I posted this at another forum. I think it's important and everyone shoud read it, do their own research, and make their own judgements.
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Copyright laws are "fuzzy". However, I do believe that "Fair Use" supercedes a license.
I believe this page uses "Fair Use", as explained by US Copyright Law.
http://www.lizardz.com/archives/scuba/message-20031208085202.html
On this page, I give credit for where the search came from, the domain for each "item", use only a small portion of each "work", AND use quotes.
This is taken from the US Gov:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
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<<The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”
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I believe that since my pages are "news reports", because they are "timely" and update daily, that using these resources follow "Fair Use", as described on the US Government page. Also, I use quotes and used: summary of an address or article, with brief quotations
Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3.amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
It is my understanding that it is a balance of all 4 factors, and that not any single one determinies Fair Use, one way or the other.
I think this is important for anyone using works of others, not just limited to RSS. So, I'll take this test for the page shown, and my "argument" for RSS, as well.
1. I fail this one. My pages and newsletters are commercial, or will be.
2. The nature of the copyrighted work:
A. Publicly available from a website or blog. Isn't password protected, etc.
B. In the case of RSS, RSS means "Real Simple Syndication" or "RDF Site Summary". A summary, by definition should be Fair Use. And since the author has full control over the summary, I think this strengthens my case for "Fair Use".
C. RSS is an open source standard meant for syndication of site summaries. If a person doens't want others to use their site summary, they shouldn't have it publicly available, or even better, password protect it.
3.Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. Again, see 2B and 2C. In the case of RSS, this is controled by the author. Again, if they don't want a lot of text in their desciption, then they shouldn't put it into their RSS pheed.
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
My use passes this with flying colors. I am INCREASING the market value by sending the author free traffic, not decreasin it. I'm not even getting a link in exchange, so the traffic is a "one way street".
In addition, The Gov also says Fair Use is a, "summary of an address or article, with brief quotations"...
And then says, "in a news report".
IMO, the page I gave above as and example is a "news report" consisting of "brief quotes", since they are news stories that update daily.
Again, the test for "Fair Use" is a balance of all the factors above.
While I failed one, I passed the others very well. IMO, being commercial does not by itself eliminate all rights to "Fair Use".
I feel pretty secure with my "Fair Use", although Netiquette does compell us to stop using resources, if the author wishes.
However, using Site Summaries is "Fair Use" in my opinion, especially when the pheed is offered in RSS phormat, since the author controls the summary. If not, then Yahoo, Google, MSN Search, et all, are in heaps of trouble, as well.
Of course, proper Netiquette would be to drop any pheed if a writer complains...But personally, I think it's kinda of "naive" to not want your pheed in as many places as possible. After all, that's the purpose of a pheed.
-Boom boom boom boom.
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