Apparently Rupert Murdoch Loves Fair Use When It Protects Him

from the let's-see-what-the-courts-think dept

Earlier this year, we pointed to a lawsuit involving Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., sued for airing an interview with Michael Jackson’s ex-wife. We noted how amusing the lawsuit filing was, because it blatantly mocked Rupert Murdoch due to his earlier statements claiming that fair use would be barred by the courts — trying to cut off that defense. But, of course, the only way to defend the actions is to use fair use — and that’s exactly what Fox News is doing in its defense of the lawsuit, heavily claiming fair use. It certainly makes you wonder — if Murdoch ever really does pull that supposedly itchy trigger finger on a Google lawsuit — if filings such as these will come back to haunt him. How can he claim that fair use doesn’t exist on the one hand, while one of his companies uses the doctrine to defend itself in a lawsuit?

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Companies: news corp

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Comments on “Apparently Rupert Murdoch Loves Fair Use When It Protects Him”

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22 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

To say that he is unaware of this now either means that he buries his head in the sand and keeps himself unaware of things he should be unaware of and, as a result, he should be punished for mismanagement at the very least.

He expects others to not infringe and to even magically know whether or not they’re infringing ahead of time (both companies and individuals), he should at least be held to a much higher standard in that respect.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Your comment is irrelevant to the issue of fair use. He, or his company, is claiming fair use. If Robert does not support fair use then he supports the idea that his company should be punished for infringement if it infringes regardless. and as a result his company SHOULD be punished and lose the lawsuit. Robert should have no problems with this.

The more relevant question is, what is Robert’s position on the punishment for unintentional infringement for others? If it’s high, then he should be punished even worse.

He supports no fair use so, according to him, he infringed and he should be held up to the standard he wants to hold others up to (but that’s not to say that others should be held up to such ridiculous standards, only him since they are his standards).

Ryan says:

Re: Re: Re:

No. A justice system that establishes a precedent based on the eccentric ramblings of the majority owner of a company, or punishes the rest of the company employees and stockholders, is a terrible system.

Rather, they can use their fair use defense against them if they ever attempt to file a suit themselves(not that it should matter anyway if fair use were consistently upheld correctly, but anybody can see the duplicity in this). You don’t change the rules whenever you want to just because you don’t like somebody.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

“Are we to expect that he knows less of his own operations than the operations of others because that’s his job?”

It’s worse than that. Copy privilege holders expect others to know more about the privilege holder’s operations than the privilege holders know about their own operation. That’s why they tend to believe that there should be little to no punishment for falsely claiming infringement on something one does not have copy privileges on yet there should be far greater punishment for unknowingly infringing on someone else’s privileges. It’s insane.

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