A pretty good flame you throw there, AF. Yeh, I fully realize that Jim made an informed business decision to protect himself and others, including you and me. And I expressed that to him in an earlier post, which you might have skipped over. As I said in that post, he deliberately put himself, his family and his supporters in financial harms way in defense of a constitutional principal which probably 99% of us wouldn't have done. Now go light a flame under someone elses a$$, preferably at the LA Times or the Washington Post.
Free speech. Hey, send the article via e-mail to a bunch of your friends. Woo hoo! Oh, living on the edge.
There's no first amendment right to co-opt the proprietary products of law abiding business entities. We have commercial law, and it's a damn good thing we do. Our laws of patent, intellectual property and copyright are integral to America's continued prosperity. It's what we do best. We invent stuff. Copying stuff is easy. I can copy a Dickie Betts guitar solo, but I could never invent it from scratch and have it come it out like that. That's why Dicky Betts is a multi-millionaire, and I like hacking on the guitar. Dicky deserves that money, that's his talent and effort and commitment. He's invested immeasurably more time, sacrifice and money than I have to play guitar with the skill and creativity he does. That's his tune, that's his money. I have no right to digitally copy the Allman Brother's new CD and sell it for half the price. I have no right to get some local yokels and cover their greatest hits on our own CD and sell it for half the going price through the black market. That belongs to them.
The people who believe they have some 1st Amendment right to use any speech, music, literary or journalism material created by someone else are jerks IMO. Same with the Napster thiefs. Same with the Software Pirates. Same with the guys who knock off our patented pharmaceuticals and engineering designs. They're pirates. They should go to jail, that's commercial theft. Same as if you came into my warehouse and stole 30 TVs to take to your store for resale. No difference. This is private property right, not a speech right. Our commercial laws have spurred innovation and efficiency in our economy. They are sacrosanct.
The Washington Post operates a number of news outlets. The newspaper, Newsweek, Business Week, Information Week, Insight Magazine, book publishing, web centers, trade shows, etc. They have invested billions in Presses, plant and equipment, data processing assets, delivery mechanisms, paper, ink, marketing, accounting and administration, editors, reporters, photographers and graphic artists. Pressmen, Truckers, Warehouse workers, maintenance etc. Need I go on? They recruit and pay talented reporters to provide news coverage or commentary that is more compelling, and thus produces greater newspaper, magazine and advertising sales than do their competitors. This quality and uniqueness of their news coverage is their basic VALUE ADD. It's their reporting, their editing, their production flexibility and their technology infrastructure. It all costs money.
Why WOULD they allow one individual to enter their site, copy their proprietary news material, and then post it for the perusal of 50/100/200/1000/2000 others? If the Washington post gets revenue from distinct visits or web hits, that's a direct and negative revenue impact for the Post. FreeRepublic is not a little chat room, we raised $70,000 plus last week. A $300,000 revenue organization is larger than about 30-40$ of all businesses in America. We pay FR to have access to the same material the Washington Post derives revenue from. Material that is theirs!!!
Would you go into an all you can eat buffet, pay the $8.00, load up some huge tupperware containers with all their food and take it outside to 30 people waiting for chow? That's what copyright law is about ... the fair return of a valuable product or service to the entity that creates and produces it.
Many here think that the lawsuits were trivial, but these two organizations have investments far beyond their daily rags. They have to protect the future ... these firms are making huge investments in magazines, books, television stations, video and audio production units, educational software and production etc. etc. They needed to assert their legal right to the revenue generated from their investments, assets and personnel. The Seattle Times can't print a piece by Post reporter Ceci Connelly in their paper without paying for the service. The National Review can't take a Byron York piece commissioned and owned by the Spectator and print it in their magazine. This was a new milieu, these companies needed to get their creative property rights confirmed in a court of law to build a sheild around their revenue centers. Period. They get paid for hits, there's no subscription fee. And, it's not whether any of us would go to the post or Times site without seeing the content of the story ... but rather, how many of us would link into their site once the lead in is presented here? That's the issue.
This isn't about Free Republic, it's about fundamental rights to the revenue of proprietary and revenue-valuable information provided over this new distribution channel. Doesn't matter if it's on paper, via pager, from a Fax on Demand service or displayed on the World Wide Web. That's their product. That's what advertisers pay them for - the value and demand of the information they provide.
I'm a virulent opponent to these Napster-like operations. They need to be shut down. Some guy spends 10 hours a day for 15 years to get the proficiency to create music that people will buy, and some buttholes in a dorm room who can't even play their skin flutes correctly put this guys work into a grab bag that anyone in the world can access for free? The artist gets stiffed. At the University of Minnesota, the creeps weren't even paying for the first unit. The library bought CDs, the kids checked them out, downloaded them and started sending the files back and forth. Uh uh, that's the difference between making a cassette tape of your Boston album for your brother or to listen to in your car and having a high speed duplication service and putting 1200 cassette tapes of Boston's new album out in a basket on Main Street. The first is fair use or a slight violation, the last is wholesale theft, pure and simple. I'd like to see those little twerps at Napster be thrown into a room with James Hetfield of Metallica and they can explain their anti-establishment right to steal tens of thousands of dollars from his pocket and that of his bandmates, roadies, agents and everyone at the record company. Those snotty punks need an ass-whipping.