Thanks for mentioning my legal discussion of fair use here & linking to it.
I find Commondreams.org to be an extremely useful site as a blogger. As for the fair use claim on their site, I hope you're aware that commondreams is but one of many such sites which collect articles & make them avaiable on the internet & claim a fair use exemption fr. copyright.
How can you claim that commondreams causes significant financial damage to the copyright holder (fair use pt. #4)? Does it cause some harm potentially? I guess. Does it cause enough harm that a judge would rule that commondreams violated copyright & could not claim fair use? That's a toughie. But I don't think as a copyright holder I'd want to go to court with that as my main claim.
Another issue considered under fair use is whether the user changed the copyright material when they published it. Since Commondreams does not present the actual original article on its site but rather a barebones version of it, CD could claim that its use adheres to Fair Use in that sense.
The SFGate editor who claimed that Commondreams was "ripping off" their site in order to "get the pg. views instead of us" reminds me of the absolutist approach of so many copyright holders. If this editor is correct in saying that CD does not link to the original article, then I agree that this is wrong of them. But to say that a site that performs a free, non commercial service by keeping people online informed about important social & political issues of the day is "ripping them off" is overly melodramatic.
And if the Chron took CD to court how do you think a judge might look at a big corporation trying to take down a relatively small nonprofit do good website like CD? I don't know how any judge would react but again if I were a reasonable, cautious copyright attorney I might advise my client to think twice before going after them.
Besides, if I recall correctly the CD site say plainly that it will remove any article whose owner objects to it being published at CD (at least that what many similar sites say including my own blog). A simple C&D should suffice before you haul anyone off to court.
Thanks, Richard, for your comments on my blog, and for the very useful information on your blog.
I completely agree with a generous fair use exemption that would cover the way most blogs use material: that is, they excerpt it and comment on it, adding to the discussion.
Common Dreams differs, though.
You stated, "Since Commondreams does not present the actual original article on its site but rather a barebones version of it, CD could claim that its use adheres to Fair Use in that sense." I don't think that's an accurate depiction of what they are doing. It appears to me that they are republishing columns in their entirety, and not transforming, commenting, or otherwise adding anything of value.
As for economic damage, SFGate is clearly damaged if it gets advertising revenue based on page views (as I believe it does). It loses page views when Sorensen readers go to Common Dreams instead of SFGate.
Finally, as far as the big corporation vs. little non-profit, major news organizations are in deep trouble, even without having their content ripped off. Outgoing NY Times Public Editor bemoaned the budget issues that are forcing the NY Times to move from staff writers to freelancers, and now the Chronicle is terminating even lowly paid freelancers. The dead-tree press is no longer the Goliath against the online David.
Thanks again for your good work and please let me know if I am wrong about any of the above.
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