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Current Events » in reply to Mainstream media declares war on Internet

re: Mainstream media decide to test copyright law.
Mary Anne — (archived)

"Fair use" is only an interpretation of the copyright law. It's not law itself.

When an organization that employs a large number of journalists and photojournalists, such as AP, sees links to the work of its members appearing willynilly without the entity that paid for the writer's or photographer's work even getting a hit on its website, it correctly detects a problem. Without those hits, the paying entity (often, but not always, a newspaper) cannot demonstrate to its advertisers that it's being read by the advertisers' target audiences. The result to the paying entity may be eventual death by a million cyberpickpockets.

I have heard educated people assert that they can copy large portions of works, or even whole works, without an author's explicit permission as long as they, the educated people, are not doing it for profit. They believe that non-profit status justifies posting other people's work, identified of course, on their webpages and sites. Not true! It's really about time copyright law was elucidated for the public. Journalism is no Eden, and fair use is no fig leaf.

Re: the idea of licensing even the ability to link: If music producers can assert the right to charge $0.99 per song in electronic format, surely the original publishers can assert the right to be paid for their investment too. If writers and photographers want to, they will be able to go freelance to the public and be paid directly, or if they are independently wealthy, give their work away for free. I thought you liked free-market capitalism, where everything has a price and everyone has a right to demand payment.

As I read the article, AP is at this point merely collecting data on who links to what and what happens as a result. To call that a declaration of war on the internet is rather like saying the US has declared war on Brazil because we take satellite photos of the Amazon.

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