringement suit against Yahoo!, citing as examples 23 articles which it alleged the internet company had reproduced from its stable of newspapers without permission.
SPH operates 18 newspapers titles in four languages. The publicly-held company, which also operates non-media assets such as property and retail, charges S$26.65 a month for access to the online version of its flagship The Straits Times newspaper. Its daily print version costs 90 cents.
Yahoo! provides free local and international news coverage to anyone with access to the internet.
The landmark case, which has attracted global media attention, pits a traditional media owner against a new media company and is believed to be the first of its kind in Singapore. -
SPH is losing out to the internet.
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If the High Court of Singapore is taking care of this case, Yahoo may likely lose. Kangaroo Court of Singapore you know! SPH = PAP control.
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Originally posted by winsomeea:
If the High Court of Singapore is taking care of this case, Yahoo may likely lose. Kangaroo Court of Singapore you know! SPH = PAP control.
One day the newspapers will be extinct, they are getting obsolete.
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Do they do this to attract ppl's attention?
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If they fight it out in sgpore courts, then we all know what the outcome will be. Facts are facts, how can they be plagiarised? SPH is acting as if they invented the facts. Anyway, me suspects that this is a ploy against yahoo. Whenever articles about sg appear, there would be hundreds of anti-govt comments. And come elections, it would go into the thousands.
So sgpore is still the same shit. They try to open up on the surface but deep beneath they are paddling like hell to arrest the popularity of such media.
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Originally posted by Rock^Star:
If they fight it out in sgpore courts, then we all know what the outcome will be. Facts are facts, how can they be plagiarised? SPH is acting as if they invented the facts. Anyway, me suspects that this is a ploy against yahoo. Whenever articles about sg appear, there would be hundreds of anti-govt comments. And come elections, it would go into the thousands.
So sgpore is still the same shit. They try to open up on the surface but deep beneath they are paddling like hell to arrest the popularity of such media.
SPH is acting as if they invented the facts.
May be they did invented the facts, and they can win the case.
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There is no change in Singapore. Never will if we are still "drinking the same pot of soup" everyday. 60% of the Singaporeans love the same pot of soup.
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unable to comments on yahoo for few days now
Editor’s note: Some Yahoo! social features, such as our polls and comments, are currently inaccessible to users. We are working to correct the issue and restore all functionality immediately. We know that this may have caused some inconvenience and we apologise to our users who might be affected.
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haha it's excruciatingly difficult not to smell a conspiracy theory.
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Originally posted by laurence82:
unable to comments on yahoo for few days now
Editor’s note: Some Yahoo! social features, such as our polls and comments, are currently inaccessible to users. We are working to correct the issue and restore all functionality immediately. We know that this may have caused some inconvenience and we apologise to our users who might be affected.
It's been disabled for many days already.
I wonder what happened?
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I think disabled because of the critical comments.
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I never know after they have done with Temasek REview Emeritus their next victim is Yahoo. Despicable PAP!
Damn la, if they are doing so well in many aspects for the nation and country there is no need to be using the media to control other media, damn the bloody PAP, Lee Hsien Loong and bloody LKY!
Vote them out! With them around life can only goes down and down.