Fair use spotlights conflicting rights

A Web site that purports to be a vociferous defender of the First Amendment and goes by the name Free Republic has taken advantage of the transportability of copy on the Internet. It stands accused of downloading articles from the online versions of The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, and posting them on its site. Both the right to free speech and the right to protection of intellectual property are based on the US Constitution, and it is possible Free Republic may try to find some refuge in a longstanding, if somewhat obscure, doctrine of copyright law: fair use.