It's pretty obvious that the posting of news articles for discussion is very different from copying and distributing music files, but perhaps Mr. Robinson has more specific insights into the differences and the legal intricacies since it has been put through the wringer of the courts and FR is still here.
It really doesn't matter. It still has to do with ownership. The news folks can decide when/where/how it's distributed. Same goes for the music folks. Just MHO...
It's not obvious to me. Here's the copyright statement from Tampa Bay Online (the AP news feed):
Except for material in the public domain under United States copyright law, all material contained on the Web site (including all software, HTML code, Java applets, Active X controls and other code) is protected by United States and foreign copyright laws. Except as otherwise expressly provided in these terms and conditions, you may not copy, distribute, transmit, display, perform, reproduce, publish, license, modify, rewrite, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any material contained on the Web site without the prior consent of the copyright owner.
I just can't see how you can defend one sort of copying and not the other. I think we all support FR and Jim in his effort's here. But I can't see how that differs from some teenager copying music. Maybe he/she wants to use the music as a basis for discussion, or maybe they want to learn some new chord progressions.
Too many times we forget just how the digital age changes things. The old methods of news dissemination have gone out along with hot lead and linotype machines. RIAA needs to pull its head out and understand that this is the 21st century. Just as Gutenberg's moveable type put an end to the scribe industry of handwriting books out in longhand for each copy that was produced, the Internet has changed music distribution. Before recorded music most artists made their money off of performances and writers made their money off of sheet music sales. I'll bet there were handcopied notes cribbed off of sheet music passed around in 1890 even though the sheets were copywrited. In 1920 musicians feared recorded music would take profits away from their performances and they would not make as much since people no longer had to hire live musicians. We saw that was wrong -- it simply drove up demand and people stopped making their own music. In the 1940s musicians who made money off of recorded music feared that radio would take away profit from their sales of recordings. We saw that that was wrong. People started to demand more recorded music after they heard a song on the radio. They made more money. The MPAA fought home VCRs because they thought people would simply record movies off of television. They were wrong. The movie studios started making more money off of home rentals and sales of VCR tapes and DVDs than they made at the box office. The world has changed. What hasn't changed is the RIAA and the MPAA. They are luddites fighting to save the buggy whip industry in the face of the automobile. I recently bought a CD based on a song I got off of the artist's official web site. Even though I had the song, I wanted the CD. You can't stop progress and innovation.