As you make your daily swing through the Newseum, check to see if you don’t notice something different today.
The Newseum announced Friday it would start testing a system that would add watermarks to the front page images it posts.
Testing began today. Here, for example, is today’s watermarked Virginian-Pilot.
Can you see them? Just barely? They’re very faint grey, in a repeating diagonal pattern. Here’s a closeup:
Remember last Monday, when the Newseum sagged and collapsed under the mighty weight of all the folks trying to access the day’s pages? It’s not the rank-and-file reader who’s causing the problem. It’s the scrapers.
Paul Sparrow, senior vice president for broadcasting at the Newseum, said in a statement that went out Friday to all contributing papers:
This is being done in response to the large number of websites and other users who download these files and post them without permission from the copyright holders and without crediting the Newseum.
The size of these mass downloads can be as much as 50 to100 GB and is one of the reasons Newseum.org crashed on May 2, 2011.
In addition, the Newseum online archive was processing more than 2,800 requests per second that day, Paul said last week.
Plus, there are legal issues, Paul tells this blog:
We are doing this is to protect the copyright holders from unauthorized use of their material. We also think it is important to defend a critical “best practice” on the web — don’t steal other peoples content. The Newseum has spent years developing Today’s Front Pages and dedicates significant staff time to maintaining it. We make it available to all web users for free as part of our mission to help the public understand the role of a free press in a democracy. But we want people to view these front pages on our website.
We hope this will be just a test. But if people continue to steal and repost these front pages without permission we may have to do it on a regular basis.
Here is the text of the message Paul sent out Friday:
On Monday, May 9, the Newseum will test a process for adding watermarks to the newspaper front pages that are posted each day on its website.
This is being done in response to the large number of websites and other users who download these files and post them without permission from the copyright holders and without crediting the Newseum.
The size of these mass downloads can be as much as 50 to100 GB and is one of the reasons Newseum.org crashed on May 2, 2011.
Our policy on the reuse of these front pages is clearly stated: Any reuse must be cleared with the copyright holder and credit given to the Newseum.
We will conduct this test for a limited period of time and review visitor feedback. You are receiving this email because this is the email of record we have for your newspaper.
Go here to find the Newseum‘s daily archive of newspaper front pages.
While I understand the concern, I wonder if it would be better for them to work on a way where people could embed the images in blog posts, etc. a la YouTube or DocStoc or something.
Seems weird to me, for at least two reasons:
1.) I can hardly imagine any newspaper having a problem with being featured on your blog.
2.) Images of the front pages of newspapers are covered under many circumstances by fair use.
They littered the WHOLE page with watermarks? That’s just … wrong. Seems like they’d be better off solving their server problems and capping heavy downloaders (I’m sure there are ways to do so on the server end), rather than making the pages look like that.
This ties into the post Megan did a long time ago for TUAW about this topic.
Here’s the way I see it: Newseum should allow people to share the pages freely, but they should figure out ways to prevent server overload. Figure out a way to prevent mass downloads, while allowing regular users to download individual pages.
There’s a big ethical question that springs to my mind about a third party slapping a watermark on the product of another entity. The NYT, for example, has a copyright on its publication. Is it legal/fair for the Newseum to then put its own “copyright,” if you will, on top of it?
We upload our front pages so people CAN get a look, not so they CAN’T.
To clarify: I want people to see our work unaltered. I don’t think Newseum or anyone else has any business slapping their name on our copyrighted work. I’m glad they provide the service, but it loses all value if they do this.
This is a strange interpretation of their service. An image of a front page posted on a blog surely can’t be a problem to anyone that posts their pages to the newseum, can it?
Does this mean posting a page from newseum for any use outside of news or critique (fair use) is illegal?
I guess posting pages for inspiration is no longer allowed…
And I’m sure I’m not the only one who saves front pages on their harddrives for future reference (which I’ve been doing since 2006), right? That’s definitely not illegal but it certainly sucks up bandwidth.
To the Newseum:
Fair use. Read about it.
Until then, up yours.
I’m back. Was away for a month after the Newseum began watermarking. I see they stopped — for now. I’ll visit until they start again. Then I’m outta there.