Court Declares Newspaper Excerpt on Online Forum is a Non-Infringing Fair Use
excerpt Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Judge Roger Hunt’s judgment confirms that an online forum is not liable for its users’ posts, even if it was not protected by the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice and takedown provisions. The decision also clarifies that a common practice on the Internet – excerpting a few sentences and linking to interesting articles elsewhere – is a fair use, not an infringement of copyright.
Righthaven CEO Steven A. Gibson dreamed of making himself rich off of lawsuits over trivial uses of newspaper articles. Instead, his company is in ruins, his legal theories have been emphatically rejected and he is under investigation by the Nevada State Bar.