[Bob J]

True, but then how did those slip through? After reading the complaint this doesn't look good. It appears the newspaper sold the rights to the story to an outside agency for the explicit purpose of filing suits to generate cash settlements. Kind of like a debt company selling their bad loans to debt collectors. They're not going to go away until they get some money and will threaten to go back in the archives and increase the amount they demand 10-fold. I think the absence if a cease and desist supports this theory.

My advice to Jim after the LA Times episode was to link and excerpt EVERYTHING. It's not up to the copyright holder to demand you not post their full articles, their copyright protection is intact when it is published. If L&E wasn't insisted on all, eventually this was bound to happen.

[Lazamataz]

?True, but then how did those slip through? After reading the complaint this doesn't look good. It appears the newspaper sold the rights to the story to an outside agency for the explicit purpose of filing suits to generate cash settlements. Kind of like a debt company selling their bad loans to debt collectors. They're not going to go away until they get some money and will threaten to go back in the archives and increase the amount they demand 10-fold. I think the absence if a cease and desist supports this theory. My advice to Jim after the LA Times episode was to link and excerpt EVERYTHING. It's not up to the copyright holder to demand you not post their full articles, their copyright protection is intact when it is published. If L&E wasn't insisted on all, eventually this was bound to happen.

All well and good.

However, Internet Copyright is now defined and articulated in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This act, while passed in the US under this name, is recognized in many other countries by other names.

Title II specifies that a reproducer of copyrighted material is protected in certain ways, to wit:

Title II: Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act

DMCA Title II, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act ("OCILLA"), creates a safe harbor for online service providers (OSPs, including ISPs) against copyright liability if they adhere to and qualify for certain prescribed safe harbor guidelines and promptly block access to allegedly infringing material (or remove such material from their systems) if they receive a notification claiming infringement from a copyright holder or the copyright holder's agent. OCILLA also includes a counternotification provision that offers OSPs a safe harbor from liability to their users upon notice from such users claiming that the material in question is not, in fact, infringing. OCILLA also provides for subpoenas to OSPs to provide their users' identity.

Free Republic's 2000 lawsuit was an attempt to challenge the requirement to cease and desist from presenting material AFTER the takedown notice.

But the law clearly requires a takedown notice.

I defy these hucksters to produce same.