Members Posting Copyrighted Content

1. User copies an article from somewhere
2. User pastes entire article on your forum
3. You don't notice it
4. You are contacted by the content author and asked to remove it, or legal action will be taken.
5. What do you do?

On my forum, a lot of people think it's legal to copy and paste an article as long as they mention the original author and cite the source. As we all know, such is not the case.

To protect myself, I have the following in my forum rules:

... and those sections of the ToS say:

[...]

And what do I do if a user posts copyrighted material? I delete/remove the post or thread and contact them explaining the reasons why.

How do you handle such situations?

 

If I spot them I edit them down to a shorter snippet in line with accepted practice.

I've only ever had authors contact me over arcade games. If I'm reasonably satisfied that the claim is genuine I'll do as asked, and that'd be the same regarding an article.

 

I once had an incident like this where a user posted someone else's tutorial, and the original author registered and made a stink... except he didn't say he was the author, and instead started badmouthing everyone. Once I asked him why he was so upset and learned what happened, I deleted the thread and posted a link to his site instead. The incident could have been resolved much faster had he said up front that he was the author and provided a link to prove it.

 

I remove it, leave a brief 'mod note' explanation in the post, and have a private word with the poster. If they will do the work of deciding which snippets they'd like to use I may edit it in for them (they don't have enough edit window to do it themselves.) If removal of content means the thread makes less sense ... well, a learning experience for all, it happens. :o

 

1. 
   
   If I am contacted by the owner of the material - I delete it - apologize to the person who owns the material - then give the member at least a 1 week ban. Depending onwhat happened, how much he/she posted - they might get up to a 6 month or 1 year ban.

 

Dissemination of information is a good thing. You shouldn't discourage people from linking to offsite information. You should however encourage fair usage when it comes to copyright. This means that instead of the entire article, the user posts a paragraph or two and then a link. This is perfectly legal and doesn't violate copyright. Also in some case such as a link to an artwork or series, you can post a portion of that. For instance someone finds a web comic on owning parakeets. They can post an issue/episode on your site with a link to the original and the rest of the collection. That is fair use.

You also have to know the license something was published under. For instance, much of the Wikipedia is under the GPL while newer content is under the Creative Commons license. So you need to encourage linking. Many sites are moving to more open distribution licenses. If its a proprietary license, shorten the submission and keep the link. If its available for distribution, then keep it.

 

That is exactly what I recommend that my members do.

Its the ones that copy entire pages and do not even give a link to the source that I have the main problem with.

 

We had a case of this recently.

First of all I ask for some kind of proof that they are the original author - anyone can claim to be the owner. If im satisfied they are the owner then I will remove if that is their wish.

 

Good topic.

So it's illegal to post the entire article even if you include the writer, date, quotes brackets/marks, and source link?

 

It's better search engine fodder if you write your own unique summary of the article and post a link to the rest anyway.

 

Yep, indeed. That is, if it's copyrighted (I believe).

 

US Law (DMCA) requires you to remove copyrighted material in a timely matter if you are indeed contacted.

Many forums have policies about crediting original authors and that's imho a good idea but even still if you are contacted by the copyright holder you must remove the content.

If you're running a commercial website then most likely yes. There exceptions for fair-use but most of that is for non-commercial usage. If you're benefiting from the content monetarily (ads or membership) then you ar infringing on the rights of the author. It's their content.

How you would feel if you had a 100 article site and some forum owner copies and pastes them all into his forum?

 

You simply remove it. I have in some of my terms that you're not to do it. But the person who owns the content HAS to give you the benefit of the doubt, and providing you remove it in due time, they can't do anything other than pester you a bit.

I've had many of "Without Pride and Prejudice" letters and emails (when I've had an email and it's shirty I tell them we only deal with legal issues via recorded delivery lol - let the buggers pay for you to remove it!) That said, most simply contact me and link to the content, and as I've had mine stolen, I'm always happy to remove it. Always always.

We do have 'private' forums where a lot of the content doesn't get reported. So if you're ever bothered about it, just shift it to a private forum where just your regulars are reading it etc perhaps?

 

I've had members post entire articles all so far have given their source which makes it tolerable IMO. So I just let it ride. If a copyright owner contacted me I'd have no issue immediately removing it.

 

<.<;;

It doesn't bother me..

 

I post a lot of article content but generally just a few paragraphs and I include source links as well as use quotes. Now I will sometimes run across articles that say no re posting without permission. I have contacted these people personally and have had good luck doing it. I will also use pictures from an article but will include the photographer's name if listed.

Anyhow, I would be more than happy to remove something should I be contacted.

 

We deal with a lot of copyright images that are made by different artists, we have in the past had a post made by a member that failed to credit the artist concerned. We have no option but to delete the post as soon as we see it.
Up to now we have never been contacted by anyone regarding copyright material.
I suppose in a way I am lucky in that I have another Admin who is way more clued up on the image copyright and artist(s) than I am, she normally deletes the posts before I even see them.

 

That's a little different than the issues we have. I suppose an image is 100% somebody's work. Whereas the issues we have are normally just a topic copy and pasted from a blog or website. So it's sort of a snippet in it's own right.

Though it's not possible for us to check every post (though we try) and some of our guys write stuff on our forums quite often that are their own work, just for the forum, and we'd end up deleting those if we just erased every large corporate looking copy (topic/whatever).

Though hats off to your other Admin Fazer.

 

If its an article i take a snippet and change the user to it, if its a link to say a warez i simply leave it unless contacted by author (usually is not the case)

If its a warez like i said they can not take legal action against you unless part of the code is posted because they are simply linking to the warez not hosting it on your server.

Cheers.

 

I see nothing wrong with quoting a few pertinent paragraphs and linking to the rest, unfortunately plenty of members just paste in entire articles with no attribution.