[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

It gets to the fundamental value of a free press in providing a check on political leaders. And Random House is one of said free presses.

Given the decline of newspapers, book-length journalism is more important than ever, and shouldn't be subject to making payments to the public figures under examination.

I was unaware that "freedom of the press" really meant "I can make money off of other peoples' work, since I claim to work in the public interest".
I thought freedom of the press gave people the right to speak up in public without being censored or persecuted by the government. You are still obligated to follow the basic rules of civilization.

Please, explain to me how Random House refusing to pay money under contract has anything to do with government censoring of the press.

I'd then say that when a public figure like Joseph Goebbels, or unlike him, keeps unpublished (in his lifetime) diaries, the public figure reasonably expects future historians to quote from them without his heirs getting a pay off.

I expect such people have a certain, I won't call it expectation, but perhaps a hope, that it would be destroyed after their death without being read. Peoples' private thoughts are often something they don't want broadcast to the world.
I highly doubt the question of whether their heirs would be paid for it ever crosses their mind.

Now, if the quotes were from books prepared for commercial publication, I'd still be against Random House paying off politicians, democratic or otherwise, or their heirs, for the quotes in critical biographies. But in terms of there being no expectation of the writing ever getting financial compensation, posts here do have a family resemblance to diary entries.

And your comparison between diaries and forum posts is ridiculous.

Forum posts are inherently given over to the public view -- that is kind of the point of them, a forum post that you hide in a drawer and never upload has failed its purpose for existing. And the forum design is inherently one where you quote others' posts. It would require one to be actually cognitively-challenged to not catch on after seeing and participating in such activities.
Private diaries are none of these things.


"Given over to the public view" is a concept that relates directly to the issue of "does one have an expectation of retaining one's rights to spoken/written content" -- a test which diaries pass and forum posts fail.

"Expectation of financial compensation" has nothing to do with the issue of "does one have an expectation of retaining one's rights to spoken/written content".
One example:
if I write a diary and release it under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license, I am going to highly-noticeable lengths to control my rights to my work, but absolutely do not expect to get paid for it. According to you, anyone should be allowed to do whatever they want (and Random House can write and sell a biography based on it) because "you don't expect to get paid, so why not?"