On copyright... [View all]

[nadinbrzezinski]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by MineralMan (a host of the General Discussion forum).

if you folks are going to actually enforce a general copyright rule (which I have never seen enforced so this kind of situational enforcement was cute), first you need to learn about copyright.

Everything you touch on the web is copyrighted. Hell, everything you post is, for 75 years or your lifetime, whichever is shorter. So you may as well use the copyright mark under every one of your posts to remind other posters of that little factoid. When we started RSD we actually sat on a few seminars on the subject by the way, Why? Well not only are we producing copyrighted material every time we post an article, but we knew we were going to be linking to somebody else's material like almost every day.

There are two major types of copyrights (and a slew of others, but this should be sufficient for general knowledge)... what I like to call the defended and enforced ones and the open source\ commons. And if you sell anything to a physical magazine these days, insist on selling not just first north american print rights, but also electronic and anything else that might rise in the future of the universe That comes from a not so famous case (it is famous among nerds) between Paizo publishing house and a bunch of freelancers. When they published in a CD Rom the whole of Dragon Magazine going back to 1979 the writers who sold them material in the 1980s sued them, for royalties. To make a long story short Paizo lost. Instead of paying royalties (They had to for the few CD Roms that were sold) they pulled the product. I actually have a copy somewhere, I was one of the lucky ones to buy it. I doubt my current computer could read it though.

And that line about the universe is one of the formulas used these days.

To the list in question:

It is quoted in full here

http://www.ellensplace.net/fascism.html

Here

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm (with expansions)

Here

http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm

and here, and actually a better copy since it uses Britt's introduction

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4113.htm

And many times on Democratic Underground over the years, as well as multiple other sites... before and after the lawsuit.

Suffice it to say, that list has been quoted in full at a few sites for a few years, The home magazine, Free Enquiry, which is a paper magazine, would have zero claim to that material if they never bought electronic rights. I have no idea, but the fact that the list is up at several places and that the author himself posted not just the list, but the essay in full at Information Clearing House, tells me that this piece, at the least the 14 points, are now in the public domain. That is the way it is being treated anywhere else, but DU as usual gets weird when it targets people.

Public domain material can be used in full. Other examples of public domain (that are born that way) are the United States Budget, a National Weather Service product, my local city budget and any article posted on the web under a commons license.

If you should write the ALL AMERICAN NOVEL, I recommend you still register with the copyright office. If for whatever reason somebody takes it, you will be able to prove it that much much easily. It used to be it was required if you had to defend it in court, to have that important letter in your physical hand, but at this point, it is not...just highly recommended. Oh and if you post that novel on an open site, it is considered published. Closed critique groups seem to be fine but have yet to be tested.

Copyright Technical Fouls at DU

We see them them here very often, The best example of a technical foul is when people post a breaking news story with only one sentence... that one sentence is called in the business a place holder. But since that is all there is at that moment, it is a technical copyright foul. Imagine how LBN would look if those were not allowed. Now a MEDIA publication, points at myself and many others, will paraphrase what the AP (that is a trademark by the way, another area of related law) posted, and link to the place holder.

But as good as the AP, and I am using them becuase they are the most aggressive at defending their copyrighted material, like most news services will ignore news aggregators. Guess what this place is? A news aggregator... a pretty decent one actually, But it is shares that with the Drudge Report which is ONLY a news aggregator. So I doubt the AP will come after this place...

Fair use is about 1 percent of a piece. You know how many times I see people using 4 paragraphs, of 5 paragraph story? That is a technical foul, well within the guidelines of the internal policy. This also means that much longer quotes than 4 paragraphs, coming from a book are fine under United States Tittle XVII fair use guidelines.

Then I also see people using 7 and 8 paras from much longer pieces from places like Vanity, outside the policy, but perhaps well within fair use as well.

And with that, I expect a few people to alert... of course I do. I have a target on my back. A few more to get snarly. and the hosts to close it... it is what it is.

(Copyright Nadin Abbott 2015)