VIDEO: Maryland Juice Asks Huffington Post to Apologize for Hypocritical Legal Threats // PLUS: Read The Gazette's Take

Maryland Juice spent the last few days at the annual Netroots Nation conference. The gathering of progressive organizers, Netizens, and politicos drew a surprising number of Marylanders. But not surprisingly, in attendance were a number of staff and writers for Arianna Huffington's blogging platform, The Huffington Post.

I used the opportunity to find a Huffington Post writer and see if I could extract an apology on behalf of Arianna Huffington. After all, her company (AOL-Huffington Post) recently unleashed corporate attorneys from mega-law firm DLA Piper to threaten legal action against Maryland Juice. They claimed I was infringing on their "intellectual" property rights by excerpting an article and photo from Patch.com. The national blogs TechDirt and Above the Law cried foul, noting that The Huffington Post itself engaged in exactly the same type of blogging that they were complaining about.

The Gazette's Daniel Leaderman recently picked up on the controversy and noted (excerpt below):

GAZETTE: State politics blog Maryland Juice (marylandjuice.com) found itself under legal attack last week from no less of a media giant than AOL, owner of both Patch.com and the Huffington Post....

....blogger David Moon posted a rebuttal explaining that not only did AOL rely on free writing from bloggers, but his actions were well within the scope of fair use provisions in U.S. copyright law....

Your move, AOL.

Maryland Juice is still awaiting that apology from Arianna Huffington....

National Tech Blog Calls AOL-Huffington Post Hypocrites for Threatening Maryland Juice // DLA Piper Idiocy EXPOSED

UPDATE: The national legal blog "Above the Law" picked up on the story of DLA Piper attorneys harassing Maryland Juice. Thanks for the lift!

Last week Maryland Juice reported on a disturbing threat we received from AOL-Huffington Post's law firm DLA Piper, on behalf of Patch.com. After excerpting portions of a Patch article in our commentary about accessory apartments in Montgomery County, we received a nastygram from AOL.  In spite of "fair use" principles, they claimed we were infringing on their intellectual property and demanded that we remove article excerpts and photos from MarylandJuice.com. Their threat letter stated, "we require that you immediately comply with our demands" and noted that they might "pursue any additional avenues."

Today, the technology bloggers at TechDirt picked up on DLA Piper's threats and called out AOL for complete and utter hypocrisy. Read this excerpt from TechDirt's article:

AOL Threatens Blogger With Copyright Infringement Charge... For Doing The Exact Same Thing AOL Has Done On A Large Scale

There have been plenty of accusations made against AOL's the Huffington Post concerning its habit of "over aggregating" content from other sites.... it would be pretty damn hypocritical for AOL to then threaten another blogger for doing exactly the same thing that HuffPo does, wouldn't it?....

Enter, Maryland Juice. A local Maryland blog, which recently had a post about some happenings in Montgomery County, which included relatively large excerpts of parts of an article from Patch, another property owned by AOL. It also included an image from the article. The Maryland Juice article included a significant amount of commentary about the article and, in particular, the photo, which was used to illustrate the point (that it was not a representative sample of county residents at the local meeting). And, yet... AOL lawyers sent a cease and desist letter....

... a few years ago, when HuffPo tried to do its own "hyper local site," it was accused of doing more or less the exact same thing (but with less commentary, and more copying)....

BAD NETIZENS: Maryland Juice Receives Legal Threats from AOL, Arianna Huffington, The Patch & DLA Piper // SHOVE IT

Where do I even begin? Maryland Juice is currently traveling on the West Coast, and I woke up to an alarming email message from the international lawfirm DLA Piper. It seems that the firm represents AOL, who in turn are the corporate owners of The Huffington Post and Patch.com. They have issued a cease and desist letter over my excerpting of a Patch.com article and photo about accessory apartments in Montgomery County, Maryland.