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.
Wouldn't that be something like conspiracy to commit fraud? If it can be proven that somebody did that, can't they be charged?
-PJ
I thought that I was the only one who does that...
-PJ
I think the one single thing that lost the election for Gore was WorldNetDaily's 12-part expose of the Gore family influence in Tennessee politics. That led to Tennessee voting for Bush in the election.
Did you notice how WND was refused Capitol press credentials for years after that? It's their way. Dont' engage, silence the opposition.
-PJ
Excerpts should do just fine. I post occasionally at another web site, this has been their rule for a very long time. We'll all learn to live with it.
I think you answered your own question. Lexis/Nexis keeps the articles in a database. Their database is huge. I assume they have a license for each newspaper because they sell the end product, "the search," to their customers.
Reading through all 460 plus responses, I wonder if this is partisan left-wing politics, old fashioned big business, or something else.
Some of these newspapers let you look at the old articles for free, but if you want to retrieve an archived one, charge you. It's possible our archiving costs them money in the long run, or will in the future when they switch to a similar system, so they are trying to whack FR out of the game to make more money.
It could also be the left-wing media fighting back against its critics, or sour grapes from complainers in the Left.
Well, this is the price to pay for becoming so big that everyone sees FR on their radar. Little websites don't have this problem. But if they think that they are immune to this kind of scrutiny once they are big enough for the enemy to see them, they are kidding themselves, LOL.
This reminds me of the stupid Spaniards, whom I have relatives from my mother side, voting for the commies because they thought that it would stop terrorism. You don't stop terrorism by allowing them to exist and flourish. So called conservative sites or "neutral" sites won't stop the main media from going after them if they are big enough. Their stupid idea that FR is generating profit, but they don't because theirs it's just volunteer donations (as if FR forces freepers to donate) shows their utter ignorance and wishful thinking.
The owners of the newspapers need to realize that there are countless ways to read old papers without paying to see the articles.
Libraries keep old periodicals around. I have to wonder (A) if libraries pay royalties for all microfiche or if any of them privately had old papers photographed and (B) if there are any libraries that have subsciptions to newspapers that permite patrons to use the library's subscription account number to view the archives on the newspaper's website (and if not, why not).
I'm sure this makes quidnunc, the Emporer of Excerpts, jump for joy!
Am I the only one that finds it very suspicious that all these complaints seem to be popping up at once?
CD
Also, these entities have teams of lawyers that spend their days searching the net for copyright violations. None of them care about the policical leanings of the sites they are looking at, they only care about copyright violations, which will ultimately lead to billable hours.
Its all about the $.
Perhaps you have some suggestions to add or maybe some legal resources (you are well connected with some legal groups) which would be helpful?
Therefore, the suggestion is to find a friendly professor at a university, who has a monster computer. Then the whole articles might be archived there, to protect the content of FR when the links to the original publishers go dead.
To protect the academic nature of this process, replacing the dead lines to newspapers and magazines could be open only to designated researchers, rather than everyone and anyone on FR. (If a renewed interest cropped up in an old thread with a link that has died, the researcher could go in, and make an additional excerpt that would address the renewed interest.)
This would not be just a gimmic. It could be legitimate and could work.
John / Billybob
When you lookm at the type of work done by Alamo Girl, the best of the best, the research work of FR is truly effective. Should not FR contact Lexis-Nexis and offer to make its work available there? The agreement would require that L-N connect FR's work to the original articles, inside L-N. No money need change hands in either direction.
John / Billybob
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