Gaelen
09-09-2006, 10:31 PM
The internet is all about sharing information--but conventional hard-copy authors and now, many websites, copyright the information they present. Once an author places a copyright notice on his/her work, even if it's a publicly available internet website, that author is free to prohibit the reproduction of their work word for word on another website without prior written permission. Copyright information for a website can usually be found in its Terms of Service or Terms of Use area. Many permit you to 'email this article' or 'download this article,' but those permissions are given for private, personal use. Placing the entire work--article, photo or illustration--on this website is considered republishing, and is a violate of copy protection.
That doesn't mean that you can't quote brief portions of someone's work in a post on this website--quoting less than 10% of the work, with proper credit to the original author, is generally not ruled in violation of copyright. However, reposting an entire article or an entire piece of work such as a photo or illustration IS usually considered a violation of copyright. Even if your use is eventually ruled not in violation of the author's copyright, arguing that point in court can get prohibitively expensive, so that's not an argument this forum would ever like to have.
If you're not sure, ASSUME IT'S COPY-PROTECTED.
In that case:
-- you can tell everyone where the information can be found (without posting the complete work)
-- you can post a link to the online version
Generally, the best way to share someone else's work published on another website is to use a link (that little globe icon with the piece of chainlink underneath is the icon you click to insert a link into your posts.) Please do not just post a link without comment or explanation, especially if the linked site requires membership or registration to read!
Members who post complete works (articles, photos or illustrations) in violation of another author's copyright protection will be asked to remove the material. If a member repeatedly violates copyright protections, s/he may lose posting privileges on this forum.
Recipes have different copyright standards than most other types of work--see the announcement posted in the Let's Cook forums for specifics. Generally, a list of ingredients can't be protected by copyright-- but the collection of recipes where the original appeared, and/or the "directions" for combining the ingredients CAN be protected by copyright. Even crediting the author and publisher and including the copyright information may be a copyright violation without the author's written permission to distribute the recipe.
Some authors permit free sharing of their recipes, but most only allow you to copy/download for personal use. Like reposting an article, photo or illustration in its entirety, sharing a recipe from another forum violates the 'personal use' agreement. And a note to cooks who post recipes here--this forum assumes no copyright over *your* recipes. You retain the copyright, but you need to protect it separately and you may not post a private copyright notice on this forum. Post here only what you are happy sharing with the entire internet community. If you prefer to copy-protect your work, you should link to it on your own copy-protected site, as you would any other author.
Let's all respect the efforts of other authors by respecting the copyright protections on their works.
That doesn't mean that you can't quote brief portions of someone's work in a post on this website--quoting less than 10% of the work, with proper credit to the original author, is generally not ruled in violation of copyright. However, reposting an entire article or an entire piece of work such as a photo or illustration IS usually considered a violation of copyright. Even if your use is eventually ruled not in violation of the author's copyright, arguing that point in court can get prohibitively expensive, so that's not an argument this forum would ever like to have.
If you're not sure, ASSUME IT'S COPY-PROTECTED.
In that case:
-- you can tell everyone where the information can be found (without posting the complete work)
-- you can post a link to the online version
Generally, the best way to share someone else's work published on another website is to use a link (that little globe icon with the piece of chainlink underneath is the icon you click to insert a link into your posts.) Please do not just post a link without comment or explanation, especially if the linked site requires membership or registration to read!
Members who post complete works (articles, photos or illustrations) in violation of another author's copyright protection will be asked to remove the material. If a member repeatedly violates copyright protections, s/he may lose posting privileges on this forum.
Recipes have different copyright standards than most other types of work--see the announcement posted in the Let's Cook forums for specifics. Generally, a list of ingredients can't be protected by copyright-- but the collection of recipes where the original appeared, and/or the "directions" for combining the ingredients CAN be protected by copyright. Even crediting the author and publisher and including the copyright information may be a copyright violation without the author's written permission to distribute the recipe.
Some authors permit free sharing of their recipes, but most only allow you to copy/download for personal use. Like reposting an article, photo or illustration in its entirety, sharing a recipe from another forum violates the 'personal use' agreement. And a note to cooks who post recipes here--this forum assumes no copyright over *your* recipes. You retain the copyright, but you need to protect it separately and you may not post a private copyright notice on this forum. Post here only what you are happy sharing with the entire internet community. If you prefer to copy-protect your work, you should link to it on your own copy-protected site, as you would any other author.
Let's all respect the efforts of other authors by respecting the copyright protections on their works.