John Wiley & Sons threatens fair use

Whatever happened to the fair use clause in the existing copyright law? Based on the threats reported by Shelley Batts on her blog, it appears that John Wiley and Sons is not familiar fair use. They threatened the doctoral student with legal action if she did not remove properly cited content from her post.

The comments on Shelley’s post are rather interesting. One person suggested brining back the Spanish Inquisition. Another person said getting this story posted on BoingBoing would be a good way to respond.

Something tells me that this story is not going to go away anytime soon.

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Update: Within a few hours Boingboing posted Shelley Batt’s story. Even Slashdot wrote about it. Then, a few hours later Wiley & Sons contacted Shelley to tell her it was a misunderstanding and she was given permission to post the images on her blog post.