Wonkette, a blogger who covers D.C. gossip, got quite worked up in a recent post about Bill O'Reilly's interview of Jon Stewart on the O'Reilly Factor; a performance described as, "So best." It seems excerpting the interview transcript wasn't enough, she copied the entire transcript into her own post. She writes:
Full transcript after the jump, which probably breaks about three hundred and sixty-seven copyright laws. But information wants to be free! Yay! Let the information run wild! Copyright 2004 Fox News Network, LLC Fox News Network SHOW: THE O'REILLY FACTOR (20:37) September 17, 2004 Friday Transcript # 091705cb.256 SECTION: News: Domestic LENGTH: 1658 words HEADLINE: Personal Story O'Reilly Discusses "The Daily Show" GUESTS: Jon Stewart, "The Daily Show" BYLINE: Bill O'ReillyBODY:
O'REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly. In the "Personal Story" segment tonight, he is the darling of the television critics, the host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, and now has a book called "America: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction" -- 'inaction,' one word. Welcome, Jon Stewart, to the no spin zone, everyone.
JON STEWART, "THE DAILY SHOW": How are you, sir?
Wonkette is a paid employee for publisher Nick Denton's blog mini-empire. Denton was one of the first to successfully create a business model for the blogs, via ad revenue. If nothing fundamental has changed, I assume that Wonkette is a paid employee of Nick Denton's blog empire. By copying and pasting the entire interview transcript (w/o a link to the source) into her for-profit site, I have difficulty finding any way this might fall under fair use. But it does provide a good example of copynorms. The post is still up, so there probably hasn't been much pressure to take it down. My guess is that it's really no big deal to Fox, but I don't really know.
Will Fox seek legal action? I hope not. As Drudge might say, developing...
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