Righthaven loses second fair use ruling over copyright law
An Oregon nonprofit did not infringe on copyrights when it posted without authorization an entire Las Vegas Review-Journal story on its website, a judge ruled Friday.
The judge reasoned that
the nonprofit used it in an educational way, the CIO didn’t try to use the story to raise money and because the story in question was primarily factual as opposed to being creative.The judge also found there was no harm to the market for the story.
“The market (served by the CIO) is not the R-J’s market,” Mahan said.
These last two points seem bogus to me: (1) Even factual news stories involve intellectual work. (2) While the non-profit’s readership would have no independent reason to look at the R-J, it did deprive the R-J of potential readers by re-printing the whole story rather than a selection with a link.