[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by Boofo

So what happens if they post only like 25% of something and then a link to the actual of the story?

This is a point of argument, what is "fair use" - I've researched this and the answer is there is no answer- it is decided on a case by case basis. If you quote 1 sentence of a book, that is probably fair use. If you quote one paragraph of a 3 paragraph article (33%) now you're really pushing your luck.

Unfortunately since there is no magic line where you can say "I only used 20 words so I'm safe." RightHaven, or anyone, could sue you for using as little as 1 sentence if they want- and the RightHaven model is to sue people who can't fight back so no matter how little someone might copy you would lose more money defending yourself that it is worth, even if you did ultimately prevail- but RightHaven knows you won't even try.

RightHaven usually sues people who copy full or significant parts of articles but have also sued people for using as little as 1 full paragraph.

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The thing is the guy behind RightHaven is both trying to make money but in a way he's also trying to "save" newspapers who are hurting. With the Internet people have decided they should be getting all their news for free when this had never been true in the past... You either paid for a newspaper or watched network tv news in which case you watched commercials, or paid for cable which in turned paid for cable news.

On the Internet now we expect free news and that means the news sites lose big money. Their only hope is to sell advertising, but anytime you or a user copies any significant part of an article that is money lost to the news site- because likely the visitor will not click on the link and not be subject to the advertisements they'd otherwise see.

So he has a valid point- it's not something I ever worried about before as an admin- if a user copied all or most of a short article I never thought twice about it- but in fact that wasn't a "victimless" crime... if everyone copied every article elsewhere online the news site that published the article to begin with would go out of business... RightHaven's goal is to make admins think twice about this behavior and while I don't agree with his tactics I can agree with his goals.