If you can’t stand the links, get off the web

I don’t always agree with Jeff Jarvis, but he nailed it in “A danger to journalism“, a post in which he discusses the “GateHouseGate” controversy: 

GateHouse has sued The New York Times Co., arguing that the Boston Globe’s new YourTown hyperlocal site for Newton is violating copyright laws by copying headlines and first sentences verbatim from GateHouse sites in Massachusetts and–horrors!–linking to the stories themselves on GateHouse’s pages.

As Jarvis put it, “If you can’t stand the links, Gatehouse, get off the web.” I am sympathetic to authors whose work is being unfairly used, as I discussed in my recent post on fair use and SEO. But suing people for copying two sentences and linking? I thought we were past that by now.