This morning I did a web search for news of the jury-selection process in the second Dossett-Leath murder trial, which began yesterday in Knoxville, TN, and I discovered an interesting copyright issue: the Knoxville News Sentinel at www.Knoxnews.com is using something called iCopyright.net to secure its rights to its online articles.

Another Knoxville news outlet, however, has posted an article under the usual terms: www.wate.com. (The article, by Hana Kim, is “Jury seated for murder trial of Raynella Dossett-Leath.”)

Both stories report completely separate “facts” of events in court yesterday.

Recently, Judge Richard Posner reportedly advocated a system of charge-per-link as a way of protecting newspaper copyrights—something along the lines of iCopyright.net, apparently. His argument was that a newspaper (and presumably a television news organization) spends a lot on news-gathering; then bloggers and news aggregators simply freeload by linking to the news provider’s site. (I wonder what Google would do if his proposition were adopted?)

This situation poses a number of problems for me, both as a writer and as a blogger (a merely opinionated person, as opposed to a journalist).

1) I value my copyrights highly, but recently American law has begun to chip away at my rights: Congress has passed several blatantly unconstitutional special, private laws for their campaign-contributors. For instance, Disney now has a virtually eternal copyright to Mickey Mouse and friends; Sonny Bono persuaded Congress that music producers and book publishers are entitled to more extensive copyright protection than anyone else is entitled to, including creators; dead celebrities’ estates can claim ownership of the deceased’s image almost forever.

2) Every copyrighted work can be referenced under the “fair use” doctrine for purposes of review and education. So, as a writer of both reviews and educational materials (which I am, and I’m not talking about this blog alone) I am entitled to a certain freedom of expression when it comes to other people’s copyrighted works. For example, I can criticize the “legitimate” media in Knoxville, TN, for labeling a defendant “the Black Widow” so that she can’t possibly get a fair trial.

3) There is no way I will permit a third party, such as iCopyright.net, to display their ads on this blog. This is a non-commercial blog about a serious American institution—the jury.

The situation also presents obvious workarounds.

1) If all online news sources prefer that I simply read their articles and then express my opinions without making any reference to them, I will be happy to do that. It seems to be the most reasonable approach. I can “opine” as pompously as anyone else online or off without citing my sources. That’s what newspapers do all the time.

2) If some online news sources (not all) don’t want me to direct traffic to their sites, that’s fine with me, too. I can provide interesting, informative links to sites that understand the value of free advertising.

The Dossett-Leath Jury Selection Process

According to numerous online sources, jury selection in the retrial of Raynella Dossett-Leath in Knoxville, TN, was conducted yesterday by the same judge who presided over her first trial, Judge Richard Baumgartner. He called a pool of 500 people to a local auditorium and told them that the jury would be sequestered beginning next Tuesday. Then he asked for a show of hands as to how many of the 500 would volunteer to serve on a sequestered jury. Fifty or so people responded positively. Subsequently, a jury of 12 plus 3 alternates was selected.

Sequestration makes perfect sense to me (a non-lawyer), because the defendant has already been condemned in the local media, and the trial is bound to be the focus of local gossip over the next few days. However, if I were the defendant, I would have wanted the venue changed to Memphis, where presumably they have better things to do than help a woman’s in-laws send her to jail so they can claim her husband’s estate.

A CourtTV truck was parked outside the jury-selection location. That means In Session will be covering the retrial. I imagine In Session won’t ask me to pay for a link to their blog. (Frankly, I think it should be the other way around, despite Judge Posner understanding of economics and the law.)