Defense: Limitations on Exclusive Rights and the Doctrine of Exhaustion

Lawyers Argue R-J Stories on Web Aren’t Protected by Copyright

But perhaps their most interesting defense is that Righthaven’s claims are barred under Section 109 of the copyright law covering “limitations on exclusive rights: effect of transfer of particular copy;” and “the doctrine of exhaustion.”
Borghese explained the theory is based on the fact that the source of the stories at issue in the lawsuits is a publicly available web page.
When a user visits a web page, the user’s browser downloads a copy of that web page. “Thus, the Review-Journal has explicitly or implicitly authorized its website users to make a copy of the article,” Borghese said.

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User SamB007 comments: Well it's about time that someone goes to court with this, once they post to story on the net it's worthless, they didn't sell it to anybody at that point and if they were afraid of the copy-rights on it the never should have given it away to start with! All news papers die in 10 hours after someone buys them, they become trash, or in my house a liner for the birds we have, so we don't have to deal with their droppings! Nice way of putting it!