Pixiq

At first, The Miami Herald was making a hissy fit about a couple of photos that Miami blogger Random Pixels ran on his site.

But now that they got the lawyers involved, they are saying it is not necessarily the photos but the articles he reprints on his site, most which are decades old and are obtained through the free online archives of the Miami-Dade Public Library.

Last week, attorney Ian Ballon of Greenberg Taurig sent Random Pixels a letter referring to L.A. Times vs Free Republic, a 1998 case that determined that posting entire excerpts of articles is not covered under the Fair Use Doctrine but constitutes a copyright violation.

But Random Pixels argues that because the articles he posts are so outdated, they fall into the public domain (In the above case law, the articles in question were clearly current). And he is refusing to remove the articles as well as refusing to remove the photos, which are no longer part of the central argument anyway.

So now it will be interesting to see what the Herald does now that their lawyer’s intimidation tactics have failed. And it’s curious to see how much money the Herald will spend on this considering they have done nothing but cut journalistic jobs this year.