The blogosphere would be in for some tough times I bet. Bloggers frequently copy large chunks of mainstream media articles and some of us copy pictures we find on the Web. Bloggers don't have a team of photographers and artists, so they snag images from the Internet. As for mainstream media articles, bloggers often quote very liberally because the mainstream media is notorious for creating dead URLs -- articles often just disappear after a week or two. In other instances, articles get archived and can only be retrieved for a fee. The result is that a post discussing a mainstream media article with just a link or a small quote can become hard to understand when the article being referred to becomes unavailable. That's why bloggers often copy significant portions of articles -- so their posts can still be understood when the URLs to the articles go dead.
We bloggers have, to put it mildly, a very robust concept of fair use. Fair use of copyrighted material is a fuzzy concept, and judges use four factors to determine if a use is fair:
1. the purpose and character of your use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market.
I use many pictures from Flickr on this blog. In the early days I'd just slap'em on without attribution or anything, but now I let people know I'm using their pictures and give them the option to remove them. It's only fair.
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