A Colombian government agency that fights unfair competition and protects consumers’ rights denied a request from the main Colombian newspapers seeking to stop a news website aggregator from using their content.
The Superintendency of Industry and Commerce (SIC) of Colombia confirmed on April 28 an earlier decision in which it denied the precautionary measures requested by 11 newspapers against Pulzo.com, a digital portal.
Newspapers like El Colombiano, El Tiempo, El País, El Heraldo, Vanguardia Liberal, La Opinión, among others, asked the SIC for these measures apparently in order to stop Pulzo.com from using information from the media outlets which “coordinate, report, and publish under their names.”
Pulzo.com is a digital native outlet launched December 2013 that describes itself as curator and content aggregator, like, for example, the Huffington Post in the United States.
“It means that we take publicly available content, information sources that allow us to make our own versions,” said Guillermo Franco, director of Pulzo.com, in an interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. “In a world of information overload we do the job of telling the reader, 'this is what we think is important’. That is the curatorial process.”
Franco assures the process is different from simply aggregating content because that would be more automatic. “We have the best practices and the curatorial process would not be successful if it did not add value,” Franco said.
That value added can range from synthesizing a large document, the comparison of multiple sources and versions adding context to information and providing a text version that is originally in another language. Pulzo.com tries to use more than one source and also curates radio, television and social network content, Franco said.
In their appeals filed before the SIC, the newspapers reported that “the principles on which the exceptions and limitations to copyright are structured, broke down.” They added that the right to information is not absolute, its “exercise can not be guaranteed with the violation of other rights such as copyright.”
In its decision, the SIC determined that the evidence submitted by the plaintiffs does not establish that the portal’s activity “is unlawful or illegal in any way.” It says that in Colombian law there is a limitation to copyright “that could legitimize the operation” of the portal. However, it added that a decision on the merits of this application must be analyzed in a “trial once the evidence is examined and the parties are heard.” It also noted that these limitations are not unique to the analog environment, and even though the digital environment is not mentioned in the legislation, the rules could be applied to it.
“I believe that we should not try to stop the digital development of the country through a court decision of precautionary measures,” said Franco. “The media should compete with us, innovating, learning, practicing and not through legal means to block us.”
“The Colombian newspapers are not trying to stop anything,” said Nora Sanín, executive director of the Colombian Association of Newspaper Editors and Media (Andiarios), in an interview with the Knight Center. “On the contrary, we wish all the success to digital media, but they should work with clear rules regarding the use of content which recognizes all the efforts made by [the media] to get it [...] We think the editor should have control over the use and distribution of content.”
Sanín said that the newspapers do not ignore the technological global trends or the discussions that are taking place in other countries on this subject, which is why they consider it important that rules must be established in the country to define this trend.
“There are aggregators of all kinds, like those that consult [the publishers] for the use of content, and if they generate income, it is divided proportionally to each party,” Sanin said. “But you can not nurture yourself from the work of others. This is a kind of piracy, parasitism. They have said, ‘when we have resources, we do original journalism,’ but they should not profit from others' resources.”
Sanín said that on May 19, 2014 Andiarios sent a letter to Franco, signed by 25 newspaper companies, requesting that “from that day on, they must refrain from including in the portal [...] the contents published by the companies." The request was rejected by the Pulzo.com.
“You know well that content is at the heart of the media and that its production is the result of huge efforts made by our reporters, photographers, designers and editors, as well as large investments of time and money by publishers,” the newspapers said in the letter. “Only we, who lead the companies that generate and edit content, have the power to decide when and where they are published.”
Franco expressed in his response to Sanín his “astonishment at a request that goes against not only technological reality, of which Colombia is no stranger, but also good practices of aggregation and curation of content [...] that have characterized Pulzo.com [...].”
These best practices, according to Franco, have to do with the use of quoted sources and attributions with their respective links to the sites of origin. In his response, Franco added that these practices contrast with the “bad practices in the use of third party content that some of the signatories of the letter perform daily and systematically.”
It should be noted that the latest decision of the SIC is restricted to the request for precautionary measures. This decision was appealed to the High Court of Bogotá, said Sanín. On the other hand, there is an ongoing case for an in-depth analysis of the topic. According to Sanín’s interpretation, the entity could take a year to decide.
With a little over 15 months of existence, Pulzo.com is the number one native digital in the country with 4.4 million unique users according to Google Analytics data quoted by the newspaper La República.
The Knight Center contacted El Colombiano and El Tiempo, but the newspapers had no representatives available for interviews on this topic.
Guillermo Franco has been an instructor for various courses offered by the Knight Center and author of ‘How to Write for the Web', distributed for free by the organization.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
