[Maigrey]

Well, I went back and read through my journalism law book (from ~10 years ago) and there wasn't a specific listing of what constituted an excerpt for fair use.

One section mentioned 2-3 paragraphs, and another specifies four factors:

*purpose and character of the use
*nature of copywrited work
*amount and "substantiality" of material in relation to work
*effect of use upon the market (community)

I'm not impressed with Gannett specifying not even excerpting, 'cept to highlight hits for their information and/or getting hits on their sight for advertising purposes.

'Bout the only one I'm not thrilled with is the Nashville paper. Oh well.

I wish Jim did have deeper pockets to fight this battle, which seems to really just gearing up.

[Mia T]

Thx.

Of even more concern, IMO, is seizure of the search engines by people with big political agendas....

The attempt by the clintons to insinuate themselves into the Google operation is a very big red flag....

[HiTech RedNeck]

And that's part of the problem - by failing to spell out significant "safe zones" for fair use (other than narrow categories such as performing songs in a religious service) the Congress gives the copyright battle to those who have the biggest legal war chests. Them who has, keeps, whether or not a theoretical Supreme Court decision would come down on their side.

Would it make sense for a FR committee to propose an amendment to the US copyright law to carve out a specific fair use safe zone for the kind of commentary that FR does. If there could be united lobbying of Congress about this matter, perhaps progress could be made.