Posted on 04/08/2004 9:19:34 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
As most of you are aware, we've recently received several copyright complaints. In the last few weeks, we've received complaints from the SJ Mercury News, Independent (UK), SF Chronicle and The Boston Globe. Just a couple days ago the Post-Gazette send a cease and desist notice and yesterday I heard from the Tribune-Review.
Tonight, I got a call from Amy and there were two more registered letters at our PO Box. The McClatchy News (Sacramento Bee) and USAToday are now added to the list of publications that have complained about copyright violations.
Well, folks, the handwriting is on the wall. The complaints are now coming in faster than I can respond to them. John is currently in the process of writing programs to search out and automatically excerpt all existing threads from these sources.
I think we're gonna have to go to excerpt and link for all news sources very soon unless we have written permission on file.
This is all about money, or more exactly hits on their web site. FR can deliever alot of hits so it is in the interest of the content providers to make a deal and get the hits. So we have to put up with a ad in each thread that the content providers provide, big deal, they get the hits we get the article. I can live with that an I am sure most freepers can too.
Hey it's not my call so I really don't know what will happen.
If that's what they think, they are VERY wrong.
I can get the articles from the source if I want them.
What I come to FR for is the discussion and dissection of the article.
The only thing we will have to be very careful of in paraphrasing articles is to NOT let bias creep in as much as possible.
Otherwise we will become just one more website that parrots an article with their own bias inserted.
The bias should come from the discussion and dissection.
They have a corporate libertarian slant, Jim,
not truly as conservative as one might think.
Freedom of speech for the hoi polloi is secondary.
Running an article forwards and backwards through AltaVista's Babelfish (e.g. English to French back to English) might accomplish something along those lines.
The problem is that the media's exact choice of words damn them. Change the context in which something was written or even the words used to express it and the authors could/would complain that they are the targets of a misinformed vast right wing conspiracy.
"You have the right to free speech/As long as you're not dumb enough/To actually try it"--The Clash, Know Your Rights (Combat Rock).
This proves their knowledge of the existance of Free Republic and what was going on at this website.
News of the WP/LAtimes settlement was circulated years ago.
How many years can a corporation know about and ignore a copyright "violation" before their wave their right to complain?
Correct (at least at sites that permit reading without "registering" an account to agree to the nature of usage).
Push back by getting the discriminating websites to acknowledge this hole in their idea. They will lose readship (and click throughs) if their content (even free) requires a user to register and to sign in to read the articles.
What's more, Google is a commercial website. They are paid for sidebar listing of websites and can even be paid for "top listing" of a site.
Google may have changed their dealings with the media though because they now also offer "Google News" to search just the wire services. Note too that "Democratic Underground" is considered a "news" source at Google News.
(and I will include the attribute information since I ended up excerpting so much of it even though the link is above): Google cache raises copyright concerns
By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
July 9, 2003, 1:28 PM PT
Google offers publishers a simple way to opt out of its temporary archive, and scuffles have yet to erupt into open warfare or lawsuits. Still, Google's cache links illustrate a slippery side of innovation on the Web, where cool new features that seem benign on the surface often carry unintended consequences.[snip]
At the heart of Google's caching dilemma lies a thorny legal problem involving a core Web technology: When is it acceptable to copy someone else's Web page, even temporarily?
If "copying" someone else's webpage was illegal (or subject to protection), the George Bush "parody" site would be stopped in their tracks for modifying the HTML code of the original site (including modifying copyrighted images and possibly trademarked logos).
Unlike formal Web archive projects, Google says its cache feature does not attempt to create a permanent historical record of the Web. Rather, the company actively seeks to delete dead links; once a Web page disappears, the search engine seeks to purge that record and any related cached page as quickly as possible.
Yeah, right. I noticed this week that Google cache still shows Jon Matthews as one of the on air personalities at KSEV 700AM (the top match when searching 'KSEV 7000')); he left the company and the website long ago last year. So much for "as quickly as possible".
The search engine shows:
"Featuring hosts such as Dan Patrick, Jon Matthews, and Edd Hendee."
While the actual website shows:
"...issue-oriented talk shows like: Dan Patrick, Laura Ingraham, Bill O'Reilly, Edd Hendee and Money Talk."
The search date indicates April 8, 2004 but I can most assure you that is FALSE (at least with regard to the PREVIEW snippet; the underlying "cache" appears to be correct). They obviously did not purge all of the old data.
Among other arguments, they say that cached pages at Google have the potential to detour traffic from their own site, or, at worst, constitute trademark or copyright violations. In the case of an out-of-date news page in Google's cache, a Web publisher could even face legal troubles because of false data remaining on the Web but corrected at its own site
When I've gone to "cached" google pages, the images are still stored on the original server and even advertising (incluing popups) will be launched; I do not know who "collects" the payment for those clicks but I would suspect that they are launched with the code identifying the cached page as the account.
Also I just like how the media tries to spin their reason from shielding viewers from the orignially PRINTED version of articles (it may subject them to lawsuits). Actually they are already subject because of "publication". Not indicating that an article online has been "modified to correct published errors" (aka a "retraction" indicating the errors) should make them just as prone to lawsuit.
The lying liars are on the run.
And technically, any time a Web surfer visits a site, that visit could be interpreted as a copyright violation, because the page is temporarily cached in the user's computer memory.
Yes, the nature of the web is that anyone who views a page has DOWNLOADED the code to their computer with the full and approved knowledge of the copyright owner.
FYI:
The digital universe is constantly changing, but its content can be either fleeting or permanent. Several Web sites, including the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and the Sept. 11 Digital Archive, have surfaced to preserve information on the Web and to keep permanent historical accounts of events and Web pages. Yet, many more pages, and even those in Google's cache, are eventually lost in the digital ether. The average lifespan of a Web site is 100 days, according to estimates by the Internet Archive.Still, copyright lawyers and industry experts say that there are legally uncharted waters around a commercial caching service.
Distinction being FR is not a commercial site.
"Many of us copyright lawyers have been waiting for this issue to come up: Google is making copies of all the Web sites they index and they're not asking permission," said Fred Lohman, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "From a strict copyright standpoint, it violates copyright."
You may have lost your day in court by knowing about the issue and yet not enforcing said copyright (according to the article, Google began caching in 1997). 7 years is a long time to know about copyright violations and not doing anything about it. That failure to act protects those who would "infringe" on someone's copyright.
Legally, what could differentiate Google from other archival sites that record pages is that it is a commercial site and that it has enormous scope and influence on the Web.
Even though they are commercial, that 7 year publicly acknowledged infringement is hard to argue. Why wait until NOW to act? Greed?
But what's kept the feature off most Web sites' radar is that, anecdotally, most people don't click on the cache. Even Google says people only "occasionally" click its cached links. If more people did, Web publishers might lose visitors--and potentially advertising dollars, which no one can afford to lose as Web publishing gets back on its feet.
A loss of "click throughs" because of caching is NOT what is killing Salon.com
Practically speaking, Web sites can "opt out," or include code in their pages that bars Google from caching the page. A tag to exclude "robots" such as "www.nytimes.com/robots.txt" or "NOARCHIVE" typically does the job. And that's largely what's kept the cache feature from being controversial.Search Engine Watch's Sullivan said that, even though some publishers are wary of the caching feature, many don't block Google's robots for fear of losing favor in the company's powerful search rankings. He said some Webmasters believe there's a stigma associated the "no cache" tag, because many sites that use it have been accused of attempting to use banned methods to manipulate Google's rankings. Google said the "no cache" tag does not affect rankings.
Again, they seek to grant the commercial site Google something they do not permit the non-commercial site Free Republic to do (and there are likely no SIGNED agreements between those news providers and Google approving of the infraction).
Some legal experts say Google may be on shaky ground by caching first and asking questions later.A provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) includes a safe harbor for Web caching. The safe harbor is narrowly defined to protect Internet service providers that cache Web pages to make them more readily accessible to subscribers. For example, AOL could keep a local copy of high-trafficked Web pages on its servers so that its members could access them with greater speed and less cost to the network. Various copyright lawyers argue that safe harbor may or may not protect Google if it was tested.
"Most people agree that the caching exception in the DMCA is obsolete," Lohman said. "I don't think it would cover Google's cache. Google is not waiting for users to request the page. It spiders the page before anyone asks for it."
Ah yes, a copyright law which passed only a few years ago is already "obsolete". Incrementalism, folks.
Still, other lawyers argue that Google's practice would be protected by fair-use laws. A judge might look at the market impact of Google's caching and find that it's valuable, given that it could ultimately drive traffic to the cached site. Or the reverse could be true, depending on the nature of the page.For its part, Google is confident that the service is within the law. "We've evaluated this from a legal perspective, including copyright law, and have determined that Google's cached page service complies with the law," a Google spokesman said.
A similar issue has played out in the courts in an image-searching case, Kelly v. Arriba Soft, filed in April 1999.[snip] The court initially ruled against Kelly based on the "established importance of search engines," but Kelly appealed and won. In Feb. 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that Arriba's use of thumbnail images of Kelly's photos was fair use, but its display of full-size images was not fair use, because it was likely to harm the market for Kelly's work by reducing visits to his Web site and by allowing free downloads. But the opinion on full-size images was remanded by the 9th Circuit Court this week and is set to go to trial in the lower court of central California.
[snip]
The 9th Circuit Court agreed that creating that copy is fair use under copyright law, she said, adding that there would be a slightly different analysis in a case related to Google. Also, the fact that the search site has an opt-out program would likely illustrate that the market for original copyrighted works can be protected, which is a significant factor in fair-use analysis.
Also I still haven't seen anyone respond to my comments regarding GG Liddy, Rush Limbaugh and other talk radio commentators who read full articles and editorials on the air. GG Liddy doesn't even provide full citation of the source (referring the a leading competitor of the Washington Times as "the Washington BEEEP").
Where do the rights of a citizen to air comments and opinion on someone elses' work end?
So even though I am looking at a website using their own server, I don't see all of their glorious advertising. There are also people who run software that limits or eliminates java scripts and block cookies. Those people legally see the pages without giving the website cookie click throughs. Those people also "deny" the website revenue for viewing the articles.
The legal answer regarding it being a copyright violation because the host website loses some click throughs has been shown to be false. There are other mechanisms that can be legally employed to view the page on their own server without the clicks.
DUh has a "policy" of only excerpting but it gets violated regularly. I don't believe that there is any automatic mechanism for forcing articles to be excerpted at DU (at least from specific sources). It is a much simpler forum system. All excerpting is enforced by their human moderators who are quite prone to human failings and error.
Everyone else who wants to see their fair use and public domain provisions of the Constitution want to make "free" use of what someone else produced. Those defending their copyright have a financial stake greater than those defending their right to the material. Those who seek the material want to make it available for free (in the case of "fair use") while those who seek to protect the "public domain" fight a battle alone that "everyone" will try to cash in on once it is won.
Example: It's A Wonderful Life had lapsed into the public domain. Retroactively it's copyright was re-granted (a complete bastardization of copyright law). I believe "Republic Pictures" now owns it but I could be wrong. A number of companies used to release it to video and it is a factor in why so many channels broadcast this movie (it was FREE). RP wants to "protect" their copyright. If a public domain selling movie company like Sinister Cinema were to fight the issue that the copyright was reinstated unconstitutionally, they would fight the battle alone but face a lot of competition in the marketplace if they won.
The copyright owners always seem willing to pay more than those on the side of "right". Copyright law has become SO much more restrictive in the past 100 years.
Educators are permitted to duplicate materials without copyright violation. "Excerpting" is not a factor.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.