Statesman publishes austin.general without attribution
Gary CPSR
a lot of postings.
I started the thread labelled "Statesman's XL Shameless Ripoff" last week
when the first issue of XL was released.
This week I find that my posting to austin.general is in XL as a *letter*
-- specifically in the section labelled "We Get Letters," on page 73. The
clear implication is that I sent a letter to the Austin
American-Statesman, which I did not -- they got the text from
austin.general, because that's the only place my comments could be found.
There are a number of issues raised by this. First, of course, is whether
a UseNet posting is "public domain" in the sense that it can be quoted in
its entirety in another venue or publication, without permission from the
author. Second is whether or not the Statesman should have noted somewhere
that this text was taken from a UseNet bulletin board, and not from a
letter sent to the newspaper. Third is the fact that the letter is
attributed to me and identifies me as a resident of Austin -- which I am,
but the Statesman would have no way of knowing that from my posting to a
UseNet bulletin board.
I don't have any problems with my opinion being published in the
Statesman, but I do have a problem with it being there without my
knowledge that the Statesman was considering its publication. If I wanted
to express my opinion in print, as a letter to the editor or to the staff
of XL, I would have written something different. Everyone knows that the
communication that is typical of UseNet bulletin boards is informal and
conversational, which may not be the style an author wants to see in his
or her local newspaper. It also raises questions of whether the
Statesman's use of material on UseNet, without permission, might constrain
people from expressing themselves, if they fear or are otherwise concerned
about their opinions showing up in the more permanent and more public
forum of a newspaper.
This is a question of journalistic ethics, in my opinion. The issue of
whether or not UseNet postings are public and can be quoted by newspapers
is definitely a gray area, no doubt about that. But it should be incumbent
on a newspaper staff to err on the side of caution and ethical
conservatism -- it would have taken very little effort to ask me my
permission, especially since both the XL staff and I use America OnLine.
What do others think about this incident?
-- Gary Chapman
cc: XLAu...@aol.com
Paul Walhus
: Well. . . . Here's something that's bound to stir up some controversy and
: a lot of postings.
: -- Gary Chapman
: cc: XLAu...@aol.com
I think they don't have a clue yet on the Internet and how it works, with
a couple of exceptions. But overall, I like that they're trying to get
feedback from users on the Net. I started an XL conference on the
Spring, but I made it clear that any quotes would have to be cleared by
the folks quoted. After all, it's standard policy on most systems that
you own your own words. But I think they probably did what they did out
of naivete rather than a deliberate attempt to rip off your words. They
(the XLent folks) need a forum where it is understood up front that folks
posting there are quotable in print. They've got a good idea and it
could improve with feedback from the Net. I'll look up your letter, is
it in todays XLent issue?
Laxman Gani
r...@bga.com (Paul Walhus) writes:
> I think they don't have a clue yet on the Internet and how it works, with
> a couple of exceptions. But overall, I like that they're trying to get
> feedback from users on the Net.
When exactly should we expect the Statesman to "get a clue"? As some will
recall, this same issue came up several months ago -- I opened the paper a few
days before the mayoral election and was surprised to find that a City reporter
(Mike Todd) had lifted a paragraph from my Usenet opinions about Daryl
Slusher's strengths as a candidate, and put it into his story about the local
Internet discussion of the elections. He did attribute me correctly, which is
where my problem starts...
I was upset because Mr. Todd apparently didn't feel he needed to take the
step of informing me that he wanted to quote part of my post. Had he bothered
to send me a message or pick up the phone, I would have asked that he not
include my comments in his article. I didn't get the chance.
I had a special case: Since I work part-time for the Austin Chronicle (not
as a writer), I had put a disclaimer of sorts in my Usenet post, explaining
that I had spent time working with Daryl Slusher (i.e. before he took his
leave-of-absence to run for Mayor). This qualification didn't appear in Todd's
article, so I ended up looking as though I was a "guy on the street," which was
rather less than true. (I didn't work on Slusher's campaign, but my
Chronicle-affiliation was enough for me to want not to appear in print without
that same information being included.)
As a side effect of not checking his sources, Mr. Todd also happened to
include an opinion from a *Statesman* employee (though not a writer) who'd put
a post on the net as well. Therefore, the "objective" story included an
editorial-type opinion from one of the paper's own employees.
I don't want to make a big deal of this again. As far as I can recall, the
net-consensus -- if there is such a thing -- seemed to be that there was
nothing *legally* wrong with a journalist taking material from Usenet postings,
because these are public forums, even though most Net service providers are
private companies.
I maintain, then and now, that it is *ethically* wrong for a journalist to
clip Usenet items without making at least some attempt to contact the people
who posted them (via e-mail or otherwise). The mayoral-race story was not time
critical -- the posts were over several days, and the story appeared well in
advance of the election. For whatever reasons, the writer chose not to take
the step of contacting his (unwitting) sources.
To that end, I gave the Statesman's City Editor my side of the story and
asked that he take steps to inform his writers about the appropriate use of
material from the Internet. I don't know exactly what a shrug sounds like over
the telephone, but that's pretty much all that I got from him. So I acquiesced
and moved on to other things.
> I started an XL conference on the
> Spring, but I made it clear that any quotes would have to be cleared by
> the folks quoted. After all, it's standard policy on most systems that
> you own your own words. But I think they probably did what they did out
> of naivete rather than a deliberate attempt to rip off your words.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice...
Our courts are far, far behind the times as far as privacy and copyright
issues on the Net are concerned. Once you hit the "send" button in your
newsreader, do you really "own your own words"? I doubt it. A journalist
should have the right to report on public happenings, and Usenet is no
exception. But that doesn't absolve him/her from the responsibility for
checking sources. Especially since the statements are going to reprinted for
an audience that's different (in nontrivial ways) from the one the posters had
written for (the Net community).
> They (the XLent folks) need a forum where it is understood up front that
> folks posting there are quotable in print. They've got a good idea and it
> could improve with feedback from the Net.
As the Statesman's editors continue to prove, you're best off assuming that
*everything* on austin.* could be fodder for a "naive" Statesman staffer to
copy and print as s/he pleases. Happy netting!
_________________________________________________________________
| |_
| Laxman Gani medi...@mail.utexas.edu (PGP/RIPEM) | |
| Dept. of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin | |
| | |
| Reality is the thing on the other side of your senses. | |
| - Jaron Lanier | |
|_________________________________________________________________| |
|_________________________________________________________________|
charles...@amd.com
> In article <34668j$h...@giga.bga.com>
> r...@bga.com (Paul Walhus) writes:
>
> > I think they don't have a clue yet on the Internet and how it works, with
> > a couple of exceptions. But overall, I like that they're trying to get
> > feedback from users on the Net.
>
> When exactly should we expect the Statesman to "get a clue"?
The Austin-American Statesman has the dubious distinction of being the most
blatantly biased, lousy excuse for non-journalism I've ever seen in any major
metropolitan newspaper I've read, and I've read lots of them.
Don't expect these folks to get a clue, they're being purposefully obtuse.
For example, wonder why the Statesman is the only Texas metropolitan newspaper
that chose not to report on the front page the recent poll that Bush is
currently virtually neck-and-neck with Richards in the race to be the next
Governor of Texas?
--
personal opinions
Gary CPSR
on in this public forum, austin.general. I consider austin.general to be
more or less a "town meeting," and my postings amount to me standing up
and having my say on some issue. If there's a reporter "in the room," so
to speak, he or she is free to report on what I said.
What I do object to is the Statesman reproducing my comment in a letters
section, without saying that these words were actually lifted from a
UseNet board -- again, the implication in the XL letters section yesterday
is that my comment was sent exclusively to the newspaper, which it was
not. It would be as if someone stood up at a City Council meeting and said
something, and then the next day, instead of those comments being quoted
as part of a story on the City Council meeting, they were in the letters
to the editor section. That seems a clear violation of journalistic
practice, if albeit a somewhat crazy one.
The other issue is the Statesman identifying me as someone from Austin,
and this is not a trivial issue. There is no way that the Statesman could
have known that I am in fact an Austin resident -- that is, without
contacting me directly. It is sloppy journalism, and naive, to jump to the
conclusion that because someone is writing about Austin, or is posting to
austin.general, that the poster lives in Austin or even anywhere nearby.
The Internet allows me to monitor austin.general even if I live in
Siberia. It also allows me, with some limitations, to *represent* myself
as living in Austin or anywhere else, and it would take a lot of trouble
to discover, through only technical means, whether or not this
representation was true or false.
This is where the "town meeting" analogy breaks down, because on UseNet
I'm not standing there speaking, available for interrogation by a reporter
who can verify my identity and where I live by asking me questions. I
could be anyone, throwing in my two cents about any subject, and from
anywhere. I could be an automated response system in Turkey, as we've seen
on some UseNet boards that have had the word "turkey" -- even when the
posting was about the edible bird -- replaced, automatically, by the word
"genocide" by some clever programmers with an ideological agenda in the
Middle East.
The reason this isn't trivial is that it goes to the issue of who makes up
a community, whose ideas count in a public discussion. In Santa Monica,
the PEN system (Personal Electronic Network), run by the city, doesn't
allow access to civic discussions by people who don't live in Santa
Monica. In Berkeley, the Community Memory Project doesn't even allow
dial-in access -- they have coin-operated terminals -- in order to
preserve equal access and community representation. Some of the FreeNets
that are springing up around the country make users register so they know
which users are living in the community and which are not.
I'm not saying that austin.general should be limited to people in Austin
-- only that the Statesman and others have to be careful about
representing who they see on this board.
-- Gary Chapman
ReedOnly
CPSR) writes:
>What I do object to is the Statesman reproducing my comment in a letters
>section, without saying that these words were actually lifted from a
>UseNet board
>
I agree. As an editor for a weekly coin collectors' magazine, I often
monitor discussions on rec.collecting.coins. I will answer questions if
someone is specific, and will help identify coins from descriptions.
IN NO WAY, however, would I ever consider using these posts as part of our
printed magazine unless 1) the writer specifically directs the message to
Coin World, Letters to the Editor, or 2) I specifically ask permission and
receive a favorable and privately-e-mailed reply (to this point, this is
theoretical. We have received but a small handful of e-mail letters to the
editor, all before the newsgroup formed.)
You are perfectly justified in your outrage, IMHO.
---Brad Reed
---Coin World
Chris Baleine
phone numbers, I'd assume they want to hear from you.
I agree they should ask for permission and post attribution.
T. Kelley Boylan
> phone numbers, I'd assume they want to hear from you.
While I have not been quoted by the Statesman (or said anything worth
quoting), I often do post queries on the Net for info on technical topics,
and the responses often end up in publication. (Mostly technical manuals.)
I always ask permission to use the person's material and give him or her
credit as a contributor.
I called the aforementioned number to find out what the Statesman's policy
is. Mr. Crowell was not at his desk at the time, so I left a message asking
if he could state that policy in the newspaper sometime in the near future.
I'd recommend anyone who's interested give him a call.
Given that the Statesman's writers are not computer literate, feedback is
essential. This is not to say he should be spammed, but I'm sure a number
of queries would alert him to the fact that he may be treading people's
toes in getting a paper out the door.
-Kelley-
Thomas Kelley Boylan |
Technical documentation | kel...@bga.com
System support | Austin, Texas
Brain transplants |
Gary CPSR
American-Statesman:
Editor
The Austin American-Statesman
305 South Congress Avenue
Austin, TX 78704
Dear Editor,
The September 1 issue of your supplement called XLent featured a "letter"
from me, in a section entitled "We Get Letters," on page 73. In fact, this
was not a letter sent to the American-Statesman , but text that I wrote,
lifted, without permission from me, from a UseNet electronic bulletin
board on the Internet.
This raises some questions of publication ethics, in my opinion. The
UseNet bulletin board called "austin.general" conceivably can be regarded
as a public forum, and your reporters should consider themselves free to
report what is said there, as if they were reporting on a public meeting.
But no one would advocate the reproduction of such comments in your
newspaper as a letter to the editor, which is a completely different form
of public communication, with different intent. Public comments should be
published with their context, as the remarks of a speaker in a particular
situation. Had I wished to send a letter to the editor about the subject I
addressed on the Internet, I would have worded my communication
differently and perhaps used a different tone.
If American-Statesman reporters are "lurking" on UseNet bulletin boards,
and allowed to reprint anything said there by users without an indication
that the text is used without permission, or without even revealing the
source of the text, this will have a negative effect on free speech on
"austin.general" and other UseNet boards. People tend to watch what they
say to reporters, in the presence of reporters, or in letters to the
editor meant for publication. The conversational style on the Internet is
less formal and frequently somewhat reckless. This incident of my "letter"
showing up unexpectedly in the newspaper could potentially change the
character of "austin.general" participation. That shouldn't happen.
The line between electronic and print communication will continue to blur.
I suggest that The Austin American-Statesman study this issue and publish
a clear policy of ethics regarding the future use of electronic
communication in the newspaper.
Sincerely,
Gary Chapman
Austin, Texas
Judith S. Weiss
on in this public forum, austin.general. I consider austin.general to be
more or less a "town meeting," and my postings amount to me standing up
and having my say on some issue. If there's a reporter "in the room," so
to speak, he or she is free to report on what I said.
What I do object to is the Statesman reproducing my comment in a letters
section, without saying that these words were actually lifted from a
UseNet board -- again, the implication in the XL letters section yesterday
is that my comment was sent exclusively to the newspaper, which it was
not. It would be as if someone stood up at a City Council meeting and said
something, and then the next day, instead of those comments being quoted
as part of a story on the City Council meeting, they were in the letters
to the editor section. That seems a clear violation of journalistic
practice, if albeit a somewhat crazy one.
Good analogy. Why don't you massage the above 2 paragraphs into letter form
and send it to Letters to the Editor at the Statesman? Even if someone on
their staff reads this, most Austinites don't, and the general readership
needs to be aware of the issues too.
(I'm all for giving the Realestateman as much trouble as possible, since they
are the only daily and tend to get a little arrogant.)
I think XLent. is a calculated attempt to step on the Chron's turf.
Everything about it reeks of calculated niche marketing. It's the OK soda of
journalism. When I stated seeing billboards for OK, I wondered whether the
folks it's aimed at would go along with the myth about a soda that "speaks
their language," or whether OK would get laughed out of town. Any stats on
that? Are people buying that shit? (Haven't tasted it myself, but I'm a
sparkling juice kinda gal.)
You don't have to like the Chron's politics to appreciate the need for more
than one journalistic pov in a city.
David Smith
As a member of this target market Generation-X, I kinda enjoy the
attention. As far as the OK soda campaign goes, I'm totally into it. The
ad campaign totally rocks, and I even crank call the 1-800 number when the
mood strikes.
I bought one OK soda, drank it, didn't like it, and that was the end of
that.
I have a similar response to the Fruitopia marketing campaign.
The XLent marketing campaign, though, is too generic, too cookie-cutter,
even self-referential. It just doesn't capture whatever inner essence
that responds to the others, and that the rest of my generation is
listening for.
To jump back to the letter, though, I thought Gary has written a pretty
good letter. It is rare to be able to express discontent without
degenerating into whining, screaming, or self righteousness. From my
perspective, there is no legal justification to prevent the Statesman
from lifting sections with or without attribution or notification. Not
every problem requires a legal solution, however, and the point I would
stress is that if the Statesman wishes to provide service to the online
community, they had better learn how to speak and represent themselves in
such a way that aligns with our community values, instead of incessantly
stepping on our toes.
And you can quote me on that.
--
thanks, | As near as my taste buds can tell, Fruitopia is merely
| repackaged Hawaiian punch. Someone should tell Minute
David Smith | Maid that death is all that awaits you outside
bla...@bga.com | the Eden Matrix.
Duncan Idaho
Laxman Gani <medi...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>In article <34668j$h...@giga.bga.com>
>r...@bga.com (Paul Walhus) writes:
> Our courts are far, far behind the times as far as privacy and copyright
>issues on the Net are concerned. Once you hit the "send" button in your
Bullshit.
>newsreader, do you really "own your own words"? I doubt it. A journalist
Your name, or pen name, and date are on all your posts. That means you've
copyrights to that material. You can double up by putting the (c) 1994
foo-bar-you Copyrights, All Rights Reserved. And for a real bother, you can
write the Fed for copyrights on your material.
Here's a Web reference containing US Copyright law:
http://www.law.cornel.edu/topical.html
And while you're at it, point out that you'll let the Statesman step all over
your Copyrights, if you can step all over theirs. Like rent a scanner for a
couple weeks, and open up an ftp site for pirated copies of the Slutsman.
STAR WITH THE CLASSIFIED ADS. That's the bread and butter of a newspaper.
And while you're at it, send the Slutsman a bill for your article, and
take them to small claims court when they fail to pay up.
- D
--
.... (C) 1994 Copyright Duncan Idaho, All Rights Reserved ..................
There are "three absolute rights [sic] the right of personal security, personal
liberty and personal property," Sir William Blackstone. "The protection of
these faculties is the first object of government." Madison, Federalist 10.
Judith S. Weiss
in other cities as well. Has this issue come up at journalist conferences? Is
it starting to be addressed in journalism school? Anyone know?)
Judith
David Smith
Give me the formula you use, Duncan, to estimate the economic value of
that last message.
Brendan B. Boerner
>I bought one OK soda, drank it, didn't like it, and that was the end of
>that.
I think it's supposed to be the US version of "Spezzi", a soft-drink in
Germany that's a mix between Orange soda and Coka Cola.
Brendan
--
Brendan B. Boerner Phone: 512/794-1576
Internet: bboe...@btrvtech.com \ Please use either if replying
or Brendan...@btrvtech.com / by mail exterior to BTI.
Disclaimer: My views are my own, not BTI's. They pay me to write
code, not speak for them.
Elvis
> I have a similar response to the Fruitopia marketing campaign.
One thing I find very interesting is that while Fruitopia has a
stereotypically hip advertising campaign, their beverages are
essentially Snapple clones -- and we're all familiar with where most of
Snapple's ad money goes: Rush Limbaugh. What's really strange is that
some advertising people must know that the drink appeals to both groovy
youngsters and stuffy conservatives. Why couldn't they just have a
normal advertising method instead of Fruitopia's psychedelic fruit
kaleidoscope, which will scare off oldsters, or Snapple's Rush, who
will actually cause people to boycott their product.
As far as Rush advertising Snapple, they could have Hitler plugging the
stuff and that wouldn't stop Kiwi-Strawberry from being a mighty tasty
beverage...
--
Eric McKinney <er...@zilker.net>
Randy Kirchhof
>In article <348pvv$6...@vern.bga.com>, David Smith <bla...@bga.com> wrote:
>
>>that.
>
>Germany that's a mix between Orange soda and Coka Cola.
Brown Fresca.
r
--
There's more to life than increasing its speed. -- Ghandi
=====================================================================
Randy Kirchhof | Travis County, TX | r...@kirchhof.com | hm - 512/259-7171
miswit
As a recovering reporter, here is the way I see it:
To me, Usenet newsgroups are similar to a group of people sitting around
in a coffee house discussing a huge variety of topics. When in informal
settings, we all are looser with our opinions than if we were, say,
talking with someone who might put our words into print.
If a reporter frequented our coffee house, he or she would obviously
overhear these opinions. (And quite often, that's how a reporter gets a
lot of tips.) However, the reporter's correct response when hearing
something of interest should be to thoroughly check the facts and confirm
anything that might libel someone with at least two sources. If the
reporter decides to go ahead and use someone's quotes, they should ask for
permission or at least tell the person they are using his statements and
give him a chance to add to or clarify anything.
Printing, without permission, anything we write to Usenet newsgroups is
akin to someone taking a tape recorder to our coffee house and taping,
transcribing and printing our conversations.
It may or may not be illegal, I don't know. I'm no lawyer. But I do know
it's unethical and extremely lazy. The reporters and their editors should
be hung up by their short hairs for such a hairbrained stunt.
David Smith
The product is essentially fruit juice, sugar, and water.
There is probably about 20 or 30 different manufacturers, all using
different marketing campaigns to peddle the same commodity.
R. Michael Litchfield
Judith S. Weiss <Judith_...@capmac.org> wrote:
>(I'm all for giving the Realestateman as much trouble as possible, since they
>are the only daily and tend to get a little arrogant.)
>I think XLent. is a calculated attempt to step on the Chron's turf.
>Everything about it reeks of calculated niche marketing. It's the OK soda of
>journalism. When I stated seeing billboards for OK, I wondered whether the
>folks it's aimed at would go along with the myth about a soda that "speaks
>their language," or whether OK would get laughed out of town. Any stats on
>that? Are people buying that shit? (Haven't tasted it myself, but I'm a
>sparkling juice kinda gal.)
x-posted to alt.fan.ok-soda
>You don't have to like the Chron's politics to appreciate the need for more
>than one journalistic pov in a city.
--
1-800-I-FEEL-OK
Jennifer Evans
I sure don't like the idea of anything I say here being stuck in the
Statesman and called a letter to the editor. But, as suggested earlier, if
they did so with my permission, that would be fine.
-Jennifer
Jason Zions
>r...@bga.com (Paul Walhus) writes:
> Our courts are far, far behind the times as far as privacy and copyright
>issues on the Net are concerned. Once you hit the "send" button in your
Bullshit.
>newsreader, do you really "own your own words"? I doubt it. A journalist
Your name, or pen name, and date are on all your posts. That means you've
copyrights to that material. You can double up by putting the (c) 1994
foo-bar-you Copyrights, All Rights Reserved. And for a real bother, you can
write the Fed for copyrights on your material.
Here's a Web reference containing US Copyright law:
http://www.law.cornel.edu/topical.html
[...]
.... (C) 1994 Copyright Duncan Idaho, All Rights Reserved ..................
Nothing like the clueless leading the clueless, I always say.
Consider the Copyright Act. Consider the exceptions bundled together under
the title "Fair Use". Consider that journalistic usage of copyrighted
material by and large constitutes "Fair Use", even when quoting the entirety
of a relatively small text.
Consider that the act of propagating your posting *requires* copying by all
and sundry systems to which you feed it, and to which they provide feeds,
and so on. You state "All Rights Reserved", yet you implicitly have granted
the right to copy by virtue of the medium in which you embed your work.
Journalistic ethics require that quotes be attributed; the text that started
this round off was. I agree that it's a little shady to recast that quoted
text in the form of a letter to the editor; they ought to apologize for
that. It can be argued that the author should be informed that his
freely-distributed work will be quoted in another place. But permission need
not be sought according to law.
You might want to follow that URL and read it again.
Jason
Judith S. Weiss
R. Michael Litchfield
alt.fan.ok-soda: 1-191
-
- Michael
--
1-800-I-FEEL-OK
Jeff Hayward
>Nothing like the clueless leading the clueless, I always say.
>
>not be sought according to law.
Uh huh. When you've got a copyright lawyer who has, for fee, given
you a written opinion stating that, let me know. Until then I'll
continue to believe that copyright *does* apply to usenet postings,
and that fair use *does not* exempt newspapers who are republishing
for profit.
--
Jeff Hayward
Duncan Idaho
In article <JAZZ.94S...@jazz.hal.com>, Jason Zions <ja...@hal.com> wrote:
>In article <3491aq$3...@lia.bga.com> de...@bga.com (Duncan Idaho) writes:
>
> >r...@bga.com (Paul Walhus) writes:
> > Our courts are far, far behind the times as far as privacy and copyright
> >issues on the Net are concerned. Once you hit the "send" button in your
>
> Bullshit.
>
> >newsreader, do you really "own your own words"? I doubt it. A journalist
>
> Your name, or pen name, and date are on all your posts. That means you've
> copyrights to that material. You can double up by putting the (c) 1994
> foo-bar-you Copyrights, All Rights Reserved. And for a real bother, you can
> write the Fed for copyrights on your material.
>
> Here's a Web reference containing US Copyright law:
>
> http://www.law.cornel.edu/topical.html
>
>[...]
>
> .... (C) 1994 Copyright Duncan Idaho, All Rights Reserved ..................
>
>Nothing like the clueless leading the clueless, I always say.
You may say that, but from what I see it's really "Nothing like substituting
adhominem in lieu of a real case..."
>Consider the Copyright Act. Consider the exceptions bundled together under
>the title "Fair Use". Consider that journalistic usage of copyrighted
>material by and large constitutes "Fair Use", even when quoting the entirety
>of a relatively small text.
Yes there is a fair use standard, and it does cite news reporting. So that's
something I had missed, but likewise I found that Fair Use is not unrestricted
if you'll read sect. 107 of the law. If you re-read my post's quotation, you
know the one you included in your adhominist reply, it's a proponent of the
existence of copyrights on a usenet post. Your post in "opposition" cites
the Fair Use standard, which means there must be copyrights, by inference,
before Fair Use Copyright standards may apply. So there should be no debate
that your Fair Use conjecture confirms my assertion that copyrights do exist.
And consequently, you were patently wrong to claim I was clueless...
"Fair Use" does not mean "Free Use", at least in my understanding of the
english language. ANd that's what I mean by citing there are limits on the
use in news reporting. Moreover, You have to take into account that not
everything in a newspaper is "news reporting" .... As to whether the Statesman
was covered by Fair Use standards, in not asking permission, that depends on
how they used it and what relative economic interests the copyright holder
and the derived copyright holder have. So it's not clear cut nor is it
monolithic in my reading of sect.107.
From what I gathered in the original post, on original thread, the copyrighted
materials were not used in reporting news or on their editorial page (which
also would be covered from what I read in sect 107). Moreover, it seems to
me that the Staesman was very cavelier in its attitude when the usenet
author challenged their use of the usenet post. If you look closely, at
even yesterday's Statesman, one news organization's article footnoted
another news oganization's matierals. Certainly, the usenet author did not
receive the same courtsey.
>Consider that the act of propagating your posting *requires* copying by all
>and sundry systems to which you feed it, and to which they provide feeds,
>and so on. You state "All Rights Reserved", yet you implicitly have granted
>the right to copy by virtue of the medium in which you embed your work.
That's a specious argument. Open a book sometime. And read the inside jacket's
copyright notice. It will have the very same language, and certainly if you
were the author you'd caused both the notice and the work's distribution in
quantity. Just as I do when I post to the internet. Moreover, I'll remind
you that no contract that I write can aborgate my statutory or Constitutional
rights, just as I can't sell myself into slavery. (And, BTW, that protection
was accomplished without a constitutional amendment.)
>
>Journalistic ethics require that quotes be attributed; the text that started
Now there's an oxymoron, esp. in the era of the Tony Oliphants and Austin
Chronicles of this Klinton world.
[Snip]
>
>You might want to follow that URL and read it again.
In your case, my advice is "read with comprehension".
- D
--
.... (C) 1994 Copyright Duncan Idaho, All Rights Reserved ..................
Judith S. Weiss
Anybody notice the story in today's RealestateMan about how the editors of
the UT daily paper (bless them!) decided that, no, they didn't want the
XL.ent supplement to be inserted into the Daily Texan every Thursday. It was
a unanimous decision of all the editors. They said it was five times the size
of the Daily Texan and made the DT look like "a black and white gift
wrapping." XL.ent also jammed the folding machine that was trying to insert
it. *snicker*
The AAS is in a huff 'cause the UT folks reneged on their contract. Shucks.
Martin Heinz
: Brendan B. Boerner <bboe...@BtrvTech.Com> wrote:
: >In article <348pvv$6...@vern.bga.com>, David Smith <bla...@bga.com> wrote:
: >>I bought one OK soda, drank it, didn't like it, and that was the end of
: >>that.
: >I think it's supposed to be the US version of "Spezzi", a soft-drink in
: >Germany that's a mix between Orange soda and Coka Cola.
Just like Budweiser and Miller are the american versions of a german drink
called "beer".
Martin
christopher williams
: Brendan B. Boerner <bboe...@BtrvTech.Com> wrote:
: >In article <348pvv$6...@vern.bga.com>, David Smith <bla...@bga.com> wrote:
: >>I bought one OK soda, drank it, didn't like it, and that was the end of
: >>that.
: >I think it's supposed to be the US version of "Spezzi", a soft-drink in
: >Germany that's a mix between Orange soda and Coka Cola.
OK soda isn't great, and it isn't horrible. it's _just_ "ok".
-cgw-