Boston Phoenix

New York paper caught pirating another copyrighted article from Boston

adamg — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:45:28 +0000

Oops, they did it again. The New York Times, which hates when people post copies of its work, posted a copy of a Boston Review article without permission. The Phoenix's Carly Carioli, who called out the Gray Lady for posting a story now owned by the Phoenix just the other day, does the honors again:

How many more examples of this hypocrisy will we have to uncover before the Times begins to acknowledge that the problem isn't merely piracy -- the problem is a copyright law written so stringently that not even a newspaper with the resources of the New York Times can comply with it? As several commenters on our original post have pointed out, under some of the proposed language for SOPA and PIPA, a website that engaged in copyright infringement equivalent to the Times's hosting of our article could be blocked from the DNS registry.

That was the entire point of my first post: that the copyright fundamentalism advocated by big-media barons like Keller and the Times is counterproductive -- even to newspapers like the Times.

New York Times lives in a copyright glass house

adamg — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:50:22 +0000

The day before ex-Times editor and current Times thumbsucker Bill Keller blasted people who reprint Times content without its permission, the Times reprinted a PDF of a Real Paper story without permission from its current copyright owner, our very own Boston Phoenix. Not just the words, but the actual pages from that long-ago alt-weekly, whose remnants the Phoenix bought.

The Phoenix is not amused:

This is about the most literal instance of copyright theft, in terms of source material (someone else's), method (photocopied a print article), and intention of the law (don't copy someone else's stuff and distribute it as your own), as can be imagined.

A farewell to Clif Garboden

adamg — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 01:10:28 +0000

Boston Phoenix Editor Carly Carioli reports the death of longtime Phoenix editor and writer Clif Garboden.

Phoenix to UHub: You got punked

adamg — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:49:13 +0000

Phoenix Editor Carly Carioli has a short reply to the Dig item - which we, being good little media sponges, sucked right in - about how Entercom might be thinking of buying and shutting down WFNX to move WEEI to FM:

For the record: it's total bullshit.

No doubt Jeff Lawrence is formulating a response at this very moment.

Facebook to Boston Phoenix: You call that a patent? We'll show you a patent!

adamg — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:53:18 +0000

Last fall, the Phoenix sued Facebook, alleging the social network violated patents owned by a Phoenix subsidiary for creating user profiles online. Facebook yesterday returned the favor, suing the Phoenix for alleged violations of patents it owns on equally fundamental parts of the Web.

In its lawsuit, like the Phoenix suit, filed in US District Court in Boston, Facebook charges search engines on the Phoenix Web site that let uses find bands, events and restaurants violate a Facebook patent on a technique for letting users narrow the results of a search query. Facebook also charges its patent is violated by a Phoenix search engine that lets users specify exactly what sort of sex acts they want to see in X-rated videos catalogued by the Phoenix's adult sites.

Phoenix writer was so pwned today

adamg — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 23:19:52 +0000

Blue Mass. Group captures the interchange between David Bernstein kvetching about a young woman asking a gubernatorial debate question about health insurance and the woman, who checked Twitter to see what people were saying about the debate.

Maybe this is where the falafel thing comes from

adamg — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:58:47 +0000

The Phoenix awakens to inform us that Bill O'Reilly, yes, that Bill O'Reilly, once wrote for the Phoenix and the Real Paper, and that he interviewed both Linda Lovelace and her director in "Deep Throat."

Phoenix gets new editor; to try to figure out how to meld online, radio and print

adamg — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:30:09 +0000

Dan Kennedy reports and analyzes. In the short term, it means Lance Gould is out and Carly Carioli is in.

City thinks post-Celtics rioters more likely to toss plastic Phoenix boxes than metal Globe, Herald boxes

adamg — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 15:33:44 +0000

Earlier this week, you may recall, Boston Police asked newspaper distributors to remove their boxes from areas where hopped-up Celtics revelers/mourners might be tempted to use them to put holes in plate-glass windows. The Phoenix reports the Boston DPW apparently thinks plastic boxes for free papers are more of a risk, because it sent crews out to remove them while leaving the potentially more lethal metal Globe and Herald boxes alone:

Can't people throw them through windows, as well? In fact, aren't their metal boxes more fun to throw through windows than our plastic ones?

Big management shakeup at the Phoenix

adamg — Thu, 06 May 2010 20:09:21 +0000

The Dig breaks the news about firings and stuff on the financial side of the house at the Phoenix.

Boston Phoenix loses a steady advertiser

adamg — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:21:21 +0000

What Craigslist hasn't killed, federal indictments will: The indictment against five people for running an alleged Asian sex ring shows they were repeat customers of the Boston Phoenix.

For nearly four years, the indictment alleges, two local organizers of the ring regularly bought ads in the Phoenix's "Female Escort" section to advertise the services of prostitutes - some allegedly held against their will - in a network of Boston-area brothels (in addition to using Craigslist):

From April, 2009 through Oct. 2009, defendant Xiang Hua Zhang made ten payments to The Boston Phoenix totaling approximately $13,125 from his Bank of America checking account in payment of advertising for the services of Asian women in The Boston Phoenix, Female Escort section.

The indictment does not specify how much the Phoenix made between December, 2005 and February, 2009, when another alleged ring leader, Jiang Liang Chen, used his credit card to buy ads in the paper.

Meanwhile, if you live in Allston, Quincy, Stoneham, Wellesley, Newton, Woburn, Malden, Peabody, ~~Somerville~~, Burlington, Watertown or Medford, you can check the indictment to see if you lived next to a brothel - it lists the specific addresses (Ed. note: The indictment mentions Somerville, but doesn't give a specific address).

The entire indictment.
The arrest warrants.

Innocent, etc.

In media restless

adamg — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:13:06 +0000

Boston Phoenix columnist Adam Reilly reports he's moving to WGBH to become an associate producer.

What was so valuable in the Phoenix today?

adamg — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:23:18 +0000

UPDATE: Rush over to your nearest Phoenix box now for a card worth 30 minutes of free time on a porn site. That's what was worth pawing through all those papers for.

On-the-street reporter Matthew files this puzzler:

Over by North Station I witnessed someone pull the entire stack of papers out of the box. He went through each one to pull out a small white-ish piece of paper.

It didn't look like it was the first distributon box he hit either ...

The Phoenix has another patent; Facebook not first to feel Mindich wrath

adamg — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:50:44 +0000

In addition to the patent used by Phoenix subsidiary Tele-Publishing, Inc. to sue Facebook this week, the company has a patent (issued in 2000) for a method and apparatus for matching registered profiles.

And in 2005, Tele-Publishing sued several alternative weeklies across the country for allegedly violating both of these patents. The issue never got to a jury because the newspapers, in Washington, Chicago and Sacramento, settled the matter by signing a licensing deal with Tele-Publishing (here's the consent decree).

Here's the abstract:

Boston Phoenix claims patent on interactive Web pages; sues Facebook

adamg — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:50:26 +0000

Tele-Publishing, Inc., a subsidiary of Phoenix Media/Communications Group, Inc., yesterday filed a federal lawsuit against Facebook, alleging the social network's personal pages violate a patent Tele-Publishing was granted in 2001.

The complaint, filed in US District Court in Boston, seeks unspecified treble damages and an end to Facebook's alleged infringement of Tele-Publishing's patent, which sets out a method by which a remote user can upload images and information to a server to build a personal Web page.

From the Tele-Publishing patent: