Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Don't paste other people's work and claim it as yours
Published on February 20, 2004 By Draginol In Misc
We've been noticing an increasing tendancy of people to simply go and take a well known columnist's writings and simpy copy and paste the entire thing and submit it as their blog entry here on JoeUser.com.

That violates the original author's copyright. You can use pieces of someone's article as part of your own article, that is known as "fair use". But you can't just wholesale copy someone else's work and submit it as your blog entry. Not only it is unethical but it creates a potential liability problem for the site.

If someone has written an article you strongly relate to, LINK to it. That is the nature of the web. Don't just repost what they've written. In the future, we will begin to remove articles that violate copyright (or edit them to link to the original source). Make your blog site your blog site, not a mirror of someone else's. Or alternatively, email the author and ask for permission to redistribute their article.
Comments (Page 4)
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on Feb 21, 2004
It's chilled plain and simple. Since I may expose the site to undue legal risk to quote without knowing what they are holding as enough or too much, I refer to the extensive disclaimer and coverage of relevant statutes at: httP;//www.rense.com/disclaimer.htm
Included there is a letter from Condoleeza Rice on the matter and substantial links to legal opinions and interpretations.

I still agree with Jeff on this matter and never thought for a moment to fear reprisal for posting a portion of the NY Times, qua ONE article in a substantial news paper, which is what it sold. Our posting is clearly done to educate and archive, never to profit or represent ownership of anothers' words or work.

Personally, I try to avoid posting a portion, as it takes away fom the authors work and does not allow them to express the true intent of that work, which may be contrary to my own. Far from criminal, I consider it moral, honorable and integrated to do so. Most authors would agree that if you are to use their work, grant the courtesy of offering all of it, as it avoids plagiarism, falsification, and mis-representation.

As I said in another post, I will abide the wishes of the owners of this site and abide whatever conditions they lay out, or take my postings elsewhere. I do apologize if any work I post causes the owners any legal hassle from such practice. I spout and spew, but am not immoral and do not intend to cause injury to the owners by acting against their wishes on such policy or practice.

Now I will move on and let this issue go, but invite the owners to send any inquiry as to my posts - by any party or agency - to me and I will address them promptly. Fair enough?
on Feb 21, 2004

Wahkonta Anathema : the NY Times is *notorious* for this kind of litigiousness.  You have to register with a valid email just to even *read* most of their online content.  That is not the kind of folks who want their stuff reprinted... for the good of mankind or not.


 

on Feb 22, 2004
Re: Copyrights~

I don't sign everyday to see stuff I could have found at NYTimes.com. There's a cool thing called "custom links" that you can use for that stuff. I personally avoid sites that contain excessive quoting and linking, because this is a forum of original thought, and I support that. This doesn't have to be a legal issue. And speaking of legal issues...

Re: EMacy or whatever his name was

Brad, remember Deleted_? lol stupid question, right? Well I thought that was somewhat immoral because this is a weblog and he had the right to say whatever. And besides, I've always been a sucker for the underdog:) But in this case, I would fully support EMacy leaving, since it's legal and moral turf. Hope you know what I mean.

Breath easy folks,

~Dan
on Feb 22, 2004
Dan, this is a private forum and not a publicly funded gov. forum. the owner has the right to decide what people may say on his site. deleted_ deserved to be removed for harassing other people on their blog sites. Allowing people to behave the way deleted_ did may prevent future participants from submitting blogs to this site since that kind of harrassment is not something they would want to go through.
on Feb 22, 2004
Guys, if you can't follow copyright law then go away. It's as simple as that. Wahkonta, Jeff, I don't care if you have blogs here.

But if you want to have a blog here you obey the law. The lawyers would contact US as well as the owners of the blog just like if a warez site is located oh Yahoo personal pages or something they're going to go after both Yahoo and the person in question.

We're willing to be as flexible as humanly possible but there's no excuse for simply regurgitating someone else's work.

I find the censorship clame laughable. Who's being censored exactly? Someone reposting someone else's work is not saying anything, they're just distributing, without permission, other people's work.

If you aren't interested in writing your own stuff then go find another site.

Besides the copyright issues, there's the issue of basic fairness. Why should those who actually WRITE their own stuff have to get buried by those just pasting onto their blogs other people's articles. If we allowed that, someone could simply point whore by reposting dozens of articles per day.
on Feb 22, 2004
I think what E Macy said on the other blog was pretty indicative of why this happens.

"It is justifiable and I for one and not afraid to re-print articles that support my point of view because by doing so my words will not be misconstrued, you will not look for weaknesses in my own character and make vicious personal attacks about my socio-economic status_that is none of your business."

I think many people cut & paste to imply professional authority and by-pass any accountability for the opinion. As E.Macy says, if you post what some guy at the NY Times says, there's no intellectual investment for the blogger, so no risk to one's ego. You at most sit back and watch the original author get flamed.

On the other hand if you read several such articles, absorb them, and then synthesize them into an opinion of your own, you've added to the overall body of ideas. It says a lot more about you as a blogger, too, I think.
on Feb 22, 2004


These rules are posted at the looniest and kookiest left wing board on the internet, DU h but beware... you run the risk of becoming as loony and as kooky as they have become

on Feb 22, 2004
Take note of all the speech codes and regulations, any opposing view is crushed, any post is almost certain to result in banning and deletion, so it is laughable to see some people come here and complain about Right wing extremism.
on Feb 22, 2004
Everyone needs to realize that this is NOT a free speech issue. This is a privately owned and run site where you have no real rights. If Brad decided he didn't want anyone with red hair posting, it would be within his rights to deny redheads access. He is NOT limiting your free speech anyway. Free speech is meant for the free expression and exchange of ideas. You are not expressing or exchanging any of your own thoughts when you just repost an article. If you posted portions and accompanied it with your own commentary and thoughts, it would be a different story. He's not telling you you can't post liberal slanted articles.

This is a free-speech argument that has long since been settled. It's been decided in courts and in classrooms. It is a dead issue that isn't open to further interpretation anymore. Ask any law professor... or heck any professor period about the issue and they'll all give you the same line. If this sort of behavior was in fact chilling free speech, the issue would have already gone to the supreme court. Face it, it's not an unconstitutional or unreasonable limit... not that the issue even applies to a private site anyway.

Online, you have NO real rights as you are using non-public resources. Think of a web site as a local mall... you can go in, shop, talk with friends, hang out, do whatever within the normal boundaries of the law, but if the management for any reason takes a disliking towards you, they can kick your butt out with little to no explanation, and since it's private property, it is their right.
on Feb 22, 2004

Just a question- are any of the people claiming that reposting an entire article is "fair use" IP attorneys?  Do you work with IP attorneys?  Well, Stardock does.  We have a team of attorneys.  We're not going to open the doors for a lawsuit just to allow some people to repost other peoples works. This site is owned by a corporation, so this is a commercial site.  Why would we want to get sued over something like this?  Write your own stuff.  Quote other people's stuff to make a point, give them credit, and link to them.  There is no "censorship" involved there.  Just don't be lazy, is it really that hard?


Some days I question Brad's judgment on opening this up as a totally free blog site.  I guess maybe there are reasons why other sites function the way they do.  Maybe we should have followed one of the others implementation

on Feb 22, 2004
A DAMN good example of why this is wrong:

Challenge: Back Up Bush's Resume

Someone gets a list of things in their email, doesn't verify any of the facts, doesn't even know what the source is, and posts it, daring people to refute it.

Why the hell should I waste hours refuting something that this guy doesn't even know is true or not? Since when does the burden of proof lay with the accused? People post this rot because they know disproving it is a statistical nightmare.

Then, when it finally ends up containing false material, they can wash their hands by saying it wasn't theirs and delight in all the people who are misled in the meantime.
on Feb 22, 2004
I don't think e-mail forwards should be copied and pasted since the original source is unknown therefor it is unknown if the original author had intended for his or her writing to be forwarded through e-mail and may have been posted on a personal website only for visitors to read but not copy.
on Feb 22, 2004
People keep saying that since this is a privately owned site it's not a matter of speech. That's true legally, but Brad is an ethical person and he runs his site according to ethics as well as legalities. And ethics allow for views that don't necessarily coincide.

~Dan
on Jun 16, 2004
just thought this needed to be bumped up for the new generation of JUers to see!
on Oct 05, 2004
Given Zoomba's article and the amount of reposting that's been going on, I'll bump this too....
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