More copyright complaints

Free Republic | April 8, 2004 | Jim Robinson

[Jim Robinson]

As most of you are aware, we've recently received several copyright complaints. In the last few weeks, we've received complaints from the SJ Mercury News, Independent (UK), SF Chronicle and The Boston Globe. Just a couple days ago the Post-Gazette send a cease and desist notice and yesterday I heard from the Tribune-Review.

Tonight, I got a call from Amy and there were two more registered letters at our PO Box. The McClatchy News (Sacramento Bee) and USAToday are now added to the list of publications that have complained about copyright violations.

Well, folks, the handwriting is on the wall. The complaints are now coming in faster than I can respond to them. John is currently in the process of writing programs to search out and automatically excerpt all existing threads from these sources.

I think we're gonna have to go to excerpt and link for all news sources very soon unless we have written permission on file.

[CounterCounterCulture]

Sounds like we'll have to take control and keep hard copies and/or copies of important stuff on hard drive, for archival and research purposes.

We'll have to level whole forests to track their deceipt. Is that what they really want? ;-)

[Ex-Dem]

Sounds like we'll have to take control and keep hard copies and/or copies of important stuff on hard drive, for archival and research purposes.

That may not work with web-based articles, because they'll probably just deny it and accuse us of fabricating/altering the data files. At least with hard copies, the ink on the paper can probably be traced back to the newspaper in question, so there's no denying who wrote what.

[tpaine]

To: Mo1; Chad Fairbanks
To: Jim Robinson

Chad Fairbanks wrote:
Or, alternativly, as FReepers respond to the posted, excerpted article, they could "quote" the next paragraph in the article, and eventually the whole article is posted anyway, just in bits and pieces.

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That's an interesting idea
101 -Mo1-

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First proposed back in '98 when the WP/LA Times lawsuit first hit..
Naturally, -- as the owner, JR cannot even hint that we individuals can play this sort of game.
But if we all did it, would we all be banned? -- Or more to the point, could we all be sued?
140 tpaine


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I don't know.
-- That DUh link recommends that trolls post threads deliberately to initiate copyright lawsuits against FR.
-WeGe-

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You're misssing the point.
If individuals use their fair use right to post portions of excerpted articles in the body of a thread, -- FR cannot be held responsible.

JR & the mods cannot reasonably be expected to monitor every comment on every thread.

Sure, individuals could be charged with ignoring copywrite, and no doubt could be sued.

But I doubt if JR could be forced to do more than delete 'offending' posts, if & when they were brought to his attention.
Big IF..

[international american]

I was wondereing when this would happen...but it won't stop us!!

[ChevyZ28]

Well, here we go again. Round and round she goes, where she stops no body knows.

I would not be surprised to find out that this attack on Free Republic is in co ordination to shut up Rush Limbaugh. The conservatives can now fight fire with fire with Rush and this web site, they don't like it. Another clear and present sign we are winning and knocking a chunk out of the liberal notion of the world. I wonder how much longer we need before we can finally sink the liberal ship once and for all.

[BlessedByLiberty]

Think you're correct. Objective journalism has become an oxymoron and no one points out the partisanship of the media the way Freepers do. This is the problem the Partisan Press faces - the outright lies, mistakes, deliberate fabrication, or misquoting is presented here and Freepers will take it upon themselves to make the big COMPLAINT! Point out their partisanship.

This is what happens when you don't want to accept their propaganda - they have to limit how much evidence you accumulate.

Perhaps a few letters to editors asking why they don't want more exposure, as on the Internet of their reporting?

[\/\/ayne]

Something like that is already in place. Over the next few days I'm going to apply my auto-snip tool to reduce the corpus down to a permissible size. That action will be logged in the edit history of each article. The original body will be available to a select few, which may or may not include more than the moderator staff--depending upon how poorly the auto-snip performs (depending how frequently we'll need to re-snip the article, to select a meatier cut.) Auto-snip only grabs the first few significant sentences, and not with much thought at that.

Later tools could be applied (to new posts as well) to select facts... names and dates... to populate some type of search table. Quotes can be extracted as well. And other tools could be written to monitor changes in the source article and report differences automatically.

That sounds perfect for right now, but I believe FreeRepublic should become a regular newspaper that can pay for articles. We could excerpt normally but pay for the really important ones. All this can be spelled out in the posting page. Not everyone would understand, but enough people would get it and most would only post the whole article on the really important ones.

Note: Fundraising idea - Freepers are great writers - can some that are experienced authors write a book about the phenomenon of Free Republic itself and donate the proceeds? I'm sure it would be a best seller!

[maryz]

Are you referring to legal action? I thought it was the plaintiff's job to prove something, not the defendent's.

In a criminal action, the defendant doesn't have to present a defense; if he doesn't, the court reminds the jury that that can't be held against him. But the standard here is "beyond a reasonable doubt."

In a civil case, the standard is "preponderance of the evidence," and if only the plaintiff offers evidence, that's where the preponderance is.

[supercat]

"Happy Birthday", copyright 1935, has had its copyright renewed.

As I said, there may be a copyright on the lyrics. The original "Good Morning to All", however, is certainly and unambiguously in the public domain.

[Landru]

"I was wondereing when this would happen...but it won't stop us!!"

No it most certainly won't.
Only *stiffens* our resolve, Tim. ;^)

One other thing struck me hearing this announcement: the timing.
Didn't it strike you somewhat *odd* all these sleezy rags show up at right around the same time frame to whine & throw a hissyfit?

Had to ask myself: Could it be -- *GASP* -- a virtual Left-wing conspiracy!!??!!

>?<

...nawwwww. :o)

[Triple Word Score]

I get this odd thing--my firewall will tell me that various news sites are requesting my Ebay password.

My local news site, newsok.com, is one of the worst, but major news sources other than that have done it too. It mystifies me. I admit I know next to nothing about what is actually going on or if the request for my Ebay password comes from them or not.

I also don't know if my computer could give them what they're asking for--I always enter my password manually, every time....

[Jakarta ex-pat]

There are and will be thousands of websites out there that will never 'exclude" FR.

To hell with those who do and good riddnace; who cares.

[sweetliberty]

It is creepy, isn't it? I presume that they don't get through, at least not the ones that my firewall is notifying me about and I don't really understand how it works either, but I find it very disturbing that anyone with the know-how can access anybody's conmputer at will for whatever purpose they may have, and I'll warrant that anybody resorting to such things has no good purpose in mind.

[Jakarta ex-pat]

good riddnace=good riddance.

[cyborg]

Wow the player haters are out in force.

[cyborg]

hehehe

[TheBattman]

The questin begs - what are these news sources loosing by us posting stories from their sites (with linking)?

The answer is - zero. Thus you have to pursue other reasons for their desire to end our use of their materials.

This has nothing to do with copywrite infringement - it has EVERYthing to do with use of their materials in opposition to those media outlet's political stand.

[TheBattman]

Jim has already learned the hard way (via previous cases) that "fair use" does not apply to conservative web sites.

[Sloth]

Obviously, the lefties are getting more scared of you & FR.

[mo]

Have you looked into distributed servers using P2P technology? I'm not a computer guy, but there may be ways to archive and retrieve in cyberspace that do not involve owning and operating a file server.