E-Commerce News: Legal : Bloggers Cautioned About Being Copy Cats

E-Commerce News: Legal : Bloggers Cautioned About Being Copy Cats: "What's Fair Use?
There's also the consideration of 'fair use,' which allows portions of copyrighted material to be reproduced without the copyright holder's permission, added Llewellyn's colleague, Thomas Smart, who is co-chair of the intellectual property and patent litigation group at Kaye Scholer. However, to claim fair use, one must meet the standards.
Smart explained that the courts ask four questions to determine if someone is making fair use of copyrighted material:
What is the nature or purpose of the use? 'Commentary or adding your ideas to someone else's ideas or literary criticism are more favored than just copying for purposes of passing it on to someone or reselling it,' he said.
What is the nature of the work being copied? 'A work of fiction is entitled to more protection than the daily weather chart in the newspaper,' he explained. 'The higher the degree of creativity in a work, the more entitled it is to protection.'
How much of the work was copied? 'If you take an entire article from The Wall Street Journal or Newsweek and recapitulate the whole thing, that's more problematic than if you take a couple of quotes from it,' he observed.
How did the copying affect the market for the copyrighted work?"

I wonder if I copied too much of this article...

Seriously, I suspect this issue will eventually lead to a major recalc in my blogging strategy. My blog is mostly a news filter, with sparse commentary, but I've long suspected that some publishers may eventually object to news filter-oriented blogs.