firefox in the hong kong press

The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong’s premier English language newspaper) today reported on Firefox in one of its technology columns. The reviewer had mixed feelings about Firefox: he liked the product, but had problems with its installation. I’d link to the article itself, but it requires a paid site subscription, so instead I made … Continue reading “firefox in the hong kong press”

The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong’s premier English language newspaper) today reported on Firefox in one of its technology columns. The reviewer had mixed feelings about Firefox: he liked the product, but had problems with its installation. I’d link to the article itself, but it requires a paid site subscription, so instead I made a PDF and have made that available for viewing. Thanks to yusufg for the heads up.

4 thoughts on “firefox in the hong kong press”

  1. While it’s really great that Firefox is getting press mentions, unless the copyright laws are radically different in Hong Kong to here, that PDF is a copyright violation and you should take it down. (And even if they are different, you should respect SCMP’s wish to charge for its content, and take it down anyway…)

  2. Gerv, I considered this. My reasoning is as follows:

    a) I am (legally) able to forward by email the full text of the article via their site to whoever I want (whether they are a subscriber or not).
    b) I am also a print subscriber and could thus potentially show the physical article to whoever I want. This is clearly fair use.
    c) I am also fully attributing the article to them.

    Given all these factors, I think this also falls within my fair use rights.

  3. Ali,

    That really doesn’t follow. The SCMP does not want their content made available to everyone without paying (which is what you are doing); if they did, they would make it available that way themselves.

    If a) is true, then you could maybe post the full text of that email (including any copyright attributions). That _might_ be OK – but putting something on the web is still different to sending it by email. What if a SCMP subscriber sent themselves every article by email and then set up a free-to-view copy of the SCMP?

    What you do in b) is clearly fair use, but it’s a different situation. If you show the article to someone, you have not given anyone else a _copy_ of the article. Copyright law is all about copying. If you photocopied it and gave it to them (which is a better comparison with what you are doing here), you would be violating copyright.

    c) is irrelevant. I’m not allowed to give someone else a copied CD of Windows, even if I make sure to tell them it was made by Microsoft.

  4. Fair enough. I’ve replaced it with a version they emailed to me which had no notices (or links to notices) about what I could or couldn’t do with it. As for ‘what if someone mirrored the entire site’, that’s not what I’m doing, nor is it eqivalent to doing that.

    At this point I’m no longer distributing something that only a subscriber of the site (or newspaper) would have access to.

    I’ve of course maintained all the copyright notices that were present in their email to me.

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