Chairman Rupert, and the business of thieving intellectual property ...

Startling headline:

Plimer the toast of Copenhagen sceptics meeting.

Startling text:

There's a second, less publicised climate conference going on in Copenhagen this week -- the climate sceptics' "Copenhagen Climate Challenge"...

...Mind you, they didn't really need a sprawling conference centre like the one housing the 32,000 attendees at the UN shindig.

For Australian academic Ian Plimer, a star attraction of the two-day event, there were 45 attendees, with an average age well above 60.

Startling joke:

Professor Plimer gave his talk about the "natural" climatic fluctuations during the formation of Earth, and how they were not in any way driven by carbon dioxide. He brought the house down with jokes such as "I am speaking here about algal reefs, not Al Gore reefs, although by the way they are both a type of slime."

Ha. Aren't these theologians a hoot.

Oh I'm sorry, I'm thieving Chairman Rupert's content in the way of all those intellectual property thieves out there.

Does this feel better?

Hey, preacher leave those kids alone.

First up in this wonderful cut and paste section of The Australian?

After losing the grown-up vote in the Higgins by-election, Clive Hamilton takes to scaring children on ABC's The Drum yesterday.

Sorry, that's not intellectual property theft. That's just referencing content. You know, like Google. Fair use. Perhaps a bit tattered, but still, defensible. But there's no link to The Drum.

What, you want they should leave our site for the socialists at the ABC?

Never mind. Here's the link: A letter to your father, by Clive Hamilton.

Next up? Tim Flannery on Radio National Breakfast last Thursday talking about nuclear energy with Fran Kelly. Says he's never supported nuclear power. Interesting, I'd like to hear that. Don't the socialists provide audio on their web site?

What, and have our readers leave our site to listen to the socialists chat amongst themselves?

Never mind. Here's the link to the audio.

What next? An inconvenient truth. Tim Flannery in The Age, May 30, 2006.

Seems like Tim Flannery did write an article in praise of nuclear power. Produces a gotcha moment for The Australian. Hmm, I'd like to read that. But wait a second, there's no link.

What and have the socialists read content elsewhere? Sure we filched the content for the gotcha, it's called fair use, a bit tattered, but we referenced our source. Now why on earth would we link to it?

Never mind. Here's the link to Let's talk about nuclear power and other energy sources.

Still more? Yep indeedy indoody.

Seems Al Gore waxes lyrical in his latest book, Our Choice. It includes a poem. Want to read it? Seems like Chairman Rupert's stolen the content by offering up a bit of the poem. Why not buy the book? Support the copyright holder. Stick it up Dymocks. Stick it up local writers. Stick it up Bob Carr. Stick it up Chairman Rupert.

Anything else? Now that you mention it, there is.

Is Al Gore the good shepherd? Apparently, according to Mark Hertsgaard in Vanity Fair.

Oh that sounds interesting, nice of you to quote a bit, but hang on there's no link.

Never mind. Here it is, under the header Al Gore: The Poet Laureate of Climate Change, and in the spirit of Chairman Rupert, here's how the poem begins:

One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun
Vapors rise as
Fever settles on an acid sea

Now let's do a totally meaningless and pointless segue, unless you think Al Gore in Vanity Fair has something to do with the ABC:

ABC Editorial Policies 5.1.6:

Context, analysis and comment included in news and current affairs content should be backed by demonstrable evidence, and based on the professional expertise and judgement of staff and not on personal opinion. The public expression of personal opinions of staff has no place in news and current affairs content.

Interesting. But what are these editorial policies and where might I find a copy, because you see there's no link? Aren't they under review?

Never mind, you'll find all the ABC editorial policies and code of practices you might want here.

Now of course for the smart arse gotcha:

Media Watch's Jonathan Holmes on the ABC's The Drum:

I was frankly gobsmacked some weeks ago, when The 7.30 Report's political editor, Chris Uhlmann, wrote a piece for ABC News's `Off Air' section called `Rudd squanders chance to practice what he preaches'. It was rather astonishing that the ABC had allowed one of its most prominent political reporters publicly to accuse the Prime Minister of rank hypocrisy. Even more amazingly, a couple of days later the piece appeared on the opinion page of The Australian -- presumably, with the ABC's permission. The newspaper that Kevin Rudd has declared to be an `unashamed defender of the ideological right', and `Fox News in print'. Had a prominent ABC political reporter so openly attacked John Howard's personal ethics, one shudders to imagine The Australian's reaction. Yet so far as I know, Uhlmann's piece slid by without a murmur -- from the PM's office, or anywhere else.

Wait a second. Is that a gotcha for the ABC, Chris Uhlmann, or The Australian, or worse still, The Punch, which regularly beguiles ABC employees to scribble trivia for Chairman Rupert?

Hard to say. Did The Australian get permission? Who knows. Here's the Uhlmann piece under the header Rudd squanders chance to practise what he preaches.

And here's a link to the Jonathan Holmes piece. In it, Holmes goes on to write:

Now don't get me wrong. In my opinion, it was a fine piece of - er - analysis. But it was also - undeniably - a powerfully-expressed opinion.

And in fact, if you went to ABC News Online last week, before The Drum was launched, you would have found a tab to click called 'opinion'. Click on it, and you would have got a page called 'opinion and analysis'. Whoever wrote that page title hadn't been reading their Chadwick Guidance Notes.

But that's what it said, and that's what The Drum will be, if it's to be worth reading. Analysis, and opinion. Because, in the end, the border between them can't be patrolled, without parsing the life out of both.

At least, that's my opinion. What's yours?

But you might not have been able to read that, if you hadn't trotted off to The Drum, or done a google. Because there wasn't a link.

Memo to Chairman Rupert and the thieves working for him in the cut paste section of The Australian. Respectable intellectual property thieves leave a link as a way of explaining their ethical fair use activities. Respectable thieves acknowledge their sources, and help out their readers so they can read a little further ... or at least leave a chocolate on the pillow before leaving the building with the goods.

But I got the joke, and it was a good one. Having Tim Blair do some moonlighting for the upmarket tabloid is a real wheeze. He nailed that Tim Flannery and those ABC socialists real good.

Now a final word from Chairman Rupert in the WSJ:

In the new business model, we will be charging consumers for the news we provide on our Internet sites. The critics say people won't pay. I believe they will, but only if we give them something of good and useful value. Our customers are smart enough to know that you don't get something for nothing.

That goes for some of our friends online too. And yet there are those who think they have a right to take our news content and use it for their own purposes without contributing a penny to its production. Some rewrite, at times without attribution, the news stories of expensive and distinguished journalists who invested days, weeks or even months in their stories—all under the tattered veil of "fair use."

These people are not investing in journalism. They are feeding off the hard- earned efforts and investments of others. And their almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not "fair use." To be impolite, it's theft.

Right now content creators bear all the costs, while aggregators enjoy many of the benefits. In the long term, this is untenable. We are open to different pay models. But the principle is clear: To paraphrase a famous economist, there's no such thing as a free news story, and we are going to ensure that we get a fair but modest price for the value we provide.

No link. It's only fair ...

(Below: image found here).