If this weren't a free service I'd definitely raise hell..
Are these students not paying fees, and (were it to occur in most other countries) taxpayers paying also?
Also as a publisher of a small Online Community Newspaper, I hope that Gannett and the other big news publishing companies follow suit. It's win win for me.
I often see how independent small publishers break stories, only for larger organisations to source from, but not attribute their source, several days later. This is especially true of quality blogs and online communities in niche interest or geographical areas - I run one of these. Not attributing and mandatory charging for a derivative work is not good form.
I would like to know the IP range that Murdoch companies use, in order to block them from my content.
Can you imagine my shock when I opened up an email telling me our website domain name (YOUTUBEISLAM.COM) is being taken over by GOOGLE and their video site — YOUTUBE? Here is more or less what we were told:
NOTICE: Effective August 5th, 2009 Google (owner of YouTube.com) will take over your domain name: YOUTUBEISLAM.COM.
Although we have purchased the name "YOUTUBEISLAM.COM" and have renewed for several years through GODADDY.COM it seems GOOGLE has enough influence to just simply take our domain name from us — and by the way, we have even paid for it all the way through to next year.
First, their lawyers contacted us saying they were going to take our domain because we copied their logo. We didn't even come close to their logo. (look for yourself http://www.youtubeislam.com/images/logo.gif)
They next came up with saying our name was too similar to their name. We changed the name and the layout to read: YoUtuBeisLam.com and we even registered that as a trade name. We changed the logo and the images to reflect the new name.
They said they went into "arbitration" (of course we were not invited to that meeting) and then our registrar (GODADDY.COM) notified us they are "transferring" our domain name over to GOOGLE.
We have always maintained the highest of standards on our site — We never allowed any videos with inappropriate material. We did not allow videos that insulted or put down other religions. No dating or suggestive materials. No bad language. Only topics fit for all the family. We paid for the bandwidth from our own pockets to make sure everything was always as it should be without having people click and wind up on websites attacking beliefs or making fun of believers and certainly nothing to hurt people's feelings.
Whatever you think of Islam and Muslims, there is no justification for stealing a domain name without due process of law. So much for not being evil! Google has officially become the Evil Corporation it explicitly said it would not become. Shame on you Google!
You can see a video about it on their site.
No man is an island if he's on at least one mailing list.