[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.)

[John Robinson]

The forgotten fourth consideration was Impact of use.

[sweetliberty]

Thanks for the reply. I am the most anti-commercial individual I know and I can't see how it be construed in any way as commercial, but I am not a lawyer. Anyway, I'm glad they're off y'all's back for the time being.

[Bryan]

Well, since we are "minimally commercial," I think we should turn it to our advantage. A display ad with a link to Amazon, for such books as Bias, Hell to Pay, The Final Days, The Decline of the West and Ten Things You Can Never Say In America would gain Free Republic a 15% commission for every book sold through the link.

Such display ads should be kept off the threads to keep the "minimally commercial" thing going and avoid making any of our members mad. But it could be put on the homepage, the "Self-Search" page and the "Latest Posts" pages. There are a lot of options and this is just one of them.

Since we have the name, we might as well have the game.

[HAL9000]

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.

One of LAT/WP's arguments was that Free Republic was a commercial site because it used the dot-com top level domain.

Perhaps FR should have used the dot-org domain intended for not-for-profit organizations - like www.washingtonpost.org

Anyhow, I'm glad this thing is honorably settled.