MN AG Ellison: Trump Has a Real Shot at Winning Minnesota

There is a difference between quoting someone and wanting to do what you are promulgating by using the video in a paid for campaign ad. A paid-for campaign ad is seeking value and without the explicit permission of the person involved can be construed as breaking copyright law.

Now, with that said, a news organization can use it in a news story and not break copyright law. Blogs cannot as blogs have been deemed not a news organization although some like to think they are.

How are people quoting each other “all the time”?

The difference is whether value is expected from the quote. Also there are laws that do govern quotes. Trump can use the quote without Morre’s permission and Moore or his attorney could send a cease and desist letter to the Trump campaign. Thus stating that Trump did not have permission to use the words and therefore making it illegal. Had Trump paraphrased rather than quoted verbatim, that is a different story. Quoting and verbatim quoting are different and one is against the law and the other is not. As such you cannot quote someone verbatim and expect to receive value from that quote. Obtaining office is considered a thing of value.

Just because everyone does it (jump off a cliff) are you going to do it to (not without a hand glider!).

Thanks for parsing the nuance of “expecting value.”

That makes sense in some respects. Though I would think when a significantly-known public figure like Michael Moore does a speech, his speech falls into the public domain unless he has explicitly copyrighted it, much as a singer will copyright their songs.

As for “people do that all the time” - it wasn’t a reference that people should follow what others are doing. But rather, just implying that if quoting others is done frequently by politicians and news orgs, that the act of doing so must’ve been vetted against infringement concerns.

Michael Moore’s speech does not fall into the Public Realm. It was given on a show that one either had to go out of their way to find and listen to and two subscribe to. What you think is the Public Realm also has its protections. For example, for someone like Sean Hannity, a well known public figure has pure and unfettered control of his speech over the Public Realm. Why? He clearly spoke in the Public Realm, but he is not a journalist. His opinion may be paraphrased when used in a campaign ad but cannot be used with him speaking those words.

A public figure like Nancy Pehosi speech can be used because she is a Public Servant. However, when she is not in a Public Servant capacity, her words are protected. Don’t confuse what is seen on a news story as being accessible to the public realm for use. As the news story belongs to the news organization that authored the story and as such are the speech is also protected. So you cannot just lift something from a news story or from an origination source without permission. Ask FreeRepublic about this and they will tell you that some News organizations people cannot copy word for word the story on here. They can excerpt the story with proper credit to the story.

What you see happening daily, even on FreeRepublic, the copy and pasting of news stories can be construed as copyright infringement. This begets a whole new discussion because it also brings in Section 230. However in the end the source of the information whether it be a news organization or a non-publishing website has laws that govern protections afforded to them.

And to your concern that the act of copy and pasting is vetted, FreeRepublic is a good example of this. There are sites no Freeper can copy and paste the entire story. And FR does list them as they get them which in turn is the vetting process. Those posts that are in infringement do get shut down on here.

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