July 3, 2010 (CAP News Wire) – A word of warning to any online gambling affiliates who use news stories from online newspapers in their own website content: Posting entire articles from other sites can be considered copyright infringement, and you can be busted.
Case in point: The Las Vegas Sun has announced that the Las Vegas Review-Journal is suing six websites for reprinting its entire articles without permission. Most of these websites are focused on the online gambling industry; the list even includes the fairly high-profile Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Foundation, one of the most vocal supporters of new iGaming regulatory laws in the United States.
Also on the list are smaller, more personal websites focused on online gambling and other topics. And this isn’t the first time the LVRJ has taken such action — so far this year, the paper’s legal arm has filed “at least 56 such lawsuits”. MajorWager.com was another Internet gambling-related site targeted by a prior lawsuit.
Apparently, these sites did credit the Review-Journal as their source, but that in itself doesn’t provide permission to post entire articles to a website.
The paper also reportedly failed to notify the parties that it didn’t permit such posting of its content prior to launching the legal action.