Please review this gentle reminder

[Mike1]

I think it is time for a gentle reminder about copyright and the need to respect information that is published on other Web sites, as well as the bandwidth of other sites.

There have been a couple of recent instances of posts from other forums being copied here to X Marks. Please remember that if you are going to quote something found on another forum, you have the responsibility of contacting the original author to seek permission. Without securing permission, you should not be copying and/or reproducing anything.

When you enter any information on this particular forum, you retain copyright to that information. You are granting Highlandtide a perpetual license to copy and publicly display that information, but you retain the copyright. If someone copies that information to another Web site, without permission, they are actually violating your copyright.

The bottom line is this - If you see a post on another forum and want that information to be conveyed to X Marks forum users, either seek permission from the original author or simply post a link to that information.

There are also times when a news articles from electronic-format newspapers are being posted here. Again, if you publish one of those articles on this forum, you are reproducing copyright material.

If you discover that type of information and want to post portions of it here, you need to quote only the pertinent sentence or paragraph, insert a link back to the original article and also insert a Fair Use Notice. Something along the lines of this -

FAIR USE NOTICE: This website contains some copyrighted material which in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is being distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for non-profit research and educational or criticism purposes only. Not withstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work including such use by reproduction in copies or recordings 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.

These simple rules do not cover all the points of copyright law, but will at least demonstrate that you are not trying to reproduce any copyright material in a malicious manner.

We also need to be courteous about bandwidth limitations. Nearly all Web site hosts have monthly bandwidth limitations. These days, most hosting companies are pretty generous with their limitations, but they do still exist. If you are browsing the Web and come across an interesting image, your first inclination is to copy the URL of that image and insert it into a forum post here. What you are effectively doing is hijacking the other Web site's bandwidth AND posting a copyright image.

The best bet here is to post a link to that image. Yes, it will still burn up bandwidth on the other Web site, but it will not be happening remotely.

Your other option is to seek permission to copy that image from the original site and then publish it on your own, personal Web space. That being done, you can hot-link to it all day long, because the only bandwidth being expended will be your own.

Please remember that if you copy someone's material here without permission, that material is being published on Highlandtide's Web space. Need I explain who is responsible for what is published here?

So do everyone a favor and try to respect the material published on other sites. If you simply must quote, then be responsible enough to seek permission.

[Nick]

As a history major, I have an instinctive drive to cite everything. What if, when we post an article or a picture, we cite the source? Then, as far as I know, there would be no blatant copyright infringement.

I suppose most people here aren't as familiar with citation styles as a history or english major, or forgot them after graduation. I'm not suggesting that we stick to a strict MLA, APA, or Chicago citation style, but if we at least give the author (if known), the URL of the information in question, and the date that information was retrieved (due to the shifting nature of the net), it would be enough to recognize that whatever it is belongs to the person cited.

Just a suggestion.

Cheers

[KiltedCodeWarrior]

...I suppose most people here aren't as familiar with citation styles as a history or english major, or forgot them after graduation. I'm not suggesting that we stick to a strict MLA, APA, or Chicago citation style...

About to complete my MS this year, and I am MORE than familiar with these syles. However, I would like to think that following any of them, or at least attempting to, would help the issue.

[Andrew Breecher]

The easiest, and most common, way to cite sources on the Internet is to turn your quote, or part of it, into a hyperlink directly to the source. The code is extremely simple to use, and here's a page listing all your options. I can't think of any clearer example of this in action than how Jason Kottke does inline quoting on his web page.

Andrew.

[Sherry]

If you really want us to use the Fair Use quote above, it would be a good idea to put it (or make this thread) a sticky.

I always post a link back to the original article, & include the author's name, etc. It seems obvious that posting on a board for general reading is a not-for-profit use, but I suppose someone could be a real pain about it.