A Blogger in Hot Water

The issue of copyright infringement seems to be a constant battle for bloggers trying to protect their own intellectual property. However, sometimes the shoe is on the other foot so to speak. Some bloggers are guilty of copyright infringement themselves. When this happens there can be legal action taken against the blogger as Gawker Media has recently found out. Apparently the Gawker published images of the dedication page and 21 pages of Sarah Palin's America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag to be released Nov. 23, published by HarperCollins/Associated Press, ahead of it's release¹ .  The Gawker was ordered by a federal judge in Manhatten to remove the pages and to cease distributing, publishing or otherwise transmitting pages from the book.   The Gawker has be ordered to "deliver the material it used to the publisher so it can be destroyed"¹.  The Gawker is defending their actions under fair use.  A hearing is scheduled for November 30.  An undisclosed amount of monetary damages are being sought by the publisher.

This situation brings up a number of issues ranging from where they got the leaked material in the first place and whether they had the right to use it under fair use.  Really what they did is no different than the gossip rags but that still doesn't make it right.  Gawker Media based in New York City is one of the most visible and successful blog-oriented media companies².  The company was founded and is owned by Nick Denton.  Since all Gawker articles are licensed on a Creative Commons attribution-NonCommercial license they are well aware of the meaning of copyright and copyright infringement.  Images of pages in a book that has not even been released yet are not fair use!  This ought to be a rather interesting lawsuit with the deck stacked against the Gawker. 

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