Mark Duffy (a.k.a. "copyranter") vs. Fair Use
How much of another publication's content should Buzzfeed republish?
- It all started when New York magazine decided to have some fun with The New York Post and the arrest of an NYPD officer who was allegedly planning to kidnap, cook, and eat several women:
We're predicting tomorrow's @NewYorkPost headlines of the cannibal cop. Tweet us yours! nym.ag/R2AzqF- Mark Duffy, a.k.a. Buzzfeed's "copyranter," liked the results so much that he lifted eight of them (out of 11) and posted them on Buzzfeed:
- Bloomberg's director of social media took issue with the generous sampling:
- His collegues responded:
- Duffy responded with the "they started it" defense, most popular in the 4-10 year old demographic:
@StephLauren @jaredbkeller And linked back telling readers to go see more. NY Mag used to jack my content all the time on copyranter.
@copyranter @stephlauren The full post? Or just a single image macro? Because one or two with a link is fine, but this is more than half.- Former "Fox Mole" Joe Muto, who knows a little something about stealing, weighed in:
@AntDeRosa @jaredbkeller They both basically stole it from Twitter. NY Mag just stole it first.- Keller, De Rosa, and the author of the New York piece, Dan Amira, disagreed:
- @JoeMuto @AntDeRosa Not really. Readers didn't generate those images using memegenerator or another tool...NYMag just asked for captions.
@JoeMuto @AntDeRosa @jaredbkeller No, actually. We photoshopped the Post front pages, and gave credit to Twitter when warranted.- And now, we present Duffy's angry response to everyone who dared question his journalistic ethics.
- First up, Globe and Mail's deputy editor of digital operations:
Not even a link? RT @AntDeRosa: MT @jaredbkeller: @Buzzfeed straight up jacked this @NYMag post bit.ly/TiNHvO bit.ly/VJMl0L- @chrisboutet Yes there's link telling readers to go see more of the covers. Why don't you look first before tweeting.
- @copyranter Yeah sorry, I didn't scroll to the very bottom of this copy-paste job because I'd already seen the content on @NYMag.
- Duffy began to get quite spirited. This will be a continuing theme:
