posted
Don't worry, it's not valid in Eastern Europe. You can copy Hatrack with impunity, and make copies of Microsoft and Disney products to your heart's content.
posted
The presence of a copyright symbol/statement does not in any sense imply a copyright on all content co-present with the symbol.
And actually, that would theoretically stop quoting other members in whole, Papa, if it were intepreted literally, amusingly enough.
It would also prevent posting even fair use snippets of works (even a single line quotation from LOTR, for instance).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I think Papa Moose owns the copyright on landmark posts. Should we be paying him royalties? Or, since he posted it on Hatrack, does it all revert to our sponsors and we should pay them royalties?
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
"I know half of you half as well as I would like but I like even less then half of you less then half then you deserve."
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:And actually, that would theoretically stop quoting other members in whole, Papa, if it were intepreted literally, amusingly enough.
Actually, if the board owned the copyright on all our posts, then we have explicit permission to post them on this site, because we can post copyrighted material owned by this BB. It's right there in the user agreement.
But, of course, the work in which this BB has a claim to authorship is the compilation of individual works (our posts), and not the individual posts ourselves.
posted
Funny, I thought the copyright on the bottom of a BBS was there to copyright the layout and design of the forum as opposed to the individual content of the posts.
Posts: 494 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
That brings up a couple of very interesting questions. As I understand current United States copyright law (anyone who understands it better, that's your cue to correct me), anything original you write down, you automatically own the copyright to. If this BB owns the copyrights to all the material we post here, does that mean that, theoretically, Mr. Card, as the owner of this BB, could take entire posts from us and put them into his books without attribution? (I am not for a moment suggesting that he ever would; I'm just asking if it would be theoretically legal.)
The more important question is, if I write a book at some point, and I like the way I expressed a particular view here before, and I wish to quote myself extensively (with or without pointing out that I've written it before, depending on whether that was relevant), would I, legally, be free to do that because I own the copyrights to my own posts? Or would I have to attain permission from the BB (that is to say, Mr. Card) to recycle my own material?
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Yes, Dag, if it did have copyright on the individual posts.
I'm not even sure there would be a copyright on the compilation, exactly . . . that's an interesting question, what exactly constitutes the "message board work". The message board owners certainly get an implied (and likely explicitly stated somewhere in the TOS) license on our posts, which are then incorporated into the new work . . . but would the work be just this very specific compilation or the general compilation in this order and the various adornments that make it this specific compilation?
Ah well, doubt it will ever come up.
Just to clarify as people seem to be supposing otherwise still: the presence of the copyright statement at the bottom of the page in no way implies the Cards own the copyright on our individual posts.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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