It's Official: LAT/WP vs Free Republic Settles

LAT/WP vs Free Republic ^ | June 19, 2002 | Jim Robinson

[Jim Robinson]

I just received official word that our settlement with the LAT/WP in their alleged copyright infringement and unfair competion suit against Free Republic (click Source link above for complete history of the case) is completely finalized with the court. I do not have a copy of the final order yet, but the basic terms are as follows:

• Unless we receive prior written permission on an article by article basis, Free Republic agrees to continue posting only excerpts (as allowed by fair use) and links from any of the LAT/WP or related publications.

• Free Republic agrees to remove all full text copies of any LAT/WP and related publications copyrighted articles from its archives and servers and to destroy all copies of same.

• Neither party is awarded any damages, attorney fees or costs except that Free Republic agrees to pay the Los Angeles Times $5,000 and the Washington Post $5,000 (these negotiated amounts have already been paid).

I will post the entire final order including the list of related publications as soon as I receive a copy and get it scanned in.

Well, my fingers are not cold and dead and my keyboard has not been ripped away. While this is not entirely a win for FR, neither is it a crushing defeat. Free Republic is alive and well and the fight against liberalism continues on. It's a crying shame that the hallowed words of the WP/LAT will no longer grace our pages, but, somehow, I am sure we will manage to live on without them.

And despite what our detractors may say, we have not committed any crimes or broken any laws and we have not admitted to any guilt. We have negotiated a mutual agreement and settlement with the LAT/WP and have agreed upon satisfactory terms for continuing forward without having to spend the rest of our lives in court.

Many thanks to all of you for your past and continuing support.

Regards.

Jim Robinson

[callisto]

are you like me?

Most definitely. Short of reading from a specific journalist(of which I don't) there's little need since most news is spread to other outlets at a rapid pace. The internet can be used to avoid a website as much as it can be used to find one. Isn't technology a wonderful thing?

[MeekOneGOP]

Wow! Nice fireworks graphics !
The thing that would have made it better is if we could post LAT/WP in full.
THAT really stinks, imho. But it's behind FR now, thank goodness!
Must be a SCOFLA-type Election 2000 judge we got?.........

[harrowup]

Does a Day ever pass, when we can just not despise elitist liberals a little more than we already do??????

For the record, I don't like elitists period.

As to the discussion at hand I've often wondered why...

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appears on the WP's site just as it does on the NYT's...

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While I subscribe to both the ability to copy doesn't change when the server doesn't know I do having logged in from another station.

Early mornings involve doing just as they request by emailing and/or printing pertinent articles. How far down the line does responsibility lie for protecting the copyright? Have I more exposure than the website or person upon which or whom I direct my cyber reflection?

The thing is, I believe that Morrow was wrong de jure in her dismissal of the fair use defense...and I believe the WP/LAT want it both ways...they want us to link to their sites...and also print their articles...and email them to others...but they don't want us to critique them in public while the NYT has no problem with that apparently.

Of course if I were the caliber of Post management I would not want the veil lifted either.

[Dales]

We have 90 days to get them off (WP/LAT and all related companies). John is working on the programs as we speak.

Are y'all going to just pull those articles/threads, or is John going to do something like he does with the 'teasers' in the latest posts page, taking any related publication's post and pruning it down to just the first few sentences?

[RedWing9]

More than likely, these spiders would have to be custom built for each site and each format change of those sites.

Spider's give me the willies :o)

[meyer]

The business of publishing relies on advertising revenue. Subscriptions and newsstand revenue barely cover the costs of distribution. A publisher must guarantee to an advertiser that a certain number of people read a publication and are exposed to the ads. And, they factor in multiple readers at libraries, sharing copies, etc. So, its fine if you go to the library and read the paper to save money, because the publisher saves distribution costs and still gets the page views it needs to charge the advertiser. They have a right to be concerned about theft and re-distribution of their content without advertising. That is what you are advocating and there is no justification for your position.

If I recall, there was no loss shown by LAT/WAshCompost in this action. Second, most newspaper advertising in Los Angeles is of little value here in Tennessee. Do you think I'd drive all the way to LA to buy a Ford based on a full-page ad in their print paper that I read at the local library? And face it; auto dealers and other local ads represent a huge chunk of printed page advertising dollars.

Third, most archived information available for free (and I know that you hate that word) on library fishtape carries old, obsolete advertising if any at all. The sale has ended. The products have changed. And archiving news is part of this issue since papers regularly try to hide what they had available days before.

The papers want their cake and eat it too. On the one hand, they offer something for free that can be cut/pasted by anyone and saved to any hard drive with a little space on it; then they go on to claim that doing so might hurt revenue. Don't set a plate full of food on my table then tell me I can't eat it. Its on my table; its mine.

The papers are trying to apply old printed-page standards to an international, free-flowing information medium that is very much as uncontrollable as speech itself. I would suggest that a new revenue paradigm is in order since the old one doesn't and cannot apply. What if freerepublic were off-shore and out of the jurisdiction of the US courts and within a soveriegn nation? How would you apply this paradigm then?

I surmise that to try to prevent people from sharing information, they are trying to control the news. As has been pointed out, the news happens for free. If they want to spread the word for free, that's their problem. There are other resources for the information, though not too many as biased as LAT/WAshCompost.

[Dales]

Restoring respect for the constitution is a worthy replacement for opposition to Clinton.

Yep.

Partisan party politics are not, -- and will tear apart this small free republic, -- just as it has had much to do with the ongoing destruction of our larger one

Here is the problem, and where I think I start to disagree with you. I think that 95% plus of the people posting here do agree that restoring respect for the constitution is a primary goal.

The problem is that you have

• those who think this means anything that the founding fathers would have balked at must be rejected now, and
• you have people who think that the only way to get to a more constitutional (for lack of a better description) nation is to first minimize the number of liberal Democrats in office because if we push too hard now we will just cede power to the leftists, and
• we have people who think we should go along with the leftists to encourage a more radical backlash, and
• we have people who think that the striving for a return to our constitutional precepts is secondary to the battle against terrorists, and
• we have those who think the striving for a return to our constitutional precepts is secondary to controlling immigration, and
• we probably have a few other factions that don't fit into any of these categories but also agree with the general premise.

And when each of these groups or factions digs in, guess what you have? You have partisan politics, generally centered around different parties (Republican, Libertarian, Reform, Constitution, and whoever the anarchists are supporting) than the Republican/Democrat party bickering most people think of when they think of partisan party politics.

My way of saying, if you want to say that partisan party politics are not a worthy replacement for opposition to Clinton, and will tear Free Republic apart, then you probably should bust on anyone calling other Freepers statists if they are Republicans, or Bushbots if they support Bush, and harsh on those who bash Keyes constantly, and give hell to those who call libertarians druggies.

If you are serious about stopping the partisan party bickering, we have to police ourselves and not tolerate the partisan propagandizing and demagoguery we throw at each other on Free Repubic.

[nicollo]

Thanks for the business lesson. Let's see, buy low, sell high... I think I got it.

Now go read my no. 491 one more time, especially this:

The same political rights that lend to copyright protect our (fair) use of this material in the political context in which we use it.

The Washington (com)Post Company, or any corporation, exists by public grant. Katie Graham was not endowed by her creator with an inalienable right to control every aspect of her company's product. Or did you not notice that patents and copyrights expire?

The extent of "fair use" is contrived by statute. The nature of it is derived of the Constitution. That's why we argued the First Amendment.

Btw, your:

any immediate and global presentation of copyright material that bypasses a copyright holders revenue opportunity is unfair.

That is not what the law says. I would add, and we argued, I believe, that our political rights are not subservient to every "copyright holders revenue opportunity."

[an amused spectator]

The court should have kicked LAT/WP in their butts.

LAT paid good money to its boy Savage to advertise for the appointment of MMM. Why do you think a bought court would rule against the buyers? ;-)

[Grampa Dave]

Many people fail to realize that with the internet we have the ultimate choice to say no or yes to allowing what has been written to appear on our computer screen.

John Robinson will be soon allowing us that choice of whom and whose words don't appear on our screen while logged on to Free Republic. I currently use two other forums that allow this ultimate power to each user, and it is great.

If there is clymer who uses the forum like a drive by shooter or to push a liberal doctrine, you just block he/she/it from appearing on your screen. So the bully/thugs who live to terrorize and be bullies on Free Republic will soon be electronic history.

I place the bully/thugs on Free Republic in the same low life category as the NY Slimes, DC Compost, LA Slimes, USA Today and other liberal fishwraps as having Zero value. They will disappear from my screen/computer, the day that John Rob offers this new service to me.

[an amused spectator]

You can always open a website and post the full text of LAT/WP articles yourself. Then, when they sue you, you can have the privilege and honor of taking it all the way to the Supreme Court to try and convince them to overturn a century or more of bad case law.

Or, you can open a liberal website and post the full text of LAT/WP articles yourself, and they'll never sue you.

Sort of like The Smirking Chimp.

[Ditto]

I sure do miss Connie and Brian, to name but two

Ditto that, but life goes on.

[B. A. Conservative]

"You two better call Mel Brooks, - and get some tips on living a thousand years."

It took several hundred years for the Roman Empire to degrade their currency to nothing, but the empire collapsed quickly after the currency was destroyed. WJC, Robert Rubin, and their Greenspan stooge @ the Fed have set the stage for the destruction of the dollar. The Democrats have dumbed Americans down to the point we now have a huge basket of unfunded liabilities coming due in Medicare and Social Security. Under existing law these liabilities are unquantifiable and unknowable. Worse there is no practical limit of magnitude to which these liabilities can rise. To make it really exciting, there is no reservoir of capital or reliable income stream from which these maturing liabilities can actually be paid.

That is the way it is with political promises, lots of promise and no meaningful means of delivery. The history of the world is that politicians make empty promises in exchange for the temporal right to exercise power. They defer delivery into the future by the rolling over of progressively enlarging (compounding) promissory notes until the credit system collapses under its own weight. The United States is defintely less than two decades from the pyramid collapsing. And it could happen within less than a decade.

Tom,
From your name and your reply, I assume that you are a "doubting Thomas". And from past experience, so are most conservatives; Freepers are certainly not exceptions. This is not necessarily the forum for economic discussion, but the internet offers almost unlimited access to information of all kinds. I would refer you and other Freepers to another site which can shed considerable light and thought on the subject. I would encourage you to avail yourselves to not only the links in the article, but to all of Adam Hamiltons works and his references. It will be time well spent and it may help you survive the coming Inflation Tsunami.

"..tips on living a thousand years." I'm working on it.

[fight_truth_decay]

Congrats..now I wonder if Internet radio will be shut down by the music industry! Streams are removed from websites such as www.wrko.com that carries Rush..Howie Carr and others as we speak pending outcomes..

[an amused spectator]

What was this lawsuit about in your opinion?

Orders from the Clinton White House to shut us and our criticisms down. The liberal website The Smirking Chimp started posting full text Los Angeles Times & WP articles AFTER the MMM judgement against FR, and they only got a warning letter from the WP.

They still post full text Los Angeles Times articles, and they post disguised Washington Post articles. Neither publication seems to be troubled by these clear violations.

[bvw]

First, I am happy that this sword that has hung over the head of the Robinsons and of FR has been removed. I am sad that FR and Liberty did not completely vanquish the foe, but have heard that the decision is NOT a judicial precedent, and am very happy if that is the case.

Know Granpa Dave says "John Robinson will be soon allowing us that choice of whom and whose words don't appear on our screen while logged on to Free Republic."

If such a feature is implemented, I think a great strength of Free Republic will be lost, and we will be divided into little in-groups and miss many good comments and rebukes from members who we have some grudge against.

I can not reccommend more strongly against such a feature.

[an amused spectator]

Instead, it seems that the FR position was to argue copyrighted material was free to take.

Actually, we paid for it. LAT and WP sell their archived stuff to your friendly local library, and you can access your friendly local library's media archives on the Web.

All you got's to do is get a library card. ;-)

[Grampa Dave]

That is the beauty of being an American. You can allow anyone into your home or on your tv, radio or computer!

As an American, I don't want these Clymers in my home in any fashion. They bring no added value to my life. They for the most part are bullies/thugs who participate in 24/7 drive by shootings on Free Republic.

Thanks to Jim/John Rob for allowing us to make that choice.

This comment of yours reminds me of those who said we had/should listen to Maher of Politically correct after his remarks. Wrong!: "I can not reccommend more strongly against such a feature.!"

I use email blocking to block those who abuse it. I use Call Screening to block those not wanted on my phone, and now John/Jim Rob are offering me and others that same tool on FR.

[bvw]

Sorry, I have also tried such blocks in "forums" (note that word, implies a public place where any may speak up). I have seen the long term effect and it is like the breaking up into people unable to understand one another that occurred at the Tower of Babel.

[an amused spectator]

LOL!!!