Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: TV, radio, and the First Amendment

Author:Jeremy Bowers
Posted:10/26/1999; 1:18:49 PM
Topic:TV & the First Amendment
Msg #:12379 (In response to 12377)
Prev/Next:12378 / 12380

It's perfectly comparable. Both the commentator/heckler and the speaker are aiming for the same target -- your ear.

Everybody's aiming at your ears and eyes! But the commentator and the heckler are on different platforms: One's on the PA system, one's on the radio. With TV, both are on the web page.

Your server and the files on it are your soap box. Once they reach my computer, I (and my tools) can do any lawful thing I want with them, even if the result does not resemble the page you wanted me to see.

This is a tautology; I'm claiming this isn't a legal thing to do.

By re-displaying the document in a form that the Pentagon did not appreciate, were the annotation authors trampling on some moral right that the Pentagon had?

As I believe you point out, American Government documents have different provisions then "normal" documents. Under normal circumstances, they would not have been allowed to republish the data in toto; it would hurt the market value of the original work too much, annotations or no. It is difficult to trample on rights that don't exist. Try doing that to a Clancy bestselling novel; the publisher will go right past "not appreciating" it and will be seeing you in court.

(In other words, that is an exception, not a rule.)

On a more theoretical note, do government entities even have rights? I don't know, anybody know?

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