Difference between software and news articles:
When you copy software from a friend and use that software on you own computer you are depriving the author of payment for their product. When you copy a Dow Jones article from the Members-only site, then you are depriving Dow Jones of payment for membership to their site.
When you copy a news article from Yahoo and repost it and do not claim yourself as the author and do not re-sell the information nor do you receive compensation, then you are not depriving Yahoo of any revenues as it is in the Free site.
Furthermore, if it's O.K. to post a "link" to the article, then there is no difference in posting the entire article (from top to bottom) without the link. The only thing that Yahoo might complain about is that by not accessing the news article on their site, they might be deprived of certain demographic information about the visitor, e.g., age, race, sex, zip code, etc, that they can use for marketing and commerce. Problem with that argument is that no demographic information is required to access most of what Yahoo has to offer and even when it is required, it is often-times totally made up (bogus) because the poster wishes to remain private. Yahoo and other free sites have yet to complain in any form or fashion about you are so worried about.... not on SI, Raging Bull, or on Yahoo's own message boards. I would not worry about it as it is really none of your concern anyway. |
