[Air-l] Copyright issues on material transmitted to AIR-L

[Ed Lamoureux]

I believe the Washington Post/NY TIMES, etc., to be the legal copyright
holders of the material their reporters/writers produce. As such, they
have a right (legally, ethically, and morally) to distribute the material
in their environment(s) of choice and to profit from that distribution. On
the web, that means in the presence of display/banner ads, for which they
are paid.

when readers refer to the url and link to the page . . . the copyright
holders' rights and authorial positions are protected. When readers are
shown plain text versions (copied and pasted), the display is not in the
commercial context intended by the producer. Distribution in this fashion
is akin to shoplifting.

I don't believe that one can protect oneself with the "academic" veil on
this one. We're not in class, we're not doing research on the list and its
behavior (and even if we were, the full text of the copyright protected
mateirals would not need to be part of the project), we're no different
from college dormies who think it's cool to use napster as a way to not
have to pay for the right to listen to music on their computers.

except, of course, that we should know better.

Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D.
Associate Professor, 
Speech Communication and Multimedia
Editor, Journal of Communication and Religion
Bradley University
Peoria IL 61625
ell at bradley.edu
http://hilltop.bradley.edu/~ell
Fax: 309-677-3446