Newspaper reporter Hayward Howard does investigative journalism for The Springfield Post, a local online news outlet that focuses on government accountability and political reporting. Howard recently spent upwards of a year working to get documents from the Springfield Police Department that seem to show that they have been underreporting incidents of violence between police officers and homeless citizens. This is a big deal. It essentially demonstrates that SPD officers have been involved in conflicts that end in hospitalization at almost four times the rate they were reporting to the public. And Howard had to really work to get these documents, including personal emails between officers, log books of incidents, and discipline reports that are all public records (i.e. should be accessible to any citizen who requests them) but were otherwise hidden from public view because they were embarrassing to the officers. He writes an article about this reporting and it runs on the front page of The Springfield Post, which is a small online operation that registers copyright to all their works regularly with the Copyright Office. Within 24 hours, the major daily newspaper in the same town, The Springfield Times, runs a similar article about the SPD's violence against homeless people by a crime reporter named Karen Pearce. The Times article cites some of the same emails, log books, and reports as the Post article did, but it is written in Pearce's own words, and using different interviews with different sources for direct quotes. Pearce has been a police reporter for a very long time, and she inserted some of that historical context into her story and added to Howard's article's understanding of the issue. However, it is clear that The Springfield Times' piece will draw readers away from The Springfield Post because it is simply a more widely-read newspaper. Pearce does not credit Howard or The Post in her piece. Howard is incensed. He worked for a year to get the information he used and the Times just used his piece to write their own, without giving him any credit for the work he put in to access these long-hidden public records. He sues The Springfield Times and Karen Pearce for copyright infringement. Would Howard's suit be successful? Would The Springfield Times have a fair use defense? Why or why not? FIRAC to find out.