Re: Posting the (Washington) Post

On Fri, 13 Mar 1998, Joseph P. Bauer <joseph.p.bauer.1[_at_]nd.edu> wrote:
>
> On 3/12/98, Tyler T. Ochoa <tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Several posts to this list summarized the decision in Quality
> > King. One of the posts, however, also reprinted in its entirety an
> > article about the decision from the Washington Post, entitled "Court
> > Lets Discounters Keep Selling U.S.-Made Goods They Buy Overseas,"
> > by Joan Biskupic, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, March 10,
> > 1998; Page A07.
> >
> > Just to make things interesting, is this posting an infringement
> > of the Washington Post's copyright in the article?
>
> In fact, the Washington Post has its own web-site, which publishes
> many of the articles from the newspaper for all to read, for free.
> That would cut even more strongly in favor of the assertion that
> posting one article, for a select group of readers, would have
> minimal/no impact on the market value of the work.

Being a frequent user of the Washington Post Web site, and a daily reader of the Washington Post, I do not believe your characterization of the Washington Post Web site is entirely accurate. The Post makes about 90% of its daily content available on their Web site for free for a period of two weeks. After that, it is my understanding that it is removed from the free portion of the Web site.

Archives of the Washington Post, dating to 1986, are then sold as a subscription service. From time to time, the Post has periods of free access to the entire contents of the archive. It looks like the most recent such period ended March 3, 1998.

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/archives/fees.htm

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