Lowell Deeds

A story in the business section of today’s Globe reports that GateHouse Publishing, the publisher of a host of small town newspapers in Greater Boston, has sued the Globe for copyright infringement. The dispute arises from the Globe’s (relatively) new section on www.boston.com called “Your Town.” The goal of this section is to have a separate page for each of teh 151 communities in the Greater Boston area. Rather than containing content solely generated by Globe reporters, each community’s “Your Town” page would be populated with content created locally by bloggers and interested residents, supplemented by the professional staff of the Globe. The section also “scrapes” headlines and stories about the town from other websites and presents them on the boston.com page. This is GateHouse’s complaint - that the Globe is improperly taking its content without its permission. Here’s a link to the “Your Town” section. Thus far, sections for Newton, Waltham and Needham have been activated.