Ziff Davis To Website: License To Link, Updated

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Ziff Davis is threatening pocketpctools.com with legal action for posting a snippet from and link to a Ziff Davis story. Is it just me, or is this sort of the IDEA of the internet? From pocketpctools.com: 'We are currently being threatened with legal action by a large organization that produces news stories (I am trying to find out if I am "allowed" to post the emails they have sent me). A while back (about a month and 70 posts ago), one of our admins posted a story that introduced you to one of their stories. Needless to say, there was a small editorial about the said story, a short quote from the story, a link to, and full credit given to them for the story.'" Update: 08/08 23:55 GMT by S : To clarify, Ziff Davis/EWeek (and not ZDNet, as the submitter and linked story suggest) are involved in this story. Update: 08/09 02:08 GMT by T : Matthew Rothenberg of eWEEK writes with a clarification (below); it seems like this is just a tempest in a teapot, and linkers can breathe easy.

Rothenberg writes: "Hey! I'm the executive editor in charge of eWEEK.com -- and before this situation unravels any farther, I need to make a couple of quick clarifications about our reprint policy:

While I haven't gotten all the details about what happened, this legal warning to PocketPCTools seems to be a result of miscommunication within our company. We understand and embrace the principles under which sites such as PocketPCTools link to and excerpt our content. There are plenty of occasions when a professional media company needs to question the wholesale appropriation of its content or the use of its marks. From everything I understand about the PocketPCTools case so far, this is NOT one of those occasions!

We're moving to correct the situation now ... PocketPCTools was apparently acting within the appropriate bounds of Web etiquette -- actually, doing us a favor by sending us the traffic -- and Ziff Davis was apparently mistaken in issuing this warning.

My personal apologies to anyone inconvenienced by this error. We're investigating the situation now and will act accordingly."

Uh Oh

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Slashdot get permission to link to this story?

Oh no.

[modifried]

Slashdot just posted a snippet from pocketpctools.com, and a link to their site. Let's hope pocketpctools.com doesn't threaten legal action.

Re:Let's send a message...

[Loadmaster]

Actually, to send the right message we should post a story about ZDnet and /. their servers. See how much traffic you would have missed if there was no link? Damn, ZDnet should pay /.

Watch out slashdot!

[Muerto]

Your days are so totally numbered.

Re:Let's send a message...

[foidulus]

boycott ZDnet India! [zdnetindia.com]

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

or better yet, mod it and you both down for trolling or offtopic, yea, that w00d be FuNNi3z d00dz.....

(god damn, l33t wannabes suck)

Re:Blogs

[the_mad_poster]

Congratulations on being the first individual to wander along and comment on my purported action without reading TFA. From the aforementioned FA:

It is Ziff Davis (ZDNet) that has forced us to remove the story mentioned above. The original story was on eWeek.

Therefore, whatever parent company harrassed them must have been involved with eWeek.

QED.

Re:Uh Oh

[pocketpctools.com]

No... but we will let this one pass. ;-)

Re:Blogs

[Jacer]

I think the key to a successful writing campaign is to be: 1) Polite 2) Respectful 3) Objective 4) To the point 5) Request a reply 6) Use your real name and city/state and send from the same email address they can reply to. What complete bullshit. I don't know what kind of idiot mentors you've had in your life, but I was always told the best way to get something done is to make damn sure everyone offending you knows it. Beyond that I really don't know that I have a point, so no further correspondence is nessecary. Yours Truly, Jon Johnson of Hicksville.

Re:Boss of eWEEK.com here

[Almost-Retired]

Greetings Matthew;

It rather sounds as if we're in violent agreement here.

I think I'd like to be a fly on the wall in the offices come tomorrow morning. I think I'd find I was living in some of those "interesting times" Confusious was fond of refering to. :-)

Can the air conditioning handle the expected smoke?

Mmm, I suppose I'd better put in the obligatory smiley here, you might need it tomorrow. :-)

--
Cheers & good luck, Gene

Re:Moderation (OT)

[Steve G Swine]

I think it was just posted twice to milk karma out of a bad situation...

Soooo ...

[ProfM]

Do we like Ziff-Davis now ... or hate 'em?

You forgot one, silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

a. We'd be kinda DUMB; and
b. We'd have to expect that people would take umbrage, right?

c. PROFIT!!