Posting whole articles (was Re: Abortion Training)

[Nathan Newman]

Over at the National Lawyers Guild Drug Policy committee, we've been
spending quite a bit of time on this issue, largely because there isa
wonderful resource, the Media Awareness Project that maintains a large
database of media articles on the drug war. (at www.mapinc.org).   The media
types are getting more aggressive, but posting links is not going to help in
the long run.  They are already starting to sue people for linking to
anything other than their home page, based on the argument that bypassing
any page deprives them of income and thus is a copyright infringement.

The law on non-profit archives of sites is unclear, but I guarantee that if
all the sites now posting full articles retreat to linking, then the media
folks will merely move en masse to lawsuits over linking.  The law is
actually unsettled here, so a premature retreat is just going to encourage
the courts to ratify that retreat before we've actually lost completely in
the courts.

That is actualy the strategy of the media corps-- intimidate everyone so
they can argue that "practice" is not to post full articles, even in the
nonprofit world.

The other problem with links is that they disappear rapidly, meaning that
archives become useless.  People see the discussion but can't see the
original article.

If Marco is feeling threatened, we might have to cave unless we can find an
alternative host.

Nathan Newman

nathan at newman.org     http://www.nathannewman.org
http://www.nathannewman.org/log/  (News & Views WebLog)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marco Anglesio" <mpa at the-wire.com>
To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 10:56 AM
Subject: Posting whole articles (was Re: Abortion Training)

All,

Despite any philosophical objections you may have to copyright, please try
to sum up in your own words or quote a relevant fragment (thus falling
under fair use) of an online article. Post a link to direct people to the
whole thing. Five minutes work, tops, is not a lot to ask.

The archive maintainer, that being me, has already received a few nasty
letters from people defending their copyright and recently one presumed
nutbar claiming to represent AOL Time Warner's legal department. I can
only assume that media conglomerates are going to get tougher in this area
one day. I'd like LBO-Talk to survive it.

Marco

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>                                      |       With sufficient thrust,     <
>            Marco Anglesio            |         pigs fly just fine.       <
>           mpa at the-wire.com           |        However, this is not       <
>     http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa     |      necessarily a good idea.     <
>                                      |             --RFC 1925            <
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