Posted on 12/02/2001 10:09:56 PM PST by Bob J
Nothing...thats what it means.
The afholes have been trying to scare FReepers with this little bit information. Here is my opinion on the subject.
As you all know, the Washington Post and LA Times sued FR LLC and Jim to stop it from posting full text articles. The basis of FR's attorneys defense rested on the fair use clause. Unfortunately, Jim drew probably the worst judge he could...Margaret Morrow, a Clinton nominee, whose appointment was held up for a long time by Republicans due to here obvious left wing opinions.
The plaintiffs attorneys filed a pre trial motion to squelch the fair use defense and Judge Morrow ruled affirmatively. That basically took all the guts out of the Jim's defense. At that point, Jim's most prudent course of action was to stipulate to a decision against him. That way the case could get into the appeal with the least cost. This may have actually worked for the best since if Jim won, the WP was certainly going to appeal. It would also follow that whoever lost the appeal would then appeal to the SC. It has been estimated going directly to appeal may have saved Jim and FR 200-300k. Now, it may only cost 20-30k to get all the way to the Supremes.
Once Jim stipulated, they were allowed to ask for a dollar judgement. When Jim found out it was 1 million, he said "Why not make it 500 million. Hell, make it a billion!" The fact is Jim nor FR LLC have any money. What is raised during the quarterly FReepathons is used during the next 3 months for expenses. The LAT and WP know this. I doubt if they expect to ever see a dime of it. The judgement allows them to put a nice round number on their balance sheet to offset the obvious huge expenses this case is chewing up on their P&L's. Can you imagine the public relations nightmare for a multi billion dollar corporation to going after a disabled vet for a million bucks he doesn't have? How about a billion...heheh.
Obviously, some donations go to legal expenses, as in any business, but Jim is trying to minimize the cost. So, when an afhole throws that million dollar judgement in your face, as if you are or they expect you to pay for it, say what Jim said, "Thank you sir, make it a billion, please!"
Ha! What loosers...
Free Republic has a life of its own. It will never die.
Bottom line: If the OTHER NEWS WEBSITES can post full text without challenge from these bozos, why cannot WE?I've done some research on these sites. Grab yourself a cup of Maalox, you'll need it when you're done reading (all emphasis mine unless otherwise noted)
It's been said that dreams are our roadmaps to the future. If so, where are we headed? Common Dreams is a national non-profit citizens' organization working to bring progressive Americans together to promote progressive visions for America's future. Founded in 1997, we are committed to being on the cutting-edge of using the internet as a political organizing tool - and creating new models for internet activism....NewsCenter's roots go back to the early 90's when Common Dreams Editor Craig Brown (bio) was the chief-of-staff to a progressive member of Congress....
The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration for people who continue to work for a better world, despite corporate media's distortions and unwillingness to cover the efforts to free humanity.The Independent Media Center was established by various independent and alternative media organizations and activists for the purpose of providing grassroots coverage of the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle last November....
History & Goals
The Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace (CCMEP) is a non-hierarchical, democratic organization formed in the Fall of 1990 in response to US build-up towards the Gulf War in the Middle East. After the war it disbanded and was resurrected in November of 1997 when the U.S. threatened Iraq with another major military campaign. The group has remained active since....Since September 11, CCMEP has helped organize discussions, meetings and actions with numerous people interested in working together. CCMEP is working with other communities to call for a thoughtful, educated, peaceful, legal response to the terrorist attacks and an end to local and international racism. Since September 11 we have worked to educate media and religious communities, held several large demonstrations, and have initiated a boycott of Circuit City for their racial profiling....
Who We Are
The website has been created under the auspices of the Media Foundation, which is based in New Delhi...Aims and Objectives The Media Foundation is a society of like-minded individuals founded in 1979 to achieve the following objectives:
To promote, support, encourage and undertake social science, statistical and scientific research pertaining to the print, electronic, film and other media with a view to enhancing and strengthening their freedom and independence; to uphold constitutional freedom of speech, expression and information; and to encourage freedom in society and enhance the quality of life through media and process of communication.
This site contains copyrighted material which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of issues such as humanism, participatory democracy and social justice through news reporting, commentary and criticism. We believe this constitutes the "fair use" of copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of the US Copyright Law....
A place where we enjoy ourselves amongst the different homeschoolers and sometimes non-homeschoolers with all types of beliefs and backgrounds....Politics-for-all room (editor's note; this is the forum where the article is found)
All 'indepth' political discussion can be and should be discussed in this room only please....
Anarchy and anarchism on the web? Infoshop.org has lots of information of interest to anarchists, anti-authoritarians, and other activists
The Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) is an independent research and media group of progressive writers, scholars and activists committed to curbing the tide of "globalisation" and "disarming" the New World Order. The CRG webpage at http://globalresearch.ca based in Montréal publishes news articles, commentary, background research and analysis on a broad range of issues, focussing on the interrelationship between social, economic, strategic, geopolitical and environmental processes.
Even if I lose it all and the LAT/WP forces me into bankruptcy, I can still operate this thing from the poor house, or even from a jail cell if I have to, as long as someone donates a computer and internet connection and donors pay directly to the bandwidth provider and systems maintenance people. There is no law prohibiting that. If someone or some group of people want to set up a Free Speech Trust for a Free Republic, then all donated funds could flow through that and be controlled and disbursed by a board of trustees. No money will have to come to me at all, unless the board decides to help fund my maintenance.BIG Texas BUMP to that!
You are truly an American Hero, and a Defender of Freedom.. I find it very disturbing that we have those out there who think that the "media" should control public opinion, and not the public...
That is the ROOT problem, the lawsuit is simply a surface problem, that we will see unfold...
Thank you for standing up for freedom, I know it is the responsibility of each poster to give credit to the author, and not to plagerize, as a matter of fact, quoting the source or source document is an essential element of any discussion or debate. IMHO, this is consistent with "fair use" we want to give credit where credit is due, and critisism where critisism is due...
David
I say - go for it!
I would Love to have said something along those lines.....but, your words said it all !! !! !!
Bravo !!
Stay safe!
First off, government does it via the consent of the people. Criminals do not look to get any consent from anyone. Of course, government uses the threat of force, even just governments are allowed this. I don't think they use fraud per se, but I do think that there is a lot of unaccountability ( How could there not be though given the size of gov't. - look at this conservative website which won't give accountability to its donors - I would have to say that our federal government is far more responsible and accountable to its citizens than this website is to its donors) I wonder about the Libertarian premise. Assuming people on this forum that are afraid of the vices that the Libertarian premise has a hands-off position on, and would stand firm on individual rights and especially 2nd Amendment -- no-infringement whatsoever -- consider these points under the Libertarian premise:
. This "no infringment whatsoever" is such a load of baloney. First lets start off with a person that feels that they have a right to bear arms but does not have the money to buy one. Does their right of ownership of arms override the right someone else has to their private property? In you "no infringement whatsoever" world, the right of a mans property would be overuled by someone elses right to own arms. So by neccessity, private property rights must give way in order to have absolute rights in bearing arms. That is the funny thing about rights, they are all interdependent things and are not stand alone entities like you and your libertarian pals like to imagine.
Of course, then we get onto what that right extends to. Does it extend to nuclear arms? Does it extend to anthrax? If I were to guess, you would feel that you and you alone can define what is an "arm" and what is not. I know that you are not willing to allow the courts to figure that out.
1. How much would the vices infiltrate citizens lives and society? Probably not much more than they have already. But for examples sake, let's say vice doubled. How much violent crime would there be? How dangerous would it be for citizens and society? How bad would that be compared to number 2 below.
I have no idea. Nor do you.
2. Without the Libertarian premise, how far will government infiltrate to nullify the 2nd Amendment? All the way to gun confiscation. How much violent crime would there be? How dangerous would it be for citizens and society?
Well, the 2nd ammendment is not , nor has ever been dependent on the libertarian premises as layed out by the libertarian advocates on this forum. I do not know how far the governement will go towards gun confiscation, but I know people that own AK-47's, which demonstrates a right to own far more fire power than any of the American citizen posessed at the founding of this nation.
Sorry, but this reminds me more of Al Capone than George Washington.
The more I listen to your arguments concerning WP/LAT, and the principles you base them on, the more reasonable you seem and the more likely it seems to me you will win.
The failure of WP/LAT to consistently go after all so-called offenders, and instead pick on one and ignore the others, reminds me of an entity who hasn't made that mistake: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The statuette of Oscar -- both the object itself and images depicting it -- are scrupulously protected by the Academy. It goes after anyone, big or small, who reproduces that image even in the most general way. The Academy speaks up at minor infractions by the owners of tiny shops who sell Oscar-like images, even images not exactly reproduced.
A few years ago, I noticed a piece of illustrative art on the Web site of the Minneapolis Star Tribune (StarTribune.com). On their arts page, they had a graphic similar to this:
Their old image, like the image above, was a composite of images meant to portray "the arts," and it included a piano keyboard, a scrap of film, and... an image curiously similar to, but not the same as, the Oscar statuette. The paper had been using that exact piece of graphic art for years.
During that time, I had been reading about the Academy's protection of their image at their Web site. I decided to inform them of the StarTribune's veiled use of the Oscar image, and sent the Academy a link to the offending Web page.
The very next day the image had disappeared. The StarTribune had undoubtedly been contacted by the Academy.
The Academy does this because if they didn't protect their copyright against each infraction, however small, they would eventually risk losing the exclusive right to that valuable image. It would enter the public domain.
The WP and LAT, in my mind, gave up all rights to their flimsy, so-called claims when they allowed everyone else on the planet to the same "fair use" that they find objectionable by you. They have lost not only their credibility, but -- in my humble non-legal opinion -- any claim at all to the distibution and reproduction of their stories. At least when it comes to the Fair Use issue, you have them over a barrel.
Keep protecting yourself furiously as you have been doing, but I don't think they have a snowball's chance in hell.
(And now I may have to contact the estate of Grant Wood and send them a link to the Star Tribune's Web site.)
When it comes to forums and news souces, you and your site are SIMPLY THE BEST!!
We're behind you, sir!
We Freepers would never allow anything to happen to Jim Robinson. The world has felt our freep(sting) in many different ways and areas and subjects.
Tye don't know FR and Jim Rob have the heart of Braveheart and the soul of The Patriot.
Three cheers for Jim Robinson and FR!!!!!!!
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