The puzzling new warning on FT stories online

Peter Kafka of All Things Digital writes Thursday about the new warning that the Financial Times has put on its Web site stories.

Kafka writes, “But if you’re that confident in your model–which, in short, allows Web surfers to look in on the FT.com site 10 times a month for free but demands payment for anything more than that–what’s with the following message at the bottom of each story?

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

“Anyone else think that strikes a weird tone between pleading and chiding? I’m told the note started showing up on FT stories about three weeks ago and that staffers at the paper are a bit confused about it as well. Here’s how FT spokeswoman Darcy Keller explains the message, via email:

The FT copyright simply protects our ownership of FT content. There is obviously a distinction between third parties referring to FT articles and linking back to FT.com and those that reuse and distribute our content without attributing it to the FT.”

Read more here.