Daily Mail and News Corp settle copied- stories dispute By Henry Mance

Does MailOnline copy Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, or vice versa? The world may never know. The two publishers have settled an Australian legal dispute over the alleged lifting of celebrity exclusives, with both sides claiming victory. The spat related to the business model of MailOnline, the world’s most visited English-language newspaper website, which like other digital publications relies on quickly replicating rivals’ stories. Martin Clarke, MailOnline’s publisher, said the matter had been resolved “very much to my satisfaction”. But News Corp Australia claimed that there had been “a change in the practices of Mail Online since we made our complaint”. The dispute emerged in June, when News Corp sent a cease-and-desist letter to MailOnline’s Australian operations, citing at least 10 instances where its stories had allegedly been copied. “We believe the Daily Mail Australia is breaching our copyright by lifting substantial slabs of original content from a large number of articles,” the company said. Daily Mail Australia, a joint venture between UK-listed Daily Mail and General Trust and Australia’s Nine Entertainment Company, hit back. It pointed to cases where News Corp’s publications had used its content, including photos of the cricketer Stuart Broad, without permission or attribution. Under Australian law, it is not an offence to reproduce news, providing the reproduction involves some input by a reporter. That means news sites such as MailOnline, Gawker and Huffington Post are unlikely to be breaching copyright as long as they do not simply copy-and-paste from other websites, or publish photos or videos without the permission of the copyright owners. Mr Clarke continued his offensive against News Corp’s drive for online profitability. In an interview with the Financial Times, he criticised News UK’s decision to pay more than £20m for rights to broadcast Premier League football highlights online. “If I want to watch the football, I’ll watch it on the telly,” he said. “We didn’t go for any of those rights.” MailOnline had depicted the legal dispute as an attempt by News Corp, which accounts for more than half of the print newspapers sold in Australia, to “throttle” its growth in the country, where it launched earlier this year. News Corp operates three of the country’s nine most popular news sites, while MailOnline is number 10, with 1.4m monthly unique visitors in February. MailOnline offers its content for free and earns revenue from advertising. Many of News Corp’s major titles, including The Australian, The Sun and The Wall Street Journal, operate paywalls. Robert Thomson, News Corp’s chief executive, has sustained the company’s emphasis on copyright, accusing Google of acting in a way that would bankrupt some European newspapers.