FreeRepublic Case in Appelate Court Next Week 22
An anonymous reader submits: "ETHER ZONE is running this article about the court case between the Los Angeles Times / Washington Post and FreeRepublic, LLC, which hosts the conservative politcal forum FreeRepublic. On Monday, February 11, the 9th District Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will convene to hear oral arguments in the ongoing copyright case. At issue is the propensity of FreeRepublic.com and its owner, Jim Robinson, to allow the posting
of whole-length articles from news organizations nationwide onto his server--a policy the Post and Times, respectively, assert infringe upon the intellectual property rights of both the news corporations and of individual writers."
What is Free (Score:3, Interesting)
He claims that Free Republic was set up in order to allow people to report and discuss the issues of the day with out hinderence. Then as soon as the USA gets one terrorist attack he supends the rules and declairs that decent will no longer be tolerated.
Comming from the other side of the Pond, yes I am British, this smacks of the knee jurk reactisonism we have come to expect only from our politishions.
If Jim was in the UK I'd say he was gunning for a knighthood, do you have an equivalent over there?
Any way I think he'll loose this one on the grounds that he has cencerd some of the posts so his argument about not being able to cencer others don't stand up.
Of cause when G. doublya Bush gets to hear about this he might want to do somthing to help.
Watch this space.
Re:What is Free (Score:2)
Isn't that called Slashdot?
I think you meant dissent.
Re:What is Free (Score:1)
Wher's the spelling nazi when I need him
Re:What is Free (Score:1)
Re:What is Free (Score:2)
If Jim was in the UK I'd say he was gunning for a knighthood, do you have an equivalent over there?
Appearing on the Tonight Show.
non-fair use and non-fair editorial policy? (Score:2)
The fair use thing is pretty obvious IMHO. He violated the standard and should be held accountable.
What really bugs me though is that he ran his site nominally on a free speech platform and now not only deletes aritcles, but bans users who's opinions he disagrees with. (We don't do that at poliglut and I don't even *like* half our users
Re:non-fair use and non-fair editorial policy? (Score:1)
I don't know why he can't just link to the stories like every other news/discussion site does. Linking clearly doesn't violate copyright. (If you don't want your stuff being seen/linked, don't put it on the web.)
I wonder if it would be any different if he kept a local copy of the story to link to just in case the original site took theirs down. Would it make any difference if he made it available only because the original source no longer did? If that's not legal, caching search engines like Google are in trouble. I realize that's a pretty fine line to walk. After all, if you have a local copy "just in case", how much different is it to just use that to begin with (as long as you're citing the source and giving due credit)? Unless it's not really about fair use of the material but instead lost ad revenue because of decreased traffic to the original...
I've never participated at FR so I don't know how they run things, and I don't know the specifics of this situation. Personally I think the community moderation model for discussion weblogs is better than editorial censorship.
FR is wrong here (Score:2)
Even free speech champion
Free Republic (Score:1)
Where does this end? If Free Republic were for profit, it would be a different thing, but it is not. It is nothing more than the digital age equivalent of people gathering around a water cooler reading, sharing and discussing the morning paper.
Lastly, if Free Republic is forced to only post a portion of the article, then the article is lost when the source (inevitibly) moves the article or goes off the Internet. Then, the discussion archive becomes nearly useless.
I can't stick around, I'll check back later for replies.....
Re:Free Republic (Score:1)
Single use. If you cut out the article and put it on the bulletin board, then you gave away your legally-obtained copy of the article, and you'll notice that it's not in your paper anymore. If you Xerox (TM diluted) the article and post in on the bulleting board, that's technically a no-no and that's what Free Republic does.
teacher taking an article out of a paper and bringing it to her class
Again, single use, and also that copywright laws make specific exceptions for academic uses. (This was one of the big challenges to the DMCA, that it violates "fair use" because you can't excerpt from a DVD without first DeCSS-ing it. Not getting it, the judge said "rent the VHS," apparently not realizing that much DVD content isn't on the VHS. But anyway...)
So why go after Free Republic? The "gather 'round the water cooler" analogy has a hard time reconciling:
1. There's only so much room on the bulletin board next to the water cooler. On the Internet, there are hardly such constraints. So the amount of "piracy" is potentially much greated
2. At the water cooler, the potential audience is your co-workers. On the Internet the potential audience is millions of people. So the damage from "piracy" is potentially millions of lost customers.
Interesting, I bet the courts will determine that it's okay to link to the article but not copy its contents. That's pretty much goes against what the courts decided in the 2600 case, where linking was the big no-no. I suppose there's a subtle legal difference depending what you're linking to: If it's "legit" content, you can put in the http: and if it's "circumvention device" then you can't.
On one point I agree, that the "digital age" makes all of these issues extremely unclear and will ultimately force a paradigm shift regarding copywright and IP. Like any revolution, it will take a while, and there will be plenty of resistance, esp. from the monied interests.
--I think I spelled copywright wrong.
Re:Free Republic (Score:1)
The difference between sharing an article on the Internet with a community of friends and sharing an article around the water cooler is the same difference as that between sharing an MP3 file on the Internet with a community of friends and sharing it on a cassette.
I can't think of a principled distinction.