- LOS ANGELES (AP) -- In a case with broad implications in cyberspace, the
Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post filed a copyright-infringement
lawsuit against a Web site that posts their stories without permission.
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- The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in
federal court in Los Angeles accuses the Free Republic site of using hundreds
of stories from the newspapers, violating their copyrights and diverting
users and potential revenue from their own Web sites.
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- Rex Heinke, an attorney for the newspapers,
said the Free Republic site has been posting the stories "on a very
large scale for a very long time."
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- The Fresno-based site posts the stories
and allows users to write comments about them. The site's operator, Jim
Robinson, said he has ignored warnings from the newspapers because the
practice is protected by the First Amendment and the "fair use"
doctrine of copyright law.
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- The doctrine allows portions of copyrighted
works to be duplicated when presented in the context of commentary, such
as a book review that contains excerpts.
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- "I'm resolved to do whatever it
takes to win this case," said Robinson, a computer programmer. "I
will not back down." He said he is being singled out because of his
political leanings. The FreeRepublic site features many right-wing messages.
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- The suit is widely seen as a potentially
groundbreaking attempt to address how copyright protections apply to the
Internet.
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- "It's a very important lawsuit because
it's a question that needs to be settled," said John Shepard Wiley
Jr., a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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- "The Net is one giant copying machine,
and producers, authors and content providers have been worried that the
Ne would threaten their basic economic incentives," he said.
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