Bullying Women: How we are taking down one hate blogger

Turn around is fair play, but not for a bully.

From: Cory Allen Heidelberger <cory@dakotafreepress.com>
Subject: Kathy Scott—inappropriate content

Message Body:
Dear Ms. Stewart:

You may want to review and edit Kathy Scott’s latest blog post concerning Annette Bosworth and my coverage of her Senate campaign and perjury conviction. The post contains numerous unsubstantiated allegations that I am a sexist who hates women. The post attributes to me an anonymous comment without any evidence that I was responsible for those words. The post copies entire posts from my blog without my permission. The post far exceeds the 900-word limit specified in your guest posting guidelines. Most importantly, the post does little to support your blog’s mission of “celebrating, supporting & connecting women entrepreneurs” and instead focuses on launching strange, hard-to-defend personal attacks.

She Owns It is your blog to do with as you wish. Simply be aware that Scott’s personal attacks do not appear to fit the otherwise positive, empowering mission and tone of your site.

Cory Allen Heidelberger
Dakota Free Press
Aberdeen, SD

Ask the Law Geek: Is publishing screenshots Fair Use?

Generally, four factors must be considered in context, as a whole to determine whether a reproduction is fair use or unfair use, i.e. copyright infringement. The four factors of fair use are:

  1. The purpose and character of the use: Reproduction for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research is not copyright infringement. This probably covers most blogs and personal websites, but there are other factors to consider.
  2. The nature of the copyrighted work: The Supreme Court has said that this factor is often “not much help,” but the nature of the original could become more important when dealing with digital works that may be reproduced not one time, but one million times, in a fraction of the time.
  3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole: If the original is 10,000 pages, and the culprit reproduces one page, that is probably not infringement. But, if the original is one page, and the culprit still reproduces one page, he has probably infringed on the copyright.
  4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work: This one gets fun. The Supreme Court has rejected an irrebuttable presumption that commercial reproduction eliminates the fair use defense, but reproduction for a commercial purpose may push the secondary use closer to infringement and farther away from fair use. This factor requires the court to consider the relevant market and the competitive atmosphere while simultaneously trying to increase the welfare of Americans, two often competing interests. For instance, although a corporation may limit many forms of unauthorized reproduction of its software, the FCC has stated that truthful, non-deceptive comparative advertising is both legal and important to a healthy marketplace.As is true in most intellectual property, courts seek to strike a balance between the rights and incentives of the rights holders and the welfare and benefit of the general public.
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