Reply With QuoteNot a Lawyer...Originally Posted by bindeweede
Small excerpts would fall under Fair Use, generally a couple of sentences and a link to the full article should be fine.
Jack,
We know you are a legal expert. I came across this...
Copyright
The entire content of the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons website remains the property of the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons and is thus copyrighted © with all rights reserved except as detailed herein.
You must not copy, distribute, or publish any material from this website. Any other use of copyright material belonging to the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons requires the formal permission of the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons.
So, is it illegal to quote just a small amount from a site such as this?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear
bright, until you hear them speak.
Not a Lawyer...
Small excerpts would fall under Fair Use, generally a couple of sentences and a link to the full article should be fine.
Defendants might as well have said: Beneficent creatures from the 17th dimension use this bracelet as a beacon to locate people who need pain relief and whisk them off to their home world every night to provide help in ways unknown to our science.
Judge Frank Easterbrook commenting on the Q-Ray bracelet
"For Gods sake you're an American! Stop thinking of the consequences and blow something up" - Stan Smith, American Dad!
Well, that was the conclusion I came to when I found this, but after a little while, my eyes went all funny.........
http://ahds.ac.uk/copyrightfaq.htm#faq18
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear
bright, until you hear them speak.
As I understand it, copyright applies to how something is presented or written. You cannot copyright facts, only the way you write about them. So, you can rewrite someone else's article and, though it may be plagiarism, it may not necessarily violate copyright. You can quote an article, provided it's not too long ("fair use").
I'm not a lawyer but I write a lot so I make myself aware of copyright issues. The copyright on photos is much stricter. Obviously, you can't quote a photo so the whole thing is copyright unless otherwise stated. Despite this, copyright photos are routinely plastered all over the web, probably mostly through ignorance.
If you want to criticise a web site without violating copyright it is probably best to challenge any facts they give. This is usually the best way for skeptics to go, in any case.
A grey area is reviews. Obviously, if you are invited to review a work by its author, publisher or agent, you can say quote from it pretty freely. Some people, however, review works that they've never been invited to by anyone connected with the publisher. This might be problematic. I'd be interested to know what the legal people think of this question.
Last edited by Mulder; 3rd September 2008 at 08:48 AM.
Copyright relates to content/ideas as well as words so your first scenario (re-writing someone else's article) would be a serious breach of copyright if you claimed it as your own work.
On web-sites the best approach is to provide a link to the page with the info on which is not a breach of copyright rather than risk a direct quotation. Importantly direct quotation is usually allowed so long as the source is acknowledged.
As to reviews, this is covered by 'fair use' - assuming you don't quote everything there is no problem.
I would suspect that the copyright statement (pretty standard words and recommended for anyone selling services of this type) is to protect from other psychics rather than those who disagree.
"No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority." Robert Heinlein
I'm pretty sure you can't copyright ideas and I'm not sure about content either eg http://www.artquest.org.uk/artlaw/copyright/29491.htm
I think they also use it to try to try to give some respectability to their position. If it's copyright, it has to do with legal stuff, and therefore if they have legal stuff they must be reputable. Obviously nonsense, but all part of the con to impart some sort of degree of integrity.
Mousse from a bowl is very nice, but to put it on a person is demented!
As I understand it, you can copyright ideas but not facts. So if you write a novel with a killer new plot idea, or a song with a particular tune, and someone issues something very similar shortly afterwards, you might have a case. Remember the case over 'The Da Vinci Code'? The plaintiffs lost that one, but clearly there was a case to be heard.
On the other hand, if a diligent researcher comes up with some new factual information and publishes it, it is then open to anyone to write about it (as long as they don't copy the words used).
Anthony G Williams
Home page
Indeed, if Baigent and Leigh had admitted that Holy Blood Holy Grail was a work of fiction they would, almost certainly, have won. But trying to pretend that it was real history undermined their case and meant that their ideas were fair game for Brown to use.
Or if three hack fantasists invent new information but pretend that it is real?
'Croydon' Bob Newman. The ladies call him "Thrush" - as he's an irritating cunt.
Although it did require the original authors to at least imply that their great work of history was in reality a work of untruth.
The origins of copyright lies with the 'Statute of Anne' in 1709 which replaced limited common law protection for writers' work. Crucially this Act conferred economic rights allowing for the development of the publishing (as opposed to printing) industry. There had been an earlier Act (1662 Licensing Act) that produced a register of books published and their authors but stopped short of prevent copying or piracy. This earlier Act in effect created the book repositories (British Library, Bodleian, etc) as it required the depositing of a copy of any book published.
A brief history: http://www.lawdit.co.uk/reading_room/room/view_article.asp?name=../articles/The%20History%20of%20Copyright.htm
"No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority." Robert Heinlein
After reading around, it seems you can only copyright ideas if they are manifest in a physical way that can be copied (which makes sense) eg. an artwork or book. Ideas themselves, as intellectual entities, cannot be copyrighted.
If you're writing factual material then other people can re-write what you've said in their own words. It is only if they use your actual words that there is a problem. I assume it depends how many of your words they use before it is a copyright violation - something for the courts to decide, presumably.
So, I could re-write someone else's article provided it is factual and I change the wording substantially. If, however, they expressed their own ideas on the facts in the article, I could not use those.
All of this is a strong case for being original when writing. It's more interesting anyway!
Last edited by Mulder; 4th September 2008 at 11:57 AM.
Well yes, that's fairly obvious. I recall being told in a seminar about copyright about an incident (early in the 20th century IIRC) in which a politician made an off-the-cuff speech which was recorded verbatim by a shorthand reporter and reproduced in his paper. The politician sued for breach of copyright and not only lost, he was told that as the reporter was the first person to write it down, the copyright for that speech lay with the reporter!
Anthony G Williams
Home page
It is even moot as to whether the speaker would have copyright if they read from a prepared speach (i.e. written down) unless they had published that speech in some way - such as giving a copy to the Chairman or to the journalist present.
"No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority." Robert Heinlein
Two words for ya, to bring to the Intellectual Copyright angle of this thread:-
Raj
Persaud.
"Plagarists Anonymous"?
"No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority." Robert Heinlein
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