View Thread

Hello,

I frequently discuss news articles related to our field at the start of class. A few weeks ago I posted a message on the SIM listserv describing an Internet news aggregator called Flipboard that enables users to create their own online "magazines." The magazines are viewable within the Flipboard mobile app for iOS, Android, and Windows products and via the Internet. People can subscribe to the magazine to get news updates. I created my own magazine, Evolved Business (http://flip.it/azpcv), and use it as a means for my students to easily read class-related articles and, hopefully, inspire them to find additional articles to discuss in class. 

After I posted my message several people emailed me directly and asked if they could add articles to my "Evolved Business" magazine. I think having a collaborative magazine is a great idea so I set up a magazine to which everyone can contribute articles. I called this one "Social Issues in Management." You can view this magazine at http://flip.it/ZxjaW.

I invite you to participate in adding articles to this online magazine. It is easy to join the effort. All you need to do is accept the invitation to become a contributor by visiting http://flip.it/WNhsl and start adding articles. You add articles by installing the Flipboard applet in your browser (https://share.flipboard.com/) and then whenever you read an interesting article on the Internet, you simply click the applet in your browser menu to add it to the "Social Issues in Management" magazine. You can also add articles by viewing articles in other Flipboard magazines and clicking on the plus button. I request that the articles added are news stories and not advertisements, calls for papers, or conference announcements.

If you do not wish to contribute, it may to useful for you or your students to subscribe to the magazine in order to quickly see a number of news articles relevant to our field.

I hope you consider participating in this project. I look forward to seeing interesting articles posted from scholars around the world.

Cheers,

Ron

--

Ronald M Roman, PhD
Organization and Management Department
San Jose State University
ronald.roman@sjsu.edu
Twitter: @EvolvedBusiness - focused on a better way to conduct business that integrates ethics, human rights, the natural environment, and profitability to create a socially just, ecologically sound, and financially sustainable society.

Check out my Flipboard magazine, Evolved Business, at http://flip.it/azpcv for the latest news and articles on ethical and sustainable business!

Peter and others,

The Flipboard application does not copy and paste the entire article into the "magazine." It only provides the first few sentences -- and sometimes a photo -- and a link to original website. The link is activated by clicking on the words the Flipboard application does show. Essentially it is RSS reader where the links are displayed in more sophisticated format. I do not have a law degree, but given it is displaying only a small portion of the copyrighted article and that you read the full article on the original website and given that it provides a service that many other applications such as my.yahoo.com, Digg, and Feedly provide -- albeit in a more graphical manner, I do not believe it violates copyright laws or reduces the economic potential of the original website. In fact, it probably enhances the revenue potential of the original website by driving traffic to the site. Furthermore, the courts have ruled that links to other sites are legal. The use of the photos is probably more legally problematic than the couple of sentences used as a link to the original website.

If anyone is knowledgeable about how copyright law applies here, I would be interested in your viewpoint.

Cheers,

Ron

Dear Ron and ONE-L Readers,

This looks like a great way to collect pertinent articles, but I wonder if there are any copyright implications in adding items to the magazine that are already published in major newspapers online or other kinds of publications that guard their copyright closely?

regards,

Peter Madsen
Carnegie Mellon University

Hello,

 

I frequently discuss news articles related to our field at the start of class. A few weeks ago I posted a message on the SIM listserv describing an Internet news aggregator called Flipboard that enables users to create their own online "magazines." The magazines are viewable within the Flipboard mobile app for iOS, Android, and Windows products and via the Internet. People can subscribe to the magazine to get news updates. I created my own magazine, Evolved Business (http://flip.it/azpcv), and use it as a means for my students to easily read class-related articles and, hopefully, inspire them to find additional articles to discuss in class. 

 

After I posted my message several people emailed me directly and asked if they could add articles to my "Evolved Business" magazine. I think having a collaborative magazine is a great idea so I set up a magazine to which everyone can contribute articles. I called this one "Social Issues in Management." You can view this magazine at http://flip.it/ZxjaW.

 

I invite you to participate in adding articles to this online magazine. It is easy to join the effort. All you need to do is accept the invitation to become a contributor by visiting http://flip.it/WNhsl and start adding articles. You add articles by installing the Flipboard applet in your browser (https://share.flipboard.com/) and then whenever you read an interesting article on the Internet, you simply click the applet in your browser menu to add it to the "Social Issues in Management" magazine. You can also add articles by viewing articles in other Flipboard magazines and clicking on the plus button. I request that the articles added are news stories and not advertisements, calls for papers, or conference announcements.

 

If you do not wish to contribute, it may to useful for you or your students to subscribe to the magazine in order to quickly see a number of news articles relevant to our field.

 

I hope you consider participating in this project. I look forward to seeing interesting articles posted from scholars around the world.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Ron

 

--

Ronald M Roman, PhD
Organization and Management Department
San Jose State University
ronald.roman@sjsu.edu
Twitter: @EvolvedBusiness - focused on a better way to conduct business that integrates ethics, human rights, the natural environment, and profitability to create a socially just, ecologically sound, and financially sustainable society.

 

Check out my Flipboard magazine, Evolved Business, at http://flip.it/azpcv for the latest news and articles on ethical and sustainable business!

 

Dear One-ers,

I asked my intellectual property attorney to weigh in on this important question.  Here's his response.

Rae

Rae,

I think that Ron has it right.   The use of the first few sentences plus the link (just as Google does for searches) would not be considered to be infringing.   As Ron notes, the inclusion of photos could be more problematic.    However, as long as the photos displayed on Flipboard are small thumbnails, their inclusion would probably be deemed to be fair use in this context -- and, therefore, not infringing.   It might be worth checking on how large the photos are, as displayed by Flipboard.   The leading court case on this topic is Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon and Google, 508 F.3d 1147 (9th Circuit, 2007; the Supreme Court denied cert, thus allowing the Ninth Circuit judgment to stand).   This Wikipedia entry seems to provide a good summary:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com,_Inc.    In the examples cited by the court as constituting fair use, the thumbnails were only 3% of the area of the original.   There's no black and white rule as to how large such thumbnail photos can be, but the smaller the safer.   I imagine that Flipboard has done its own legal analysis of the situation.

(As background:  In many instances, photo rights agencies or individual photographers own copyright in such photos.  They license them to the newspapers or magazines for one-time use.   Photo agencies and many photographers are vigilant in protecting  their copyrights, and they use web-crawling robots to  look for infringements.   So it is prudent to be careful about this.   Nevertheless, the use of small thumbnails is probably fair use, especially for the non-profit educational purposes that you are talking about.)

Best,

Zick