From the Law Office of Cease and Desist

Actually, the letter was more tactfully worded, probably because brazen republication of the paper's work has been going on for years on Free Republic:

Dear Mr. Cadenhead:

I note that you republished a copyrighted news story and photo (Topic: Vets Rage Over Kerry Photo) from The Washington Times on your web site. While we are flattered that you value the story and the photo, I must bring to your attention the issue of copyright. Unless our records are incomplete, you did not obtain permission to republish the article on your site. If this is not accurate, please let me know immediately.

If you wish to republish this article, please contact me to to arrange republication permission. We charge a reprint fee and require a copyright line and link to our main site.

The Washington Times does not own the copyright to the photo that ran with this article. Please contact Corbis via their web site to obtain permission to republish the photo.

For future reference, we do not require advance permission if you only run a headline and link to our site for the complete text.

If you choose not to obtain our permission to republish the article, you are hereby instructed to remove the article from your web site immediately. Please let me know how you wish to proceed.

Thank you,
Christine Reed
The Washington Times

I edited the user's message to remove the full text, leaving behind the lead and a link to the article. The photo was never published on the Drudge Retort server, which does not store images submitted by users. It was presented directly from the Washington Times server using an IMG tag like this:

<img src="http://ekzemplo.com/picture.jpg">

The Dilbert lawyers made the same mistake in a cease-and-desist letter last year, believing I was hosting a parody of the world's least funny comic strip on a message board.

2004/12/15 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Comments

F#*&in' users. Always getting you in trouble with VRWC Inc., huh?

...make me read their newspaper...
That's funny.

I guess that gift subscription I was going to get you to The American Spectator is out now, huh?

;-)

#1 · joe · 2004/12/16

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