Copyright issues - Split from Galapagos Fatality

[The Chairman]

Pete, that's a standard policy of the typical website and it sounds like a cop-out.

So be it. I have bigger fish trying to fry me at the moment. http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/site-support/321427-gundi-holm-sues-scuba-board-101-members.html

 

[merxlin]

I spent a very short amount of time on this but did note one very imortant issue with copyrights- reporting of facts is not protected, which this blog entry would seem to be. Here is a snipit of explaination:

Works that are not sufficiently original, or which constitute facts, a method or process cannot enjoy copy protection.[18]. U.S. Courts do not recognize the "sweat of the brow" doctrine, which originally allowed protection for those who labored to collect and organize facts. To combat this, business which assemble databases of information have relied on contract law where copyright law offers no protection.[19] For a work to be original, it must possess a "modicum of creativity", which is a "low threshold" although some creativity must exist.

 

[Ayisha]

Pete, that's a standard policy of the typical website and it sounds like a cop-out. What you describe is the absolute minimum for which you are responsible. I can appreciate that a mostly volunteer organization cannot be expected to run down every possible lead, however there are a few compromises that I would like for you to consider...
...The penalties for copyright violation can be severe, but more than that, it's unethical.

One reason I've seen that a lot of people copy news articles, etc. in their entirety and credit the source, rather than summarizing and linking to them is that many of those are only available for a limited time.

Providing a link to the source, crediting the author and then quoting the article helps preserve the content for future discussion when the original link is no longer valid or the article ends up archived somewhere and inaccessible.

What are the thoughts regarding this?

Agreed, Cave Diver. Articles are often unavailable after a period of time or links become broken. The thread and subject then become difficult to interpret correctly without being able to consult the source. It appears to all be moot anyway since SB posters tend to quote factual information which is outside copyright laws, rather than creative works, which are protected.

 

[bsee65]

I agree with all of that at some level. I do believe that there is a difference between facts and the presentation of facts. A cut and paste of an entire article will usually include more than just simple facts.