Replies

Received the following via email a couple days ago.

Thanks,

Jim

Dear Mr. Robinson,

I am General Counsel for Examiner.com. It has come to our attention that FreeRepublic.com or its users have posted certain articles copied from Examiner.com without authorization. The articles are as follows:

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2287993/posts (article written and copyright owned by Jenny Kakasuleff)

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/2323094/posts (article written and copyright owned by David Codrea)

Although we have no objection to your users posting links to articles featured on Examiner.com, we do not permit posting of entire articles or substantial portions thereof (or anything more than the article’s headline, and the headline must link back to Examiner.com). If you wish to include links to our articles please feel free to do so, however the extensive text copied from these articles is in violation of the Examiner.com Terms of Use and constitutes copyright infringement. The use of this content on FreeRepublic.com has not been authorized by the true owner of the work, its agent, or as a matter of law, and Examiner.com is an authorized representative of the authors of these articles.

We hereby demand that you remove the above referenced articles and any portion thereof (other than the headline, provided that the headline links to the full article on Examiner.com) immediately, and notify me in writing that you have done so. In addition, should you discover any other content from Examiner.com featured on your website, we demand that you remove such content from your website immediately.

Sincerely,

Deborah Shinbein

General Counsel & VP, Business Development

Examiner.com

Ok... Interesting.

This is the email I just got:
D,

I’m not sure why that would occur; unless some other Examiner out there complained about someone posting his or her article on Freepublic? Examiners own the rights to their own material. We simply retain the rights to use the material that is published on our site. As a result, we almost never send out a takedown notice unless requested to by an Examiner; and then it’s on a specific article.

Perhaps you can ask Freepublic why they’re refusing to allow you to publish your own material there.

Ticket Information:
Ticket #: 5484-10001678

A second email I received from Examiner:

I spoke with our Counsel, and she was representing individual Examiners who had complained about their content being published without their permission.

Your content is your own—if you wish to publish it elsewhere, that’s certainly your choice. Unfortunately, it sounds like Freepublic is banning all Examiner articles due to this circumstance. Our counsel will drop them a line and let them know it’s okay for Examiners to publish their own material; however, it’s up to them how they want to proceed in the future (handling one-off complaints every time they occur might be more of a burden than they’d like to shoulder; it seems like simply putting a blanket ban would be more cost-effective, which is likely why they did it in the first place).

Hope this at least clears it up for you.

Happy Examining!

Ticket Information:
Ticket #: 5484-10001678
Date Created: 9/13/2009 1:39 AM MDT