MSFT v Slashdot

[Brad De Long]

>
>Microsoft claims its request was an act of copyright protection, not
>censorship. "We have no problems with the comments on this technology
>- in fact, we encourage them," said MS spokesperson Adam Sohn. But if
>you want the code, Microsoft wants you to get it from them - along
>with the licensing agreement. The Linux-friendly Brits at The Register
>grudgingly admitted, for perhaps the first time, that Microsoft had a
>point. Microsoft's proprietary Kerberos extensions are subject to
>copyright rules, "and the draconian DMCA makes the distributor liable
>for the copyright violation, and its resultant harm to the copyright
>holder," wrote Annie Kermath. "No matter how ugly it looks, Microsoft
>is within its legal rights to make the request."

Why isn't Slashdot's use within "fair use"?

The bundle of documentation that Microsoft markets is the 
documentation to Windows NT as a whole--Microsoft's Kerberos 
semi-implementation runs only under NT, and is never sold or 
distributed as a product separate from NT.

So all that Slashdot has published is a trivial fraction of the NT 
documentation system, and you are allowed to reproduce trivial 
fractions under fair use...

Brad DeLong