A New York Court Ruled that Clipping Content from Internet without Payment is Not Covered by Fair Use

Meltwater is a Norwegian clipping service that monitors news about its clients on the Web. These paying clients include companies and governments that fork out good money to outsource trolling the internet for news items themselves. Meltwater provides them with news alerts, newsletters and access to a searchable database.

Those newsletters include introductory sections of news stories (aka “ledes”) that were taken from the Associated Press (AP) and other sources. AP promptly demanded that Meltwater buy a license to distribute news story excerpts. Meltwater refused, pointing out that lifting those ledes from the internet is covered by the fair use rules. AP then sued Meltwater for copyright infringement.

In court, Meltwater argued its activities are identical to those of search engines such as Google (which is showing headlines and text snippets in search results and is covered by the fair use rules. Meltwater would therefore be allowed to clip and display news stories that were found on internet.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote disagreed and ruled that there are limits to the amount of content an internet scraping service such as Meltwater can lift from internet without payment stating: “Instead of driving subscribers to third-party websites, Meltwater News acts as a substitute for news sites operated or licensed by AP.”

This ruling is also based on the “click-through” rate of the news stories Meltwater dissipated. According the judge, Meltwater had lifted more than was necessary for a search engine and that is therefore harmed AP stating: “Paraphrasing James Madison, the world is indebted to the press for triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression [...] Permitting Meltwater to take the fruit of AP’s labor for its own profit, without compensating AP, injures AP’s ability to perform this essential function of democracy.”

Reactions to the ruling were mixed. According to Techdirt’sMike Masnick, the judge misinterpreted the “fair use” rules, while AP and the New York Times were happy.

Needless to say, Meltwater appealed, so stay tuned!

Apple's Smart Move - Purchasing WiiSLAM

Remember when people were having fun at Apple’s efforts to rival Google maps? Well, Apple (AAPL) cleverly purchased WiFiSLAM (an indoor GPS company) for a reported $20M.

While most GPS companies focus on pinpointing locations in general, WifiSLAM is able to detect user locations inside buildings where standard GPS services often don’t work.

WifFiSLAM is a two-year old start-up that “building the next generation of location-based mobile apps that, for the first time, engage with users at the scale that personal interaction actually takes place.”

Its technology addresses the problem of detecting a user's GPS location when that person is indoors or otherwise in a location that might not be easily reachable by traditional GPS or cellular signals. The company uses nearby Wi-Fi networks to pinpoint where that user is located. Apple obviously wants to leverage WiFiSLAM 's capabilities to improve its own iOS offerings which is perfectly legit.

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By incorporating WiFiSLAM, Apple can provide walking directions to businesses inside shopping malls or airports. 

Will this be enough to compete with  Google Maps? You are the judge!

The Power of Colors in Marketing

How people define colors depend on their native language. There are peoples that have words for colors in terms of “dark” and “light”. For them, it is enough to name basic colors. But for many people in the Western world (especially designers and marketing professionals) there is a need to describe colors such as eggplant purple or stone red.  Defining turquoise can be tricky – it can vary from a clear shade of blue to a bluish/green hue.

In his excellent book "Looking at language through glasses – how words color the world" (Spectrum, 2012)  Guy Deutscher shows that people around the world distinguish between colors, even if  they do not have specific names for hues of color.

Funny enough, description of colors was not taken seriously since the subject was mentioned by Gladstone. He stated that neither the color of the sea not the sky was mentioned in Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey. For sure the ancient Greeks were not color blind – so what is the issue?

A large-scale ethnic research shows that many civilizations have limited vocabulary to define a multitude of colors. However, they were perfectly able to distinguish between one hue of blue and another one shade of blue.

Lazarus Geiger already identified in the beginning of the 19th century that words for colors in many cultures follow the same pattern. It starts with black/for dark and light. It is followed by red, yellow, green, and blue.

Berlin and Kay have confirmed this for many more languages in the 1960s. Deutscher concentrated on the transgression from blue to green, explaining why the Japanese  “green”' traffic light looked blue in Western eyes.

The word “khaki" is used in Belgium for a pale shade of green, while the term in neighboring the Netherlands describes a kind of desert sand light brown. Go figure!

For marketing professionals and graphic designers, it would be great if there would be an international code of colors. This would enable us to refer to and understand terms such as “winter blue” (a grayish blue hue, popular in Europe for websites) or “spring green” (a bright light green that is especially popular with eco-friendly companies).

(Image courtesy of hdw.eweb4.com) 

Flash Retailing or Pop-up Retail – an Interesting Marketing Trend

Flash or Pop-up retail, also known as pop-up store (pop-up shop in the UK) or flash retailing, is the trend of opening short-term sales spaces in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. It is also popular in Western Europe, more specifically Paris, France.

This breed of pop-up shops typically host fledgling businesses which were previously selling online, in local markets or at craft fairs. Since so many shops (even at Main Street) are empty due to the economic turn down  savvy entrepreneurs can negotiate profitable deals relating to rent. It also presents them with the opportunity to gain experience and conduct market tests without having long-term lease agreements.

This phenomenon is also known as "flash retailing". Even big retailers love it due to its obvious benefits. It allows them to showcase their new brands or test the waters for their exciting and/or innovative products.

According to Emma Jones, “the genuine pop-ups are bringing much-needed variety and flexibility to our high streets. They are not just a passing fad."

The concept is not new. Vacant of Los Angeles, CA was the first company to develop the concept of pop-up retail or temporary retail shops way back in 1999. A limited edition of products was on sold. Once those products were sold out (usually within a matter of hours) the store would be closed until shop owners received more products that would enable them to reopen the store. Vacant considered closing stores permanently after the merchandise was sold, and then move on to another targeted destination. This made sense since its consumers traveled long distances to niche retailers to purchase items. Up till now, Vacant still provides pop-up retailing and brand marketing.

Real estate companies and landlords are looking at leasing short term real estate since it gives them income until the market picks up. Pop-up stores fit the bill perfectly.

Some brands, such as Target Corporation, Kate Spade, Gucci, and LouisVuitton, use pop-up shops as part of their campaign since it is highly effective within a reasonable budget.  Incubator program such as Boxpark in London, UK and PopupHood in Oakland, CA are incubator companies that have also embraced the concept to get noticed.

So watch out for a pop-up shop success story near you! If you were involved with pop-up shops or flash marketing, please share your thoughts! I will be happy to cover you in my next blog!

(Image courtesy of Richard James at ftape.com)

New Online Press Release Kid on the Blog

PressDoc is an online platform for “press releases 2.0″ (aka “social media releases”) distribution. Traditional press release distribution services make sure that your press release ends up at a slew of media, including mainstream media (e.g., Yahoo, Fox, CNBC) and trade mags, as well as journalists, social websites and blogs.

PressDoc takes a different approach and focuses on individuals and organizations that already have a media contact list and do not want to bother with writing a standard press release. Instead, they can send a link to those contacts pointing them to a webpage with images and videos on the PressDoc platform that also provides statistics.

PressDoc is aimed at startups that do not want to spend money on established press release distributors such as PRNewswire (which also distributes social or multi-media press releases).  The average amount of press releases on PressDoc is around 150 per month.

Is PressDoc a main contender or a niche player? You decide!

• Amsterdam-based PressDoc is very Euro-centric with payment in Euros. Its main customers are based in Europe, which is a problem when penetrating the US market, let alone other foreign markets such as Latin America, Russia and the Far East.

• PressDoc offers do-it-yourself services like hosted multiple online press rooms where you can use your own domain and provide a place to store bookmark links to collect articles about your brand. This requires a certain level of knowledge how investment in time from the user.

• PressDoc offer the Social Media Release (SMR or SMNR) press release template / format that was originally authored by Todd Defren of Boston-based SHIFT Communications. This template is also offered by PressDoc competitors such as RealWire.

• PressDoc offers no apparent options to distribute a release or SEO-enable it, which is the main reason why PRNewswire et al remains the main choice.

• According to users, PressDoc doesn't distribute press releases for them, but makes it easier to leverage existing online presence for PR purposes. In many cases, a wire service might still be the way to go.

How I see it, PressDoc is competing in a market niche dominated by Prezly.

Do you agree? Please share your input!