RSS: Not Your Father's Free Magazine

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Value from context.

If someone distributes the free publication as is, the publisher is pleased because of the greater dissemination of the advertising.
If someone removes material from the ads, then the publisher has lost the value of the additional distribution.

That original context issue is important to the Courts, as shown in the NY Times and stringers case, in which the decisive factor in Justice Ginsberg's decision was movement to a database.

So this comment appears incomplete:

"... the law goes out of its way, using doctrines like fair use and implied license, to specify that some of this sort of copying is ok because the rightsholder is not harmed by it (or indeed encourages it), and the copying is done to serve a greater public good (like enabling the existence of search engines)."

If the issue is quotation outside context, the rightsholder would not be encouraging, so your first point does not apply.

In the case of a search engine, the search result is links to the material in the original context. So your second point does not apply.



The places selected for distribution of the free publication are intended to facilitate people reading the material, then leaving it for later customers. If the publisher could make distribution more uncontrolled he would. So long as the ads accompany the material.

So your second comment seems of doubtful applicability:

"The volume, scope, and reach of material distributed via online syndication, by contrast, are bounded only by capacity; in other words, assuming the network is humming along and the bandwidth needs are appropriately met, the volume, scope, and reach of distribution are not bounded at all.

The fact that an online syndicator undertakes that task with full awareness of the technical consequences (1) makes the situation different from controlled, free magazine distribution, and (2) is likely to weigh in the judicial balance toward the finding of some kind of implied license ? a limited one encompassing "white hat" and not "black hat" copying and reuse (and parsing which is which becomes a whole separate problem, of course), but some kind of license nonetheless."

The fact that online distribution is more successful at distributing material in its original context only makes the internet a more successful means of distribution; it doesn't change the goal or the requirements of the publisher.

How much of a penalty for success should there be?


I may well be overlooking an implicit point in your argument. Making it less implicit would be appreciated.

Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 09/01/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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