Cease and Desist... copyright complaint from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

VIA email from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | 04/05/2004 | Corey Waugaman, PG Permissions Department

[Jim Robinson]

Subject: Cease and Desist...

Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 14:10:47 -0400

From: Corey Waugaman

To: Susan Kish , "'webmaster@freerepublic.com'"

To Whom It May Concern:

It has been brought to our attention that you have republished Pittsburgh Post-Gazette material without permission. This is a direct violation of the Copyright Law of 1976. Please cease and desist immediately.

It is the policy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette not permit the posting of our material on any web site but our own.

Material to be removed:

Allegiance to party complicates local race for incumbent Diven

All eggs are not created equal

CMU slur brings apology

AND ANY OTHER POST-GAZETTE MATERIAL

Please remove all of our material from your web site within 24 hours. Periodic checks will be made to verify your compliance. If the material has not been removed within the allotted time, legal action will be taken.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Corey Waugaman

PG Permissions Department

[Jim Robinson]

Please post excerpts and links only from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

I will work up and post an updated list of our forbidden/excerpt & link only site list as soon as I can.

Thanks,

Jim

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[Skooz]

Well, at least that request is slightly less snotty than most others.

[CFW]

Well, they didn't have to get snippity about it!

[EggsAckley]

Thanks in advance for posting a list. It's so confusing.

[dirtboy]

Maybe it's getting to the point where we should excerpt unless we have permission, and then create a volunteer group to archive key articles for future research purposes - you'd have three or four posters who would monitor critical publications and archive articles of interest.

[RightWhale]

Excerpts will do quite well. Maybe even better since most articles contain little new material and the rest is old hash. We can be picky and be even better informed.

[reagan_fanatic]

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - ryhmes with ticks.

[fortunecookie]

I wonder if the Post Gazette has extended this warning to other sites? Here in PA, as many freepers have already discovered, they are quite liberal, Bush-haters, big Dem supporters. No surprise they are offended, copyright issues aside.

[3AngelaD]

You would think they'd be paying people to read the stuff in their third-tier rag. Should be sending red roses to Free Republic for providing free exposure instead of standing on their dubious dignity.

[Coop]

Perhaps you could poke around certain infamous liberal sites and see if you find any unexcerpted Post-Gazette articles and/or similar snippy E-mail warnings.

[Gothmog]

I noticed similar request by the SF Chronicle. With my tinfoil hat on I wonder if this has to do with the 2004 election?

[TrueBeliever9]

Its Heinz country and the home of the Tides Foundation!

[MineralMan]

"It has been brought to our attention that you have republished Pittsburgh Post-Gazette material without permission. This is a direct violation of the Copyright Law of 1976. Please cease and desist immediately. "

So, who's bringing this stuff to these papers' attention. Seems like we have one of these things pretty frequently. Is someone ratting out FR?

[antiRepublicrat]

I got a C&D once for online material posted on my server, but the letter was friendly to the extreme, including a big friendly "thank you" when I removed the material and an offer for help relating to the subject of the materials I had posted. Why do these guys have to be so nasty about it?

BTW, in the bit I've read of the DMCA, FR could possibly get around this by instituting an internal news story caching system, since there is a special exemption in the DMCA for such systems.

[Hank Rearden]

I hope we can also maintain (informally, if necessary) a list of group login codes so we don't have to individually register with each and every site. I never give them real info, anyway; I get enough spam.

[Ditto]

I wonder if the Post Gazette has extended this warning to other sites?

The way their circulation keeps going down, you would figure they would be glad anyone is reading.

[Ditto]

FYI

[Political Junkie Too]

I will work up and post an updated list of our forbidden/excerpt & link only site list as soon as I can.

You may just want to get ahead of this curve and require only excerpts from anywhere from now on, otherwise these requests will just keep dribbling in. What they do show, however, is that the partisan media is starting to pay much close attention to the content of FreeRepublic because of the influence it is having on the conservative media.

If the Left can't shut down FreeRepublic entirely (and they have tried), then they will restrict FreeRepublic as much as possible by denying us the full content of as much as possible. I predict that this trend will increase rapidly.

I would hope that, perhaps as with Newsmax, the authors themselves will come here and post their content directly. Otherwise, excerpts will be the way that the Left tries to restrict the sphere of influence of FreeRepublic.

-PJ

[Flightdeck]

There's only one liberal in my extended family. He's a journalist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Nuff said