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Articles compared in copyright case

Johannesburg - The copyright dispute between Moneyweb [JSE:MNY] and Media24 moved to comparing articles side by side in the High Court in Johannesburg on Thursday.

Moneyweb's counsel Philip Ginsburg read an article by Moneyweb and asked Acting Judge Daniel Berger to observe highlighted paragraphs as he read out the story.

''You will find not only a fair degree of language copying, but the whole conceptualisation and putting together of the article then flows from the reading of the article,'' said Ginsburg.

In another, on a possible salary increase for Cape Town members of Parliament,  he said: ''Your Lordship will not only see language copying, but there is copying of how the article is put together. We submit it is not fair use.''

Ginsburg submitted that fair use might be to use the headline, but to only write a short teaser of the article with a link to the source.

''I'm not saying you can't use anything at all. But if you look at ...what they have done, this is not fair use," he said.

In another story, on an interview with AngloPlats CEO Chris Griffiths, full quotes taken from a radio interview Moneyweb conducted with Griffiths and then turned into a story, were reportedly used.

''They don't say that their journalist was party to that programme or listened to it. They do not deny that they have copied,'' said Ginsburg.

A business article about the McDonalds in Victory Park, Johannesburg, and now Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa's acquisition of the franchise to run McDonalds in South Africa, was also selected.

''Some of the essential features of the original article find their way into the copy, of course without a journalist being present at the walkabout.''

The judge noted that in the article on McDonalds, it did acknowledge Moneyweb.

Ginsburg said they were not insisting that the name of the author of the story be included.

But, referring to the McDonalds article, he said: ''This article has no hallmark footprint or fingerprint of transformation. It is common or garden plagiarism.''

Moneyweb believes Media24 copied its work. It used the comparisons to illustrate this. Moneyweb wants the judge to order that this was unlawful, for Fin24, which published the articles, to remove them from its website and for damages to be determined at a later date.

Earlier he said: ''You can't have a monopoly on the news, but what you do have a monopoly on is the formula that you use for presenting the news. It is the sweat of the brow.''

Referring to Media24's submission in court papers that it was exerting its constitutional right to freedom of expression, Ginsburg said: ''It is stretching the concept of freedom of expression to say you can use the form of words devised by someone else."

He said the only protection for an alleged infringement in terms of the Copyright Act was ''fair use'', which he said Media24 had not observed.

''What our clients have written here are not press releases, our clients have written legitimate research based articles.''

The outcome of the case, based on the Copyright Act of 1978, is expected to set a precedent for the use of online news content in a market competing for online advertising revenue.

Moneyweb claims that Fin24 had violated its own policies on aggregation. The term refers to when an online site takes content from elsewhere, summarises it and provides a link to the original source.

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