[sweetliberty]

"They claimed we are a commercial for profit site."

Based on what??? One of the glorious things about this site is the blessed absence of commercial enterprise. What morons!

Parsy, do you have an enlightened legal opinion as to how they can claim this is a commercial site?

[John Robinson]

Judge Morrow wrote in her final opinion that FreeRepublic was "minimally commercial" that it exhibits many non-profit-like qualities, but was none-the-less "minimally commercial." Couldn't tell you offhand why for sure and don't want to make unsure guesses on this thread.

If FreeRepublic did not have this "minimally commercial" distinction as written in her opinion, FreeRepublic would have probably won a second point of four used to assess fair use. FR easily won consideration for the character and nature of the work used, and easily lost the consideration for the amount of work reproduced. I forget what the other consideration was (there are four considerations in assessing fair use) but FR lost that as well. In short, it would have weighed much more favorably to have won 2 of 4 considerations (though it is anybody's guess how this Judge would have weighted such considerations.)