RoadMAP is the first to admit that today’s item is very legalistic, but it is well worth reading all the same: “[So much of the web is built around aggregation – gathering together interesting and useful things from around the Internet and presenting them in new ways to an audience. It’s the foundation of blogging and social media. But it’s also the subject of much legal debate, particularly among the news organizations whose material is often what’s being gathered and presented. Kimberley Isbell of our friends the Citizen Media Law Project has assembled a terrific white paper on the current state of the law surrounding aggregation – what courts have approved, what they haven’t, and where the (many) grey areas still remain. This should be required reading for anyone interested in where aggregation and linking are headed.”

What’s the Law Around Aggregating News Online? A Harvard Law Report on the Risks and the Best Practices
During the past decade, the Internet has become an important news source for most Americans. According to a study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, as of January 2010, nearly 61 percent of Americans got at least some of their news online in a typical day. This increased reliance on the Internet as a source of news has coincided with declining profits in the traditional media and the shuttering of newsrooms in communities across the country. Some commentators look at this confluence of events and assert that, in this case, correlation equals causation – the Internet is harming the news business.
One explanation for the decline of the traditional media that some, including News Corporation owner Rupert Murdoch and Associated Press Chairman Dean Singleton, have seized upon is the rise of the news aggregator. According to this theory, news aggregators from Google News to The Huffington Post are free-riding, reselling and profiting from the factual information gathered by traditional media organizations at great cost. Rupert Murdoch has gone so far as to call Google’s aggregation and display of newspaper headlines and ledes “theft.” As the traditional media are quick to point out, the legality of a business model built around the monetization of third-party content isn’t merely an academic question – it’s big business. Revenues generated from online advertising totaled $23.4 billion in 2008 alone.

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