As requested by Mod Kmguru, in thread "Global Economy in 2008," I made this new thread about copyrights. (My original post there have been removed by a Mod. They noted that copying fully the text of many published articles is illegal, and suggested a format that is legal. Here is the first, and main right granted to the copyright owner. (Original publisher)


"...Several exclusive rights typically attach to the holder of a copyright:

to produce copies or reproductions of the work and to sell those copies (including, typically, electronic copies) ..."

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

Clearly a full copy posted of an artcle form Bloomberg etc, with out first obtaining their permission is a violation of copyright law. I am not stating that they will enforce their legal right, but they could.

this capitalist state is getting to me...

Oh for god sake you cant let it go can you. I have NEVER herd of a news paper or whatever taking someone to court under copyright laws for a piece of work that clearly angnologes the author. Futher more this is a topic for site feedback not B&E. If you have a problem with the way i am enforcing site rules PM plazma dont post it all over the site

Then I suggest, people who are afraid to get sued, should stay away from the forum.

Then I suggest, people who are afraid to get sued, should stay away from the forum.Or quote only limited and selected parts of the text. It is at Kmguru's request that I started this new thread. That request has now been "disapeared" as have my posts, including the first that was not rude or in error, but only offered a suggested legal format for posting. I will try to contact plasma (assuming he is the owner) as I am sure he does not want anyone to apply the copyright laws against sciforums.

I cleaned that thread of the offtopic posts including my own in order to bring the thread back to normalmality. So yes i deleted your posts and i moved this thread to where it belongs. You want to keep worrying go ahead and PM plazma but unless he orders me otherwise i wont change my style and i wont hack down another MOD's posts for your pleasure

...I have NEVER herd of a news paper or whatever taking someone to court under copyright laws for a piece of work that clearly angnologes the author. ...Your ignorance would not be an adequate legal defense. I assure you that even with a full acknowledgement of the original author, a full reproduction of his copyrighted work, without his permission, is illegal.

I bought many low quality complete reproductions of physic texts many years ago. They were made in Tiawan and shipped to the USA for about 1/3 the US price until the copyright owners shut the operation down. They copied everything, even the page that had the copyright on it!

Again I tell you are confusing plagerism with copyright laws. Giving credit avoids plagerism but does not nullify the copyright laws. Please do not again use your MOD powers to hid your errors and ignorance of these facts. I mean no offense but it is annoying when my post just disappear.

there is the difference. You PAID for them so someone was making money from them, that doesnt aplie here

Here is the Legal stuff.

§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

this capitalist state is getting to me...

Would you rather be waiting in line for you vodka ration?

Would you rather be waiting in line for you vodka ration?

I don't drink vodka.

BEN THE MAN mind your place in society, this capitalist country has given you.

there is the difference. You PAID for them so someone was making money from them, that doesnt aplie here
There have been adds here. Iassume they were paid adds.

I do not expect that anyone will exercise their right to shut sciforms down becuase all of the post until mine in thread "Global economy 2008" were complete copies of copyrighted articles, but IMHO we should try to obey the law and not needlessly run the risk.

You point about wheater or not you recieve payment is also wrong. You can not reproduce and give away copyrighted material. There is a great deal of this done with music and some are being procesuted even though they received no money for giving away some copyrighted songs.

read kmguru's post NEWS REPORTING is on that list

Here is the Legal stuff.

§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

On (1): Sciforums is probably not making a profit but it is a comercail operations (has had advertisiments etc.) and does solicit contributions. Even giving copyrighted material away for free is leagally risky if it takes profits away from the copyright owner. Note my prior ref to the legal actions taken agaist the distribution of music for free.

On (2): each source is a unique case. most of the full text copies in the thread "Global economy 2008" I think have come from Bloomberg, who does not wish to have it appear free of the adds that bring them money at the original site. Try reproducing their articles on a regular basis and see how long before you are in trouble.

On (3) That is precisesly why I suggested that only selected parts or the original, not all of it be reproduced. This has been the main succesful defense, but of course crediting the original and providing a link which will direct more traffic to their site and it advertizers is also a stong aid to avoiding any legal claim that your reproduction has caused "material injury."

On (4) the same point as (3) - I.e. you can argue that you have not caused "material damages" by directing more readers to the original site. This was where the free music distributor fail to have any defense. They obviously hurt the owenrs of the copy right material (but some are trying to claim otherwise - that they do not as they promote the songs)

The main point I have been making is that complete reproduction is neither desirable nor wise. Few read long posts. They should be shortened for the benefit of sciforum readers and as this is a discussion place, some comments on your selected sections is desirable. We should not just reproduce in full articles with no comments or discussion.

Billy T:

I suggest you follow your own interpretation, I will follow mine. We had this discussions at the inception of Sciforums, there are no issues here, I even checked with my lawyer then. If bloomberg wants to send us a notice, we will follow their advice. They know my email address.

By the way, the fact that the news piece credits Bloomberg is a free advertisement itself for them for people to sign up there. Also Google does the connected advertisement at Sciforums for nonmembers.

Our postings are for research and educational purposes. The partial posting is for people who profit from posting or commenting. I do not. Do you?

Thank you for your concern. Case closed.

Was actually there a question from the OP? If not, knock it off...

...By the way, the fact that the news piece credits Bloomberg is a free advertisement itself for them for people to sign up there. Also Google does the connected advertisement at Sciforums for nonmembers.
Our postings are for research and educational purposes. The partial posting is for people who profit from posting or commenting. I do not. Do you?
Thank you for your concern. Case closed.No, I do not profit from my "partial postings" here. I do get some pleasure from participation in discussion and occasionally learn some things. Perhaps that is a form of "profit."

Yes, it is true that there is a "fair use" exception to the copyright laws making it legal to quote sections from a book or OP Ed newspaper article and then comment on it. Critics routinely do this. However, to simply reproduce in full an article with no comments or discussion of any kind is clearly a simple violation of copyright laws as without any discussion or comments it provides no educational value not found at the original source. It only provides additional competing exposure of the copyrighted material.

Simple reproduction in full, with nothing added and no discussion is a clear violation of copyright laws. If you think it is not, please tell what you think would constitute a violation of the copyright law.

Sciforums is a "user provided content" site, by far the most successful one in its field, but legally exactly the same as YouTube or FaceBook etc. It's potential commercial value (due to the hundreds of "fresh eyeballs" that visit every minute) is much less than YouTube's or FaceBook's, but still very significant as has been demonstrated both by adds sold and solicitations of funds from members.

YouTube recently got into copyright trouble and had to shut down part of it operations which were violating the copyright laws, perhaps paying compensation to the owners of copyrighted material violated. While I do not think that sciforms is currently likely to suffer from legal action against it, it is certainly a possible risk which is easily avoid by not making threads that only reproduce in full copyrighted material with no educational comments added.

It is for this reason that I suggested that:

(1) Only selected parts of the copyrighted article be reproduced (not the full article).

(2) Some form of educational comment (such as a POV discussion) be added.

If both (1) and (2) are done then sciforums could be easily defended if any legal action were to be brought against it, as recently happen to YouTube when it failed to do either (1) or (2). I.e. with only partial posting and some critic added, one is as save as any critic quoting part of an article and discussing it.

I also note that many threads have been closed because they provided no discussion. Certainly moderators should not be exempt from this rule and allowed to make clear violations of the copyright laws.

Again, I agree that currently there is little danger that one of the copyright owners will take legal action against sciforums, but just because we can probably get away with breaking the law, IMHO, is not justification for doing so.

What you are (I think) trying to achieve with your thread "Global Economy2008" can be legally done as SAM as done in her thread giving links to many biological sites, with only a brief description of their content. She does not illegally reproduce in full the content found in them. She is providing a very useful service, not dozens of illegal, long-post pages, which few will read. I assure you I am acting only in the interest of sciforums and have nothing to gain from trying to keep it operating within the law.

Was actually there a question from the OP? If not, knock it off...

Consider Knocked off...

Billy T is correct on all points.

There really should be a thread somewhere explaining, in simple terms, Fair Use and Copyright. I remember Tiassa had a copyright thread a ways back, not sure if it would fit the bill here though.

Billy T is correct on all points.Thanks.

Points of information:
I sent a copy of post 17 to Plazma immediately after it was posted, because I feared it too would be deleted. One of the mods in his post replying to one of mine (now deleted by him) incorrectly said that there was no copyright problem if the source was given credit. Needless to say, he knows now that was incorrect but both his and my exchanged posts about this have been removed by him also. (They originally were in the Thread "Global Economy 2008.")

When Kmguru asked me to stop posting in that thread, I did so and as he suggested, started a new one, which has now been moved here. That same "deleting mod" then criticized me for continuing to post my copyright concerns in the new thread. All of my posts in that original thread have been removed. Even my first one, which was directly responsive to Kmrugu's post 19 REQUESTING posts linking to information about other countires. I gave data on Brazil by posting the link, even noting that I did not like to repost the same material in two threads. I.e. I just said it was about Brazil and gave link:

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1737965&postcount=26

When I suggested in it also that only parts of text be reproduced and some comments inserted, that mod told me I was being "rude" and had no right to tell a mod how to post. Those posts are also deleted now.

I in fact had not told a mod kmguru how to post. All I did was to illustrate my style of quoting part of published texts and use of {Billy T comment: …} to clearly indicate when I was inserting my comments within the text.

I assume that when posts are removed they are not "gone forever" but are still available in some hidden files to the mods or at least to Plazma. Thus, as I am not stupid, I have not fabricated any of this. This is as accurate a history as I can reconstruct from memory, but if any part is wrong, I apologize. I am NOT trying to embarrass a mod (hence he is not named).

Being a mod is a thankless time-consuming task I would not do*, but we all make mistakes. When this happens, I always give strong thanks for the correction. Even though, I WAS MISTREATED, I BEAR NO GRUDGE.
------------------------
*In some ways, I already function as a "powerless mod at large" correcting errors where ever I find them. I even have preformed this service a couple of times for James R, but that is rarely necessary.

Billy :

Deleted posts are only soft deleted, the mods of the forum and the admin can still see them.

I was trying to add comments in my old posts, but the site logics prevent me to do so. While a subforum MOD can edit that, it is too much of a hassle.

Copyright is more to guard against people commercially reproducing someone else's work. Internet forums have all user contributed content, even if it is often times from linked pages or other sources, it is hard to come across entirely original ideas. If credit is given you will never see an internet forum held to violations of copyright, as a matter of fact citing passages from web pages as long as links are provided is free advertisement. The problem i see often is people using other peoples ideas and injecting them into their posts as if they uncovered some kind of revelation.

Wikipedia itself has all information previously published, it is not like these are original ideas but when sources are cited few copyright owners will pursue legal action even though they can because i cant see how they get permission to reproduce everything that is on there. The whole idea when you copyright a work is not to prevent other people from seeing your work but to avoid them from claiming it as their own and of course from profiting off of it. edit:[deleted for legal purposes.]

I was trying to add comments in my old posts, but the site logics prevent me to do so. While a subforum MOD can edit that, it is too much of a hassle.Good move. I noticed that the more recent ones have some in red.

PS to John 99:
You too are making the same two mistakes:
(1)Confusing plagerism with the copyright laws. and
(2)Thinking that only if selling is it a violation of copyright laws. Giving away for free is also a violation as many music download centers have saddly learned in court.

Please see post 7, especially the last paragraph.

folks like billyt is actually doing sci a service
asguard and dragon have bricks for brains and spam the thread with nonsense

i recommend apologies and thank you's
rise above your petty egos, dumbfucksci
then grow some brains