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Theft is always an illegitimate taking of someone else's personal property.

Those who've complained to FR about preserving their property rights have had them preserved.

Those who put their product out in the public domain with no expectation of remuneration cannot, by definition, have that property taken.

If you check the source addresses for most articles on FR, you'll discover that the articles are posted as free for the taking. The fact that they appear on FR is actually a benefit for those organizations in that multiple thousands see their articles and over time are more likely to navigate to their website and produce "hits." It is "hits" that generate advertising income for many of these websites.

If you check the source addresses for most articles on FR, you'll discover that the articles are posted as free for the taking.

No. Here at FR, they are not accompanied by the ads which support the website paying the syndication fees for the articles. And no cookies are planted for building consumer profiles for demographics/marketing information for resale or for internal marketing info.

Posting the article at FR deprives them of their revenue. Plain and simple. And it's even worse for the online versions of print articles.

"Theft is always an illegitimate taking of someone else's personal property. "

By "illegitimate", do you mean according to the law, or do you mean against someone's wishes? And if you mean under the law, do you feel it is appropriate to use man's law to interpret God's? Also, why did you include the term "personal property"? I doubt if music could fall under this scope, since most of it is clearly owned by large organizations.

"Those who've complained to FR about preserving their property rights have had them preserved. "

Sure, those large organizations like the Washington Post and the L. A. Times have the money to undertake such litigation. But, so many articles are posted from so many sources on this site. In fact, there may be some articles posted here from sources that have no knowledge that this site even exists. Can you definitively say that EVERY publication's desires have been met?

"Those who put their product out in the public domain with no expectation of remuneration cannot, by definition, have that property taken. "

Then, once I record a song off the radio, which is as much in the public domain as a website, it is free for the taking, right?

"If you check the source addresses for most articles on FR, you'll discover that the articles are posted as free for the taking. The fact that they appear on FR is actually a benefit for those organizations in that multiple thousands see their articles and over time are more likely to navigate to their website and produce "hits." It is "hits" that generate advertising income for many of these websites. "

That's fine, but if you want me to assume that this is universally the case on Freerepublic, I won't. Even you used the term "most", suggesting that if there is a fair amount that is legitimate, then it is OK. Last week, I clicked an article on the topic of downloading music, intent on finding out what that publication's policy was. It sounded a lot like they didn't want us doing this...it was a typical copyright legal notice. And there, on Freerepublic, was the article posted in full. If you want to look at it, I'll put the link up here, as well as the link to the original thread.

My point is this...clearly copyright laws need to change, in both recorded and printed media.

The fact that you're taking two situations that are very similar, and justifying one, while simultaneously condemning the other, illustrates this perfectly.

Also, I don't think you're looking at it with an open mind. Clearly, you're looking for every loophole to support the idea that copying news articles is right. You should then sympathetic those who look for similar loopholes on the issue of copying music, instead of using the Bible to judge them as thieves.