New York Times Settles Linking Suit

Peter Brantley
January 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

In what many of us thought was a slightly bizarre case, the New York Times Co. has settled with GateHouse Media in a suit attempting to cease the automated aggregation of Gatehouse content on Boston.com's affiliated properties (Boston.com is owned by the Times Co.). It is not clear why the settlement was reached, since precedence was on the side of the Times' operation.

Mathew Ingram examines the settlement at the Nieman Journalism Lab:

Because while the settlement is not a legally-binding precedent -- the one piece of what might be called good news -- it still involves the New York Times voluntarily refraining from what many would argue is perfectly defensible behaviour. As Joshua Benton notes in his post at the Nieman Journalism Lab, that could well embolden other publications to launch similar cases, on the assumption that if the NYT caved then someone else might too. [Links included in original post.]

Related Stories:

• GateHouseGate: Why Did the New York Times Wimp Out?
• Links: The Simple Solution for Context
• Publishing 2.0: "How Newsrooms Throw Away Value By Not Linking To Sources On The Web"
• Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions (2000): Tickemaster Corp. v. Tickets.com, Inc.
• Wired (2002): "Public Protests NPR Link Policy"