{"id":41859,"date":"2018-01-19T05:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T10:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=41859"},"modified":"2018-01-18T22:36:03","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T03:36:03","slug":"playboy-sues-boing-boing-for-linking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/01\/19\/playboy-sues-boing-boing-for-linking\/","title":{"rendered":"Playboy<\/em> sues Boing Boing<\/em> for … linking?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought this sort of legal stupidity<\/a> went out with the 90s …<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago we were shocked to learn that Playboy<\/em> had, without notifying us, sued us over this post (we learned about it when a journalist DM’ed us on Twitter to ask about it). Today, we filed a motion to dismiss, asking the judge to throw out this baseless, bizarre case. We really hope the courts see it our way, for all our sakes.<\/p>\n

Playboy<\/em>\u2019s lawsuit is based on an imaginary (and dangerous) version of US copyright law that bears no connection to any US statute or precedent. Playboy<\/em> — once legendary champions for the First Amendment — now advances a fringe copyright theory: that it is illegal to link to things other people have posted on the web, on pain of millions in damages — the kinds of sums that would put us (and every other small publisher in America) out of business.<\/p>\n

Rather than pursuing the individual who created the allegedly infringing archive, Playboy<\/em> is pursuing a news site for pointing out the archive\u2019s value as a historical document. In so doing, Playboy<\/em> is seeking to change the legal system so that deep-pocketed opponents of journalism can shut down media organizations that displease them. It’s a law that they could never get from Congress, but which they hope the courts will conjure into existence by wiping us off the net.<\/p>\n

It’s not just independent publishers who rely on the current state of copyright law, either. Major media outlets (like Playboy<\/em>!) routinely link and embed media, without having to pay a lawyer to research the copyright status of something someone else posted, before discussing, explaining or criticizing it.<\/p>\n

The world can’t afford a judgment against us in this case — it would end the web as we know it, threatening everyone who publishes online, from us five weirdos in our basements to multimillion-dollar, globe-spanning publishing empires like Playboy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As a group of people who have had long associations with Playboy<\/em>, reading the articles (really!) and sometimes writing them, we hope the judge sees it our way — for our sakes… and for Playboy<\/em>‘s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought this sort of legal stupidity went out with the 90s … A few weeks ago we were shocked to learn that Playboy had, without notifying us, sued us over this post (we learned about it when a journalist DM’ed us on Twitter to ask about it). Today, we filed a motion to dismiss, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,28,15,13],"tags":[135,224,58,529],"class_list":["post-41859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-media","category-technology","category-usa","tag-copyright","tag-freedomofthepress","tag-internet","tag-lawyers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aT9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41860,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41859\/revisions\/41860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}