Posted on 03/23/2013 2:45:47 PM PDT by PastorBooks
I agree. The decision is narrow in that what the defendant was doing in this case was using their service without paying the fees for service that everyone else was using.
There appears to be quite a big difference in Free Republic in that Free Republic does not charge a fee, the articles are posted with direct links to the AP article, thereby giving AP the hit fee from the posting site and the posting site gets the hit fee for the ads.
The defendant in this case was charging for their service and effectively doing an end run around the AP royalty fees and making money from its subscribers.
There still is a fine line here and we should be careful about even posting a sentence from an AP story if the story can be obtained from a local outlet or some other source.
AP is undoubtedly going to try to use this narrow finding to bring down critical sites like this.
I believe that what is done on this site is entirely within the Fair Use doctrine. We shall see what transpires after this.
It makes sense that they would want you to click through to their web site to read their content, but how are you going to know you want to read it if you can’t post a clip to get your attention?
I would not be against all articles being an excert, because you gotta give credit where credit is due
Not a problem for me. I just read the headlines and give my in depth opinions from that.
I thought the issue was the site was charging.
Drudge does not clip any part of the article and most of the time he changes the title of the article he’s linking, too.
It will mean we will only be able to post titles of articles and we might not be able to copy the titles word for word.
Congress, if the people had any power, could write a law to allow excerpting copyrighted material for discussion purposes on or off the Internet. They should do that.
The seems to be saying that an annotated bibliography of AP articles on a particular subject is a copyright infringement, betcause that sounds like what the company was doing.
Some history on the quaint custom of “copyright.” It began with efforts by government to control the spread of ideas it might not agree with. Some things never change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law
The origin of copyright law in most European countries lies in efforts by the church and governments to regulate and control the output of printers.[6] Before the invention of the printing press, a writing, once created, could only be physically multiplied by the highly laborious and error-prone process of manual copying by scribes. An elaborate system of censorship and control over scribes existed.[7] Printing allowed for multiple exact copies of a work, leading to a more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information (see print culture).[6] Pope Alexander VI issued a bull in 1501 against the unlicensed printing of books and in 1559 the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books, was issued for the first time.[7]
Which is standard practice with Wikipedia and many other online encyclopedias.
Posting a sentence or small portion from an AP story should not be a problem if sourced. What has been considered by courts is how much of an article is copied (about 5% seems to be the guide), and its purpose (like commentary or artistic works) and whether it is used to make money or not, and how much it costs the source.
There you go. Something the apostles did not do. .
There are so may intertwined issues with these kinds of cases but with straight news-discussion sites like FR constrained from full posts for copyright claims and because major media outlets have demonstrated their willingness to completely revamp/rewrite an online article once caught in an outright lie or misrepresentation and can simply make the article or lie disappear aside from Orwell's "1984" vision - "fair use" demands allowing a full post of their "news" for discussion, disproof, derision or whatever.
Yes, I am possibly in contention for the longest single sentence ever but that's not the point.
More and more we will, as papers disappear, depend on everything online and news can "evolve" as desired by the media managers.
Catch them in a lie and it disappears - try and demonstrate it and you risk major, expensive and time-consuming copyright lawsuits. (Expletive deleted).
Knowledgeable FReepers could easily present scads (lots) of articles "edited" once outed for "untruths" without an actual retraction.
We need to fight for an expansion for the definition of "fair use". 1984 is not around the corner, it has arrived.
I view the purpose of FreeRepublic.Com to be to analyze everything from worldwide events to the most mundane subjects but always with any number of opinions and viewpoints on the subject - some obviously expert, many extremely knowledgeable, some heartfelt, some completely factually and obviously inaccurate but always informative, each in their own way.
Let's fight for an expansion "fair use" and against further restrictions.
IMHO.
PS: JimRob - I know you did your best. I think only an army of Breitbarts/FReepers can win this one. Thanks again for all you've done. ;-)
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