Copyright violations: Please do not post full text from SF Chronicle and SF Gate

Email message from sfgate.com | April 2, 2004 | John Angelico, SF Gate

[Jim Robinson]

Subject: Copyright violations in re: SF Chronicle

Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 14:15:25 -0800 (PST)

From: John Angelico

To: jimrob@psnw.com

Dear freerepublic.com,

It has come to our attention that you have copyrighted SF Chronicle and SF Gate articles posted within your Message Board area. Here's an example:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1091396/posts

Our policy is to allow other sites to link to our site, but not to host our material. This policy ensures that our traffic numbers will be sufficient enough to maintain our free archives, which benefits everyone.

Please remove these full text posts (or replace them w/ abstracts and links to the full article on our site). Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

John Angelico sfgate.com

[nuconvert]

Well, they asked nicely.

[Political Junkie Too]

Give 'em what they want, Jim. Prohibit anything to do with the SF Cronicle. No links. No excerpts. Nothing! Who needs 'em?

Actually, the Chronicle is one of the few newspapers whose archives are still free. I find that very handy.

-PJ

[CFC__VRWC]

Only Miss Morford could have written that. It has such a distinctive, screechy, incoherent style.

[Freedom2specul8]

I really feel for you guys..I don't see how you can possibly keep up with checking all of the articles to make sure they are following guidelines....I can't thank you all enough for the hard work you and your helpers do.

[.38sw]

Free archives are nice. The Contra Costa Times charges to retrieve old articles - the last time I retrieved one (quite some time ago) it was $1.95. I prefer free.

[CFC__VRWC]

Her stories were getting lazier and more confused in the lead-up. Either that, or the doctors are still looking for the other gerbil.

Maybe Lemmiwinks finally got his revenge.

[hellinahandcart]

Well, if Miss Morford is gone, I can't think of a single other thing we need from sfgate.

[cinFLA]

Good reason for follow-up excerpts in the thread for key passages of the article.

[radioman]

LOL! I was wondering when this would happen. Many of those articles have been changed. When you post an excerpt, they can claim you took it out of context. If you go to their archives, you'll find that the article no longer resembles the article you posted an excerpt from. They like to be able to clean things up when they get caught lying.

Limbaugh posts the full articles for his members just to prove they changed. Seems like FreeRepublic should have the same right...

[mhking]

SF Gate/Chronicle are excerpt only. Got it.

[LisaMalia]

Hmmmm, too bad the SF newspapers aren't putting as much effort into investigating the activities of moveon.org

They could have a major scoop on their hands.

[upchuck]

I've added them to our growing list of excerpt only publications.

Jim, is this list published somewhere?

[jpsb]

Well the solution is to continue posting as normal, but have the viewing software extract an abstract (first para) even thou the entire article is available. Then allow a command in the link like "complete=true" over ride the abstracting logic and retreive the entire article. I'm a pretty sure I could make my forum work that way. So I am certin FR can too.

[NewRomeTacitus]

"They like to be able to clean things up when they get caught lying."

Why, you make them sound like the Ministry of Information from "1984". Surely their journalistic integrity would preclude them even considering such a thing.

[Freedom2specul8]

That's very interesting! It gives me the idea that we should save the articles to disk when we post them...or post the entire article on a geocities website for a period of time. When the thread gets dead, then the article could be deleted.

:)

[ErnBatavia]

I can't think of a single other thing we need from sfgate.

I like their "Weird News". Funny stuff there...

[radioman]

Would the viewing software be able to recognize the article in the post?

[radioman]

their journalistic integrity

LMAO...Good one!

[tpaine]

To; John Angelico

Dear sfgate.com,

It has come to my attention that you have forbidden me from posting copyrighted SF Chronicle articles.

This troubles me as I have subscribed to the Chronicle for over 40 years and feel that I have paid for the right to post verbatim articles at FR's Message Board area.
I doubt you would dispute that I have the right to copy and post such articles on any bulletin board in town for discussion purposes.

You even urge me to go to your website & send these same copyrighted articles to friends. -- And that is exactly what I am doing when I post them at FR.

Thus, - your stance on this matter is irrational. The news you publish will be discussed on websites like FR, with or without posting your copy verbatim.
-- You are playing a losing game by alienating your subscribers.

[jpsb]

Yea, what would happen is that the extracted abstract would go into a databse or a separate text file. during normal viewing the abstract would be retrieved, but if the link contained the override then the full article would be retrieved.

Another approach that might work, thou harder to code, would be to attempt to validate the link to the orginal article, if that failed then skip the abstract and get the full version. I might play around a bit.