Are Reddit's Article Summary Bots doing copyright infringement?


BitOfNews and AutoTLDR are automated bots that "summarize" articles in the comments section of Reddit. Those bots are useful when you don't want to leave Reddit to read an article. Lately I've been thinking that such bots are hurting online newspapers and magazines, because they are not summarizing or giving an opinion of any given article. Those bots are doing a "copy/paste" of parts of any article without written permissions from the authors. You might be thinking "No since those bots analyze and post the most important sentences", but guess what? Still copyright infringement, since the bot isn't creating new content, just copying and pasting sentences. Automated bots are hurting authors and publishers.

Some may argue that the bots are doing a "fair use" of the content posted on Reddit by them. However, to be classified as "Fair Use" the purpose and character of the use of the original copyrighted work has to be "criticism, comment, research, news reporting or teaching". The main purpose of those bots is to "avoid sites with so much advertising" or to allow users to read news behind a paywall. If that's not clear enough, the bots are not creating new content nor analyzing news, those bots are just copying and pasting the articles.

Even though the bots "analyze" the most important sentences, when summoned, the bots copy and paste the sentences exactly as they were posted on the original article. And to make things worst, the bots don't even link the original author, which to me is insulting. In conclusion, Article Summary Bots are doing copyright infringement and Reddit should be held liable for all the damages, unless of course they do a site wide ban on article summary bots. 

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