Re: droit de suite

On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, Lance Purple <lpurple[_at_]netcom.com> wrote:
>
> 1. Copyright is being misused to try and silence whistle-blowers.
> The "Cyber Patrol" case and the Lighthouse Ministry cases spring
> immediately to mind, plus the perennial lawsuits by [That Church
> Tom Cruise Belongs To]. This isn't about protecting authors from
> pirate sales; it's about stopping the public from seeing various
> embarrassing-but-true things about certain wealthy corporations
> and congregations.
>
> Proposed solution: if a work is (a) copyrighted by an organization
> rather than a human, (b) published within the organization but not
> sold to the general public, and (c) contains reasonably newsworthy
> information, it should be made legal for third parties to copy and
> publish the relevant parts for news reporting purposes.

As I understand copyright law, the fair use doctrine already permits copying without permission for the purpose of news reporting regardless of whether the copyright holder is a human or an organization, and it doesn't appear to address the issue of where the original is published. Given that, I'm not understanding the need to specify the qualifiers in Item 1 -- (a) and (b) -- they would seem to be moot.

That notwithstanding, here's the problem with the proposed (c) item -- what constitutes newsworthy? Too vague. As a whole, the media cannot even assess what is "newsworthy", and these days, the term "newsworthy" is invoked to justify invading someone's privacy for no other reason than to sully or diminish that person's reputation -- often over something horribly insignificant. Lest you forget, often the parties that are screaming for "full disclosure" are usually doing so to advance their OWN agendas.

Marty Hayes
<9ball[_at_]hostsite.net> Received on Wed Apr 05 2000 - 15:39:15 GMT