Point of clarification (because I almost failed Con Law...oh well). When the DUmmies claim that they are being censored because Conservative radio stations, casino owners, etc ban liberal musicians, don't we usually have to explain to them (like the two-year olds that they are) that it's not censorship if it isn't government doing the "shutting-up?"
I really don't think there is much difference here. Publishers are free to have their material printer or reprinted wherever and whenever they choose.
Like someone else said though, Most of thise Gannett and other papers are nothing but librul trash anyways.
Yes... you are right; they are within their rights to discriminate.
However... What about a hypothetical case (you've been to law school, so you've been adequately subjected to *those*, I'll wager) in which Scumbag Leftist Media Outlet A (the party of the first part), succeeds in extracting unapproved excerpting (or whatever) rights from Scumbag Leftist Media Outlet B (the party of the second part), based on (possibly) (a) First Amendment issues, (b) contract law, (c) copyright law, (d)... etc.?
Would something of that sort thereby set a legal precedent by which Disenfranchised Conservative Media Outlet A (the party of the *third* part) could then freely excerpt the desired(?) filthy leftist drivel from (at least) Scumbag Leftist Media Outlet A, and possibly from any other media outlet... Etc.?
Actually, what I'm driving at, is, (1) it seems apparent to me that somehow, because of the structure (or more properly, the lack thereof) of the Internet, we are going to see legal precedent which will resolve the issue - i.e., the media and anyone making money off copyrights and etc. are going to end up having to adjust, or, to use a favorite leftie-lie-beral term, "get dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century", etc., (2) such precedent may not even involve *political* issues - it might involve two gardening magazine sites, or something equally mundane, (3) for those reasons it might be possible to produce a favorable ruling without a great deal of expenditure or a lawsuit, just by setting up an appropriate set of circumstances?
I still don't think I'm making myself clear, but I smell blood in the water w/r/t this issue... really. Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic but I really think it's possible to kick these jerks in their collective Theresa without a great deal of expense, just by the right sort of imaginative legal maneuver...
To take a different tack... let's say somebody stores the last 100 issues of a newspaper in their basement (I can just imagine the smell), builds an index of articles in it, and lets their friends come over and use the index and look stuff up in the paper. If the newspaper can demand royalties from someone doing that, then they can ostensibly demand royalties equally from someone who just shows their newspaper to the person sitting beside them on the (equally odiferous politically correct mass transit) bus, can't they? Is that going to fly in court? Then, what is the difference if a website which makes such archives available for free? (Or, more importantly, how can a court rule that there *is* a difference without landing in legal quicksand?) No one in either case is actually *reproducing* the material and *distributing copies* of it - the only ones doing that, are the website subscribers (assuming they're making copies).
I just think it's futile, particularly in the long term for the media to try even to suppress posting of entire articles, much less excerpting, and that - like the recording industry, but in even more severe measure - they're on a collision course with modern communications technology, and that by clever lawyering it should be possible to help them on their way to a thunderous crash without a great deal of expense...