copyright intellectual-property internet journalism freedom-of-press
Is it legal to paraphrase a paid Wall Street Journal article in its entirety and publish the paraphrased article for free?
<p>I know that in many countries republishing any web article from another website without consent is considered a form of plagery and copyright enfringement and is therefore illegal.</p>
<p>But I <em>am</em> looking to republish a couple of paid articles from wsj.com on my own website. According to <a href="http://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/reprints-wsj-terms.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the Wall Street Journal's terms of use</a> i may be required to pay them a licensing fee first in order to get permission to reproduce the articles.</p>
<p>However I don't have a lot of money and therefore don't want to pay any licensing fee. So my idea was to just read every article i want to republish and then write a paraphrased version of the article to put on my website. This paraphrased article would have completely different sentences compared to the original article but would describe the same information nonetheless. Would it be legal for me to publish such an article on my website without having to pay a licensing fee to The Wall Street Journal?</p>
<p>I am mentioning the Wall Street Journal in this thread, but my question applies to the paid articles of other online news websites as well. So to put the question more broadly: <strong>what does US law say about reproducing a copyrighted article in a paraphrased or summarized form?</strong> Is it legal or illegal to do so without prior consent?</p>
<p><strong>EDIT:</strong> Jen posted two useful links in the comments of two other law stackexchange threads that are about the same subject as this thread. However none of the answers in those threads quote the relevant part(s) from US law. I would like to know what US law says about paraphrasing an article and i would like the answer to <strong>include quotations from US law</strong>.</p>

<p>U.S. law says in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102" rel="nofollow noreferrer">17 U.S.C. 102(b)</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>In no case does copyright protection for an original work of
authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of
operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in
which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such
work.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, if you do not copy wording, just information and ideas, there should not be copyright violations. I do not see the WSJ TOS mentioning a license required to summarize or rewrite their material.</p>
<p>It is fundamental that copyright protects the expression of ideas (among other things) but <em>not</em> ideas or information. The subtlety with &quot;information&quot; is that, in some places like most of Europe a collection of organized information of non-copyrightable material can be copyrighted as a whole.</p>
<p>That is not the case in the U.S. although there was an unsuccessful attempt in the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act of 2003/4.</p>
<p>Also, plagiarism, appropriation of ideas without attribution, is an academic integrity issue, not a legal issue.</p>
