Righthaven To Explain Why Reposting Isn't Fair Use 169
Ponca City, We love you writes "TechDirt reports that a judge has asked Righthaven to explain why a non-profit organization reposting an entire article isn't fair use. The case involves the Center for Intercultural Organizing of Portland, Oregon, which was sued by Righthaven in August after an entire 33-paragraph Review-Journal story about Las Vegas immigrants was posted on the center's website, crediting the Review-Journal. The nonprofit says it was founded by Portland-area immigrants and refugees to combat widespread anti-Muslim sentiment after 9/11 and it works to strengthen immigrant and refugee communities through education, civic engagement, organizing and mobilization and does not charge subscription fees or derive any income from its website. The interesting thing is that the defendant in this case didn't even raise the fair use issue. It was the judge who brought it up, suggesting that the Nevada judges are being inundated with hundreds of Righthaven cases, and that Righthaven has already lost once in a case that was found to be fair use so judges may want to set a precedent to clear their dockets."
So why not just provide a link? (Score:2, Interesting)
If the non-profit organization liked the story, why wouldn't they simply acknowledge Righthaven by way of summary and then link back to the source. Copying verbatim, even with acknowledgement, denies Righthaven hits to its website that otherwise would have been forthcoming.
What is fair use? IANAL but I would hazard a guess that entire reproductions without permission aren't fair.
Quoting for the purpose of refuting (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the stupidest aspects of copyright "law" is this:
You can't quote to refute a work. Say you think Al Gore's science is wrong, Sarah Palin doesn't know what she's talking about, or Cheney's a liar.
The best and most effective refutation would be to quote entire chapters, and refute them line-by-line or paragraph-by-paragraph.
Since your work would be possibly larger than theirs, you're not exactly just copying their work for profit. In fact quoting for refuting is probably the highest and best use for advancing the useful arts and sciences.
Yet copyright "law" can be and is used to shut down debate.
Re:WTF is Righthaven (Score:3, Interesting)
Unsuspecting? Are people who infringe on IP ever 'expecting' a lawsuit? Is it suddenly unfair to sue them just because they are ignorant of the law?
You assume that the defendants are always guilty. Given that Righthaven has already lost one of these lawsuits because the act in question was a valid fair use situation, then yes, "unsuspecting" is applicable.
Re:"Because we say so" (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? I'd say that advertising exposure is of considerable importance to "fair use". One of the four main tests is whether it reduces the commercial value of the writing, and if I can read the whole article without any chance of seeing the ads that reduces the commercial value. Otherwise, copying anything off over-the-air television would be potentially fair use, since the only commercial value of (say) a football game is to expose the viewers to commercials.
Re:"Because we say so" (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, if the use of the article is non-commercial and does not hurt the commercial value of the original, that's basically fair use.
Handing out paper copies on the street in front of the charity HQ is probably that.
But posting it to the Internet where it can be retrieved by anyone instead of going to the copyright owner's site? That is not fair use.
Re:My view. (Score:3, Interesting)
Odd, the local newspaper (Springfield State Journal-Register) uses a GPL license for stories that aren't copyrighted by the AP or other paid sources.
Re:"Because we say so" (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed. The summary seems to suggest that just because it's a non-profit organisation doing the reposting and they gave some sort of credit, they have carte blanche to completely ignore copyright. It's surprising that any judge would behave this way, so I'm thinking there is more to this story than we have heard so far.
"To clear their docket" (c) (Score:2, Interesting)
Strange that a judge has to decide the merits of a case based on the length of their queue.
I guess it would make sense to dismiss the case for lack of enough public interest, but to set a precedent?
In my opinion, reposting is violating the rights of the copyright owner to pull the story(or other content, programs come to mind) from their website, for example to charge money for it.
I think reposting without a financial interest might still constitute fair use, as long as either the copyright owner is still publishing the information for free, or as long as you comply with requests from the copyright owner to remove the content from your site. But I guess that's too much of a commonsense position for a court.
Re:Issue with linking to an ever-changing site... (Score:3, Interesting)
You could always host a full copy locally just in case the link does die/the article is purged for some reason and only publish it in that case. Loss of revenue would be invalid in that case as they wouldn't be generating of course this only works in the case of NPO's