Leave it to Chris Powell of the Journal Inquirer, who never lacked in courage or directness, to throw down against The Courant’s use of its competitors’ reporting. In his latest missive, he takes a poke at Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, too.

Here’s a little fair-use excerpt:

Of course this [use of other paper's reporting] is not all right with the news organizations whose news has been taken, for the Courant is profiting from the work only they pay to produce. This also may be a violation of copyright law, since the “fair use” exception in the law, which allows brief quotation of copyrighted material to advance public discourse, has been construed much more narrowly than the Courant construes it.

Note that this link takes you to his editorial for the moment, but might disappear behind the JI’s “pay-to-view” firewall. It was no mistake, I’m sure, that the JI put this piece and its predecessor (now back to pay-to-view status) out there for everyone to see. (Being a pay-to-view website also strengthens the JI’s claims of copyright infringement, no?)

And, by the way, what Chris says is 100 percent on the money — maybe no pun intended when he and The Courant get into court.