Slashdot Mirror
Weblogs and Fair Use?
CBNobi asks: "Most large news distribution sites do not archive news articles after a certain period of time. Being a weblog 'author', I sometimes write editorials in response to the articles. It is difficult for my rants to stay relevant when I end up linking to a dead page. I've read the fair use laws, but is vague on digital storage. So, my question is - how do fair use laws apply to the digital setting, where it is non-profit, but can be seen by others? (Or alternatively - is there a public, digital archive of news stories?) I find it odd that it is [usually] fine to link to news stories, but it becomes copyright infringement once it becomes impossible."
Some sites (typically newspapers) charge for historical research/reproduction of articles. So it's free and searchable for a month or two, but then you have to pay for the results of the search. For info on the NY Times archiving you can click here and for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News you can look here.
If you start interfering with their cash flow, you might be hearing from them.
Funny enough, this stuff is still free in a library.
The opposite of progress is congress
As someone who spent 8 years as a programmer in a library, I too am confused by the double standard - we paid a small fee for NY Times microfiche/microfilm, but let our patrons view it for free.
That is basicly what some news sites do now: for a small fee, you can access their archives. However, because you, the payer of this service, are not considered a library, you aren't given rights to freely make available that which you pay for.
This is a case where the traditional ways to make archives available for free [via a library] will hopefully change to take advantage of the digital life we all live in now. Someone, wayback machine, google cache, etc, should be able to purchase archives of news articles for the express purpose of making them freely available to folks on the 'net.
My Daily photo website.
Just post the article anonymously to the usenet and link to it through google groups, that should work and you won't have to worry about getting caught by lawyers.