"Copyright" Brouhaha at Townhall

[Douglass Bartley]

http://rxpaul.townhall.com

Copyright/THCopy-Edit-tool-wrong "Soccer Socrates"
Posted at 1:44:42 PM on Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Mixed signals
Posted at 12:52:31 PM on Wednesday, September 12, 2007

"Sexism Running Rampant in USSR"-Copyrighted Story
Posted at 12:40:53 PM on Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Notice of Copyright
Posted at 11:57:36 AM on Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Russian Breakthrough: Enviro-Friendly Bomb
Posted at 11:39:11 AM on Wednesday, September 12, 2007

At Turn of Century, Ron Paul was Privacy Warrior
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 11:12 AM

On Proxy Wars by Proxy Warriors
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 10:45 AM

Dupicates, drafts cannot be deleted-sorry
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 10:30 PM

Townhall and Rx Paul: Friends For-Nevermore?
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 10:16 PM

[stevedasbach]

Sorry Doug, but I have to agree with Townhall here. They can get into legal trouble if they permit their bloggers to post entire articles. They indicated that extensive quoting and linking to the entire article is fine, so I don't see what the problem is. Their policy and the letter to you is typical for high-traffic websites that might attract the attention of the copyright owner (in this case, ABC).

Finally, it is, after all, their website, and they have a right to set terms of service. So even if this wasn't a legal issue, they would still be within their rights to ask you to respect the terms of service which you presumably agreed to when you set up the blog.

Please don't let your excellent blog get taken down over this.

PS: IMO, the copyright symbols every other word looks like a petty overreaction to a reasonable request from the site owner.

[Revolution9]

Having read forums for years that dissected online news items they would post a few sentences or paragraphs from the article and put the link. I wish folks would do that here so we do not have to give traffic to sites wth negative spin.

Best
Randy