Missouri newspaper pays blogger for copyright claim

A spat between a blogger and a newspaper editor is not breaking news. But a blogger asserting a copyright claim at the offices of a newspaper while a video camera is rolling – that’s national news. Boing Boing is just one of the media outlets to pick up All American Blogger Duane Lester’s story about serving The Oregon Times Observer of Oregon, Missouri, with a $500 invoice. Lester takes managing editor and publisher Bob Ripley to task for reprinting his blog post on the Holt County Sheriff’s Department without permission or attribution.

The reason this has gone viral is that Ripley, despite eventually paying Lester, first blusters and then comes around the counter in a vaguely threatening manner to size up the man who is claiming plagiarism. It is six painful minutes of two worlds colliding: small-town newspapers and enterprise bloggers.