Forum Moderators: not2easy
For instance, copying an article from, say, the New York Times online (suppose the article is by Andrew Andrewson and entitled 'The Republican Problem')and then posting that entire article in a new thread entitled 'New York Times says Republicans in trouble', with a full copy and paste job of the article in question.
On a particular sporting forum I enjoy, posters do this all the time. Not everyone likes to read through all of the news sites that may have an article on our team, so if someone finds one, they post it on the forum for all to see - with a link to the site where the article can be found.
It is rather innocent, but I can't help but worry that perhaps this may be illegal. I'm not sure how the NY Times work, but some of my local papers only leave articles online for 2 weeks before they are restricted from non-paying customers. By having these posts out there in cyberspace, people may be less likely to pay to see 'archived' articles (as the same article can be accessed on a free forum), and this may potentially hurt the media company's bottom line - this the potential for litigation.
Does anyone know the laws regarding this?
Most people won't object if you just edit the posts and replace it with a link, even if the link expires. Although it can mean the link goes out of date, by that time the conversation in the forum will have moved on in any case.
Stanford Copyright & Fair Use Overview and Resources [fairuse.stanford.edu]
A grasp of just the rudiments can save you from a lot of unwanted grief...
Syzygy
Fair use ends after a few sentences; an entire article is clearly too much.
Of course, the counterargument to that would be that if you only copy the first sentence of the article, then people have to follow the link.
The admin made another point - if a news agency were unhappy with this practice going on, they would first contact the site to have the matter dealt with before taking any legal action. Do you believe this would be the case?
[edited by: Once_a_Hero at 12:06 am (utc) on May 16, 2008]
Whilst a news agency, from whom work has been used without permission, may make contact first, you cannot be sure that they would. First contact may well be the letter threatening legal action.
Of course, if proceedings were instigated the site could find itself removed from search engine indexes. The hosting company could receive legal demands to shut the site down or at least bring pressure to bear in order to ensure that the offending material is removed. Claims for damages could be brought to bear. All these things could quite feasibly happen.
Sorry to say the admin is talking out of his/her backside and is playing a very risky game. Read up on Fair Use, get a grip on the basics of copyright law. It'll soon become very apparent to you that what you're describing is just not allowed and can come at great cost to the infringer.
Syzygy
It is rather innocent...
Maybe ignorant, but not innocent.
...the logic I have heard from the admin of a forum on which this practice is commonplace is that the news agency actually stand to benefit from this going on...
That's called rationalization. It's typically used by those who haven't yet had their site shut down.
FarmBoy
You see, the logic I have heard from the admin of a forum on which this practice is commonplace is that the news agency actually stand to benefit from this going on
His "opinions" on the matter are irrelevant. The law says otherwise.
Shutting down a website is the least of their worries if they find themselves sued.. It's pretty easy to prove this type of copyright violation and the damages are usually satutory.
