gyrfalcon wrote:It's a shame certain people want to limit and restrict the information that's easily available on the Internet.
Just because it's "on the internet" doesn't mean it's legal - or free to use. They also are not restricting any information whatsoever.
The issue at hand is the verbatim copy and paste re-posting of articles, which is basically full on copyright infringement.
The news itself (the story) isn't copyrighted, so you can summarize it or rewrite it in your own words. So the
information is not actually facing any restriction. Just their exact and specific writing and wording about it. Similarly, posting a few lines out of it (as you would when quoting a source) is also permissible.
Imagine if this was a mailing list instead of a forum and you needed to make reference to a news story. So you made photocopies of the newspaper and sent it out.
See how that's not really fair to the publisher? Same argument. It's really very cut and dry.
The only "new" thing here is that they are going after the small mom-and-pops which had been previously passed over not because of the legality, but rather that they simply don't have enough money to be worth their time. The change of strategy, likely, is that many people are starting to rely on blogs/forums exclusively and it's heavily eating into their advertising revenue.
So they sue a few people and maybe break even, but then also scare the bajesus out of everyone else.
The only truly scary/unfair part of this, is that DMCA safe harbor laws don't apply unless you have specifically designated and registered a contact. It appears to have been in the law previously, but this may be the first time it's been tested. It seems unfair to prosecute innocent service providers who have agreed to comply with the takedown request. It's at least an unintended side-effect, because usually it's not worth suing the small fry.