1. Too many Representatives flat out mis-stated what the Constitution says. They said that the copyright is "guaranteed by the Constitution" or that their Congressional mandate is to protect science and art. Neither is true. The Copyright Clause of the Constitution grants Congress the power to issue "exclusive rights" for the sake of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. That is, it was never about "protecting" but about "promoting the progress." Those are very different things. For that matter, it had nothing to do with creative works, for the most part. If we go by the originalist mandate, "science" was the part that copyright was about, and it meant "learning." The framers of the Constitution were focused on promoting learning and education via copyright, not a specific entertainment business. That it does that now is fine, but don't claim that the Constitution says that Congress must "protect" the entertainment industry. Because it says no such thing. After all, that same section grants Congress the power to grant letters of marque to privateering ships to seize foreign ships. If copyright is guaranteed by the Constitution, then so would the right to demand your right to a letter of marque.
2. Too many representatives continued to set this up as a battle between "content creators" and "the tech industry." This is dangerously misleading. In fact, at one point, Rep. Deutch flat out said that any copyright reform must carefully benefit "creators and the tech industry, as if those were the only two stakeholders. The real stakeholders of copyright law, however, have always been the public, who were barely mentioned at all in the hearing. Or, when they were mentioned, it was often with the somewhat disparaging term "users."
3. Finally, the myth that "everyone just wants stuff for free" was brought up a few times, in an effort to defend the idea that greater enforcement is a necessity. Except, that's not true. As we've seen over and over again, consumers are actually spending more today on entertainment than ever before, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And tons of studies have shown that the biggest infringers also tend to be the biggest spenders. You don't make good policy based on catchy myths, and this one is a myth. It should be stricken from the debate as false. And, I won't even bother with the one comment from Rep. Poe that "copyright won the cold war." Where do we get these people?

1. Pretty much everyone is both a content creator and a content consumer. Over and over again we heard about concerns of certain creators as if they were a separate class of people unrelated to the wider public. That's silly. Especially as we have copyright law today -- in which every piece of creative content is immediately covered by copyright at the moment the expression is set in fixed form -- we are all creators. Nearly every email you write is probably covered by copyright. Every creator is also a consumer of content, and that includes professional creators. Professional content creation often involves building off of the influences of other works. We should support that as well. Otherwise, we begin to treat copyright as a sort of welfare program for professional creators, which is never what it was intended to be.
2. Technology is just a tool. It is neither a competitor to, nor an enemy of, content creators. With so many Representatives setting up the debate as "content vs. technology," we start to go down a very dangerous and distorted path that has little to do with reality. As a tool, technology certainly can create challenges for existing and traditional business models, but also tremendous opportunity. Look at the success of platforms like Kickstarter today. Would anyone seriously argue that the "technology" company Kickstarter is "anti" creator? Similarly, we're seeing more and more artists succeed by embracing new technology platforms that enable them to do amazing things: Bandcamp, TopSpin, BandZoogle, ReverbNation, SongKick, Dropbox, SoundCloud, Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, HumbleBundle -- and many, many, many more. The list literally goes on and on and on. These are the tools that so many content creators are embracing today to help them to be better able to create, to promote, to distribute, to connect and to monetize their works than ever before. To argue that this is tech vs. content, when the tech companies seem to be handing content creators the most useful tools they've ever had to be successful, seems ridiculous.
3. Every legislative choice has costs and benefits. Too often, it seems like those pushing a certain proposal like to only look at one side of that equation. If we're to have an effective debate over copyright reform, it should include an upfront look at the costs and the benefits, the conditions and the consequences of various decisions across the board on the public. The purpose of copyright law, explicitly, is to promote the progress. We should be weighing carefully whether or not each change really would promote progress of science and the useful arts.
4. Decisions need to be made based on empirical data. As we've discussed in the past, historically, copyright reform discussions have been almost entirely faith-based. This is why the claims of "everyone just wants stuff for free" are so concerning," since the data suggests that's not even close to true. Given the recent call for objective research that would be useful in the copyright debate, by the US National Research Council, I'm hopeful that we'll actually begin to see some useful data for this discussion. Hopefully those in Congress will actually pay attention to the data, rather than continue to insist that blatantly false claims must be true.
5. Finally, and most importantly, the focus needs to remain on promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. It's not about "protecting" any industry or any class. It's about what most helps to promote overall progress. Each proposal should be judged on that standard.

As I've talked to the people who have looked into this matter, these news reports about what he was actually facing is not consistent with what the interaction was between the government and Mr. Swartz. A plea offer was made to him of 3 months, before the indictment. This case could have been resolved with a plea of 3 months. After the indictment, an offer was made and he could plead and serve 4 months. Even after that, a plea offer was made, of a range of zero to 6 months, that he would be able to argue for a probationary sentence. The government would be able to argue for up to a period of 6 months. There was never any intention for him to go to jail for a period longer than 3, 4, potentially 5 month range.

AARON SWARTZ, 24, was charged in an indictment with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. If convicted on these charges, SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million.

Cornyn: The subscription service didn't support the prosecution. Does it strike you as odd that the government would indict someone for crimes that would carry penalties of up to 35 years in prison and million dollar fines and then offer him a 3 or 4 month prison sentence?

Holder: Well I think that's a good use of prosecutorial discretion. To look at the conduct, regardless of what the statutory maximums were, and to fashion a sentence that was consistent with what the nature of the conduct was. And I think what those prosecutors did in offering 3, 4, 0 to 6 was consistent with that conduct.

The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts claims BSH Home Appliances Corp. is using Child's name and image without permission. The Irvine, Calif.-based manufacturer says it is simply making a factual reference to Child's use of its appliances.

Child, who died in 2004, had a Thermador oven in her Cambridge kitchen. It's now displayed at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington. She also used Thermador products on the set of her popular television show, "The French Chef."

BSH acknowledges that it has used images of Child and references to her use of Thermador products on its website and on social media sites, but its attorneys wrote in the complaint that "those uses do not state or imply any endorsement by Ms. Child."

The company said its references to Child "reflect on the long history, significance and influence of Thermador products on American society and culture, and Ms. Child's documented and well-known use of those products."

He decided the song would be in C, then assigned each note a number: C=1, D=2 and so on up through 9. Using those assignments, he played the sequence of pi: 3.14159 through 31 decimal places. He assigned numbers to chords, too, but could only play the chords every other note and still make it sound vaguely musical.

Finally, he used pi as the basis for the tempo — it's 157 beats per minute, which is half of 314. He played this part on several instruments, as you can see in the video above, and layered them to make a song. The result isn't exactly catchy, but it's certainly melodic.

The primary similarity between Pi Symphony and "What Pi Sounds Like" is the musical pattern formed by transposing the digits of pi to a set of musical notes. That pattern is not protected by Mr. Erickson’s copyright for Pi Symphony. Pi is a non-copyrightable fact, and the transcription of pi to music is a non-copyrightable idea. The resulting pattern of notes is an expression that merges with the non-copyrightable idea of putting pi to music: assigning digits to musical notes and playing those notes in the sequence of pi is an idea that can only be expressed in a finite number of ways. This does not mean that Mr. Erickson’s copyright is invalid, only that Mr. Erickson may not use his copyright to stop others from employing this particular pattern of musical notes.

What may be protected by copyright is the combination of that pattern with other musical elements: the choice of scale, rhythm, harmony, and embellishments or variation, for example.... Pi Symphony and "What Pi Sounds Like" employ different rhythms, different phrasing, different harmonies, and different tempos. The court does not agree with Mr. Erickson that the melodies of Pi Symphony and "What Pi Sounds Like" are sufficiently similar in their cadence or tempo to raise a question of substantial similarity. If there are additional similarities that relate to protectable elements of Mr. Erickson’s musical work, those similarities are minor and scattered throughout the work. For one work to be substantially similar to another, more than incidental and occasional similarities are required....

Thus, after the similarities based on unprotected elements of Pi Symphony are set aside, very few--if any--similarities remain. Mr. Erickson’s copyright is therefore “thin” and protects his work only from virtually identical copying...

Copyright protects against the copying of original elements of an author’s work. It does not protect the copyright holder's goodwill, market status, or artistic success. It does not even protect the author's hard work in being the first to create a compilation of information otherwise available in the public domain. See Feist, 499 U.S. at 359-360 (rejecting the “sweat of the brow” theory of copyright protection). These limitations derive from the constitutional basis of copyright, which is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” U.S. Const. art. 1, sec. 8, cl. 8. Copyright is thus intended to protect the original work of authors without granting monopolies over facts or ideas that would hinder further progress.... Given statutory law, the Constitution, and Supreme Court precedent, Mr. Erickson cannot use his copyright to stop Mr. Blake from employing the same idea—the transcription of the digits of pi to musical notes.

As with any governmental problem, real change has to start with the citizens. We need to demand evidence, and try not to let ourselves or our peers rely on rhetoric when we discuss and debate important issues and participate in the political process. But governments are not blameless: too often, politicians treat evidence as an obstacle to their political goals, when it should be the motivator of them. Here in Canada, this issue has been slowly gaining attention over the past year with growing complaints that the current government requires scientists it employs to vet their results through a media office before releasing them, to ensure that they are politically on-message. The Globe & Mail recently published a firmly-worded editorial calling on the government to end this practice, and citing the many people who want the same:

Ottawa should respond to the growing controversy – outlined in the prestigious journal Nature – by freeing its scientists. The magazine is calling on the government to show that it will live up to its promise to embrace public access to publicly funded scientific expertise. The issue is serious enough that it was the subject of a panel at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held last month in Vancouver.

The Canadian Science Writers Association and the World Federation of Science Journalists have also sent an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, citing examples of researchers being prevented from sharing details about their published work on climate change, natural resources, health, and fisheries and oceans. In the case of studies involving collaborators from other countries, Canada often gets “scooped” by foreign media who are not subject to the same level of bureaucratic interference. That hardly qualifies as celebrating success in science.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has drawn criticism before for exerting tight control over the media and all communications coming from his government, but this situation goes a step further. To censor scientists in this way neuters them and turns them into glorified copywriters, because the objective reporting of all evidence is the crux of the scientific pursuit. If this is how the government treats its scientists, then the government is not employing scientists at all.

This is a betrayal of Canadian citizens. A portion of our tax dollars goes to funding public scientific research, because it is supposed to benefit us by informing smart, effective policy, and that money is being squandered. We must call on the government to put scientists in their proper role: as shapers of the political agenda, not slaves to it. Until that happens, Canada bears the shame of being a country without public science.

The fact that the setting up of the database required, irrespective of the creation of the data which it contains, significant labour and skill on the part of its author does not justify, as such, the protection of it by copyright if that labour and that skill do not express any originality in the selection or arrangement of that data.

In a statement, Astrolabe said, "Astrolabe's lawsuit against Mr. Olson and Mr. Eggert was based on a flawed understanding of the law. We now recognize that historical facts are no one's property and, accordingly, are withdrawing our Complaint. We deeply regret the disruption that our lawsuit caused for the volunteers who maintain the TZ database, and for Internet users."

Smith’s statement draws on a high-end estimate also based on flawed assumptions for the U.S. "consumption-based share of counterfeit and pirated goods" in 2008. The cited $100 billion figure doesn’t reflect the costs to the economy, contrary to Smith’s claim; the 2011 study did not assess such costs, which are understandably slippery.

Maybe there is no solid estimate of the cost to the economy. Smith’s CNN.com statement rates False.

The fury from the Internet class is that the broad language in the pieces of legislation will be bad for start-ups, might prevent the next YouTube, or give the government the ability to take down a whole site because of one link to copyrighted works. In short, they're opposed to the legislation because they think it will be bad for the Internet business.

Bad for business. Anti-piracy legislation could be bad for the Internet business. It almost takes my breath away. Internet piracy has claimed half of the recorded music business, and made the prospect of making a living as a musician harder for artists of all rank and file. Why didn't Google, or Facebook, or Wikipedia ever stand in solidarity with musicians, actors, and writers - most of whom have never known fame and fortune - as their works were stolen with no recourse on their sites?

I have funded two films with my own money and am considering doing a third. Most of the people working on those films were not rich people, but rather middle-class craftsmen who make high-five-figure to low-six-figure sums per year. My decision on whether to fund another movie, thereby employing more people, will be based on whether or not I get my money back on the last two, and my prospects for making money on another. If a film of mine is put on a file-sharing site like Pirate Bay, Movieberry, and Newsbin2, and is then downloaded to potential customers, I lose revenue. Nobody is going to pay to see a movie in a theater, rent a DVD, or legitimately download or stream a movie once they already have it from a free pirate site.

Other industries have laws to protect them against third parties whose businesses facilitate a crime. Why not entertainment?

This is in no way censorship. A widely read op-ed piece by Rebecca MacKinnon in the New York Times likened SOPA and PIPA to China’s Internet firewall, which is used by that government to stifle criticism of its policies. This is a ridiculous exaggeration. There is no intent to suppress speech in these bills, only theft, and the risks of anyone being unable to find an outlet for their free speech because of SOPA or PIPA is minimal.

Blocking offenders will not break the Internet nor security. I’ve read numerous articles in which techies claim that DNS (Domain Name System) blocking — which forces ISPs to not allow access to sites determined to be trafficking in stolen entertainment — will undermine security and/or “break” the Internet. Like many of you, I am not versed enough on technical issues to explain how DNS blocking programs work or what may be the right method to ensure Internet security.

NATO’s Fithian said he had never witnessed such a reversal in momentum considering the legislation’s passage seemed all but assured in October. "This was the most amazing turnaround of public opinion in the 25 years I’ve been a professional lobbyist. We were up there since Day One and took 25 of my [exhibitor] CEOs and met with 50 members of Congress. We asked each member of Congress if there was anything they need to make the legislation clear and nobody said anything. Google read the legislation at the same time and didn’t say a word. But in November the greatest backlash ever occurred."

Fithian went on, "The backlash occurred, Google made its point, they’re big and tough and we get it. Hopefully now reasonable minds will prevail. Senator Dodd and his team are quite good at this. We’ll sit down with them and ask what has to be done to make legislation more narrowly tailored...."

"But the reality is we have to stop these rogue websites. They’re stealing jobs from my members. It’s not Senator Dodd’s big wealthy studio executives, it's the 160,000 Americans who earn on average $11 an hour at my cinemas. Those are the jobs at stake.”

"The criticism of this bill is completely hypothetical; none of it is based in reality," Smith said in a statement to Roll Call. "Not one of the critics was able to point to any language in the bill that would in any way harm the Internet. Their accusations are simply not supported by any facts."

"It’s a vocal minority, he said. "Because they’re strident doesn’t mean they’re either legitimate or large in number. One, they need to read the language. Show me the language. There’s nothing they can point to that does what they say it does do. I think their fears are unfounded."

It is estimated that intellectual property (IP) intensive industries provide jobs to more than 19-million Americans and account for more than 60 percent of US exports. Despite this enormous positive impact, these industries endure tremendous losses at the hands of increasingly organized and sophisticated foreign-based counterfeiters and pirates.

A February 2011 Frontier Economics report[1] estimates the total value of counterfeit and pirated goods in 2008 and projects the impact in 2015. In 2008, the report concludes the total global economic value of counterfeit and pirated products to the G20 economies alone ranged from $455 to $650 billion annually. The report notes this estimate was likely to be “conservative” for years beyond 2008 “given the rapid increase in counterfeiting and piracy observed between 2005 and 2008.” The report projects the impact could rise to $1,220 to $1,770 billion in 2015.

On the subject of digital piracy, Frontier found digitally pirated music, movies and software accounted for between $30 billion and $75 billion in value in 2008 and estimated an impact of between $80 billion and $240 billion in 2015.

An earlier Frontier study entitled “The Impact of Counterfeiting on Governments and Consumers” concludes that “approximately 2.5 million jobs have been destroyed by counterfeiting and piracy”[3] across the G20 economies. The report adds that no attempt was made to measure the secondary impacts of employment in G20 economies (i.e., suppliers, retailers and other sectors in the supply chain) or the impact on non-G20 economies.

Two other recent studies provide new insight into the scope of infringing traffic on the global Internet as well as the scale and complexity of the online counterfeiting and piracy problem. In the first, a report[4] finds that nearly one quarter (23.8%) of global Internet traffic infringes on the trademark or copyrights of intellectual property right holders. The report also estimates that approximately two-thirds of BitTorrent traffic was illegitimately shared content.

The second report[5] surveyed 22 legitimate trademarked brands revealing that sites offering pirated content and counterfeit goods generated 53-billion visits a year. In a release, the study‟s authors note that “[g]iven the large number of popular brands, it is reasonable to assume that hundreds of thousands of other rights-holders, brands and content creators are suffering the same damage.”

According to the report, “domains classified as „digital piracy‟ attracted the highest levels of traffic with a high in excess of 32-million daily visits on average for the most trafficked domain – rapidshare.com. On an annual basis, that traffic equates to more than 11.8 billion visits per year for that site.” The report further states that the “three [most-trafficked] digital piracy sites generate more than 21-billion visits per year.”

As damaging and extensive as digital piracy is to IP right holders, the harm is not confined to companies. The “2010 Digital Music and Movies Report: The True Cost of Free Entertainment”, which was conducted by security technology company, McAfee, reveals a growing number of cyber threats associated with “free” online music and videos. For instance, the researchers determined that searches for free music ringtones resulted in a 300-percent increase in the riskiness[6] of sites returned by major search engines. Searches for “MP3s” and “free MP3s” resulted in even greater risks.

The harms caused by digital piracy don't take into account the human suffering inflicted by dangerous counterfeit goods sold over the Internet. A March 2011 report by the US Government‟s Counterfeit Pharmaceutical Inter-Agency Working Group warned of the increasing challenges posed by thousands of websites that peddle harmful and/or counterfeit drugs or drug without a valid prescription in violation of federal law.

In addition to the obvious harms to consumers posed by criminals who traffic in counterfeit pharmaceuticals, health and safety concerns also negatively affect our men and women who serve in uniform as well. A 2010 GAO study revealed an alarming risk of counterfeit products entering the military supply chain and creating substantial danger to service-members

Director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) John Morton said “counterfeit and pirated goods present a triple threat to America. They rob Americans of jobs and their innovative ideas; fuel organized crime; and create a serious public safety risk. Counterfeiting has evolved to such a great extent that intellectual property thieves will sell just about anything that will make them a buck, with no regard for the integrity of the federal supply chain or the safety of our war fighters.”

A January 2010 study by the U.S. Department of Commerce estimated that counterfeit aircraft parts were “leading to a 5 to 15 percent annual decrease in weapons systems reliability.” The Commerce Department study, which surveyed military manufacturers, contractors, and distributors, reported approximately two and a half times as many incidents of counterfeit electronics in 2008 as in 2005. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in March 2010 that a supplier who sold a package containing a personal computer circuit as a $7,000 counterfeit circuit for a missile guidance system had been paid $3 million as part of contracts worth a total of $8 million.

Based on existing civil and criminal authorities, ICE has seized 350 U.S.-based[10] domain names that were investigated by ICE and ordered by federal judges to be seized after a showing the site is operating[11] in violation of criminal copyright or trademark laws. At least 86 of the domain names seized by ICE have been forfeited to the U.S. government. One foreign-owned site, Rojadirecta.com, which streams unlicensed and unauthorized sports programming over the Internet, has challenged the seizure of its domain name in federal district court.

These operations are not without critics. Some maintain ICE has overreached in this and related enforcement actions that involve child pornography investigations.

In response to concerns that H.R. 3261 may violate the First Amendment, the first provision in the bill, Section 2(a)(1), guarantees that the Act shall be applied in a manner that does not impose a prior restraint on free speech or the press. Constitutional scholar Floyd Abrams has also provided a detailed analysis of the free speech and due process implications of the bill and found it to be in complete accord with the Constitution and the rules that govern all civil litigation in US federal district court. A copy of his November 7, 2011, letter is on file with the Committee

In response to arguments that protecting American consumers and the US market from counterfeit and pirated goods delivered via the Internet establishes a dangerous precedent for repressive foreign regimes, the sponsors note that there is no moral equivalence between a US court issuing an order to enjoin continuing criminal activity and protect private property rights in full accord with the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution and a foreign regime that denies fundamental human rights to its citizens.

Finally, in response to assertions that permitting a federal district judge to authorize a service provider to apply the DNS solution to not deliver users to criminally-infringing websites, the sponsors note that Internet Service Providers already use this technique to ensure that subscribers do not gain access to websites that are associated with malware, spyware, viruses, child pornography or other unsafe or undesirable material.

"We are aware of the lawsuit," [Kim Davies, a technical manager at ICANN] said. "We believe it's important to continue the operation of the database. We'll deal with any legal matters as they arise."

1. Is data about when time zone rules changed throughout history protected under copyright?
2. If so, who owns it?
3. If someone owns it, is the Olson database a derivative work under copyright law?
4. If the Olson database does, in fact, derive from the work in question, is it a fair use?
5. Just how stupid are these astrologists, anyway?

What's even stupider about this lawsuit is that comments in the database encourage people to buy the book. So even if Astrolabe owns the copyright to the facts about time zone rules—a troubling proposition—their republication in the Olson database increases the likelihood that they'll make money off it.

A photograph is a mechanical representation of facts. This is unlike a painting, which is a non-mechanical representation of something—be it facts, such as an attempt to paint an outdoor scene or create a portrait of someone, or imagination in the form of how the artist sees the world, such as the Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night painting. Paintings, therefore, are pure expressions of ideas or facts. Photographs, however, are mechanical expressions of facts.

So can a photograph be copyrighted, even though it is a mechanical representation of facts? Yes.

Remember the Feist case—if the defendant in Feist had photocopied their competitor’s phone book pages then copyright infringement had occurred. They didn’t photocopy the pages, however—they copied the factual data and arranged it themselves. So even thin copyright allows some copyright protection, even if its limited.

A photograph deserves at least thin copyright protection. It is an expression of facts, even if it is a mechanical representation. Originality in the expression exists despite its mechanical origins—the angle, lighting, focus, and framing of the photo are controllable by the photographer. This allows a photograph to be original from another.

Photographs are mechanical representations of fact. Anyone who has ever taken photography seriously understands that these mechanical representations take a lot of work, effort, and result from each individual photographer’s expression of the scene being shot. Further, any commercial photographer will readily tell you of the importance of setting up a scene—be it in a studio, outdoors, or just knowing how to be in the right place at the right time.

But extending copyright protection beyond the mechanical copying of a photograph (i.e., scanning it and sending it to all your friends) is extending copyrights in photographs too far. The expression of a photograph cannot be separated from its factual reproduction of actual events. Attempting to do so leads to absurd results.

Therefore, a bright-line rule should reserve copyright protection in photographs only for the reproduction of those photographs. Copyright protection should not extend to the elements within the photographs themselves—doing so results in copyrighting facts, which is beyond the scope of copyright law.

I can record my own version of, say, one of Rihanna’s songs and the owner of the sound recording copyright cannot sue me for copyright infringement. (The owner of the work’s composition and performance copyrights, however, could.)

We conclude that applying NBA and copyright preemption principles to the facts of this case, the Firms' claim for "hot news" misappropriation fails because it is preempted by the Copyright Act. First, the Firms' reports culminating with the Recommendations satisfy the "subject matter" requirement because they are all works "of a type covered by section 102," i.e., "original works of authorship fixed in a... tangible medium of expression." 17 U.S.C. § 102. As discussed above, it is not determinative for the Copyright Act preemption analysis that the facts of the Recommendations themselves are not copyrightable. See NBA, 105 F.3d at 850. Second, the reports together with the Recommendations fulfill the "general scope" requirement because the rights "may be abridged by an act which, in and of itself, would infringe one of the exclusive rights' provided by federal copyright law," Altai, Inc., 982 F.2d at 716 (citing Harper & Row, 723 F.2d at 200), i.e., "acts of reproduction, performance, distribution or display," id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

Third and finally, the Firms' claim is not a so-called INS-type non-preempted claim because Fly is not, under NBA's analysis, "free-riding." It is collecting, collating and disseminating factual information -- the facts that Firms and others in the securities business have made recommendations with respect to the value of and the wisdom of purchasing or selling securities -- and attributing the information to its source. The Firms are making the news; Fly, despite the Firms' understandable desire to protect their business model, is breaking it. As the INS Court explained, long before it would have occurred to the Court to cite the First Amendment for the proposition:

[T]he news element -- the information respecting current events contained in the literary production -- is not the creation of the writer, but is a report of matters that ordinarily are publici juris; it is the history of the day. It is not to be supposed that the framers of the Constitution, when they empowered Congress "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" (Const., Art I, § 8, par. 8), intended to confer upon one who might happen to be the first to report a historic event the exclusive right for any period to spread the knowledge of it.

I take great pride in being accurate and carefully consider complaints about what I write. However, your letter does not identify a single statement by me that you believe is inaccurate or "fraudulent." The only thing you mention is my article about how the urine toxic metals test is used to defraud patients: (http://www.quackwatch.org/t). The article's title reflects my opinion, the basis of which the article explains in detail.

If you want me to consider modifying the article, please identify every sentence to which you object and explain why you believe it is not correct.

You have been making false statements about Doctor's Data and have damaged this company's business and reputation, and you have done so for personal gain and your own self-interest, disguised as performing a public service. ... Your writings and conduct are clearly designed to damage Doctor's Data. ... If you don't retract your false claims and issue a public apology, the lawsuit will be filed.

"News reporting always has been a complex ecosystem, where what is 'news' is often driven by certain influential news organizations, with others republishing or broadcasting those facts -- all to the benefit of the public," the companies said in the filing.

Google and Twitter argued that upholding the district court's decision would give those who obtained the news first strong incentives to block others from obtaining the same information.

"How, for example, would a court pick a time period during which facts about the recent Times Square bombing attempt would be non-reportable by others?"

'I was planning to use the brown hoodie for that sequence, but the director of photography hated the fact that her hair and the jacket were both brown and felt she got lost in it,'' says Chuck, who then made a last-minute run to outlet store Nordstrom Rack to hunt for a replacement. ''I literally brought that blue one on set just before they rolled cameras. Then Catherine said, 'Wendy saved the day!' That made me a hero.''