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 | | From: | Deac | | Subject: | Copyrighted Material | | Date: | Tue, 26 Oct 2004 05:51:16 GMT |
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 | Hi All,
There have been several people in recent weeks copying a lot of
copyrighted material to various Christnet groups. The following are
some excerpts from an article which I think are informative and are
applicable to us here on Christnet.
From the article: "Permission is granted to freely copy this
document in electronic form, or to print for
personal use."
The entire updated article can be read at
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
10 Big Myths about copyright explained
By Brad Templeton
1) "If it doesn't have a copyright notice, it's not
copyrighted."
This was true in the past, but today almost all major
nations follow the Berne copyright convention. For example,
in the USA, almost everything created privately after April 1,
1989 is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not.
The default you should assume for other people's works is that
they are copyrighted and may not be copied unless you *know*
otherwise.
2) "If I don't charge for it, it's not a violation."
False. Whether you charge can affect the damages awarded in
court, but that's essentially the only difference. It's still a
violation if you give it away -- and there can still be
heavy damages if you hurt the commercial value of the
property.
3) "If it's posted to Usenet it's in the public domain."
False. Nothing is in the public domain anymore unless the
owner explicitly puts it in the public domain(*)......
4) "My posting was just fair use!"
The "fair use" exemption to copyright law was created to allow
things such as commentary, parody, news reporting, research and
education about copyrighted works without the permission of the
author. Intent, and damage to the commercial value of the
work are important considerations......
Fair use is almost always a short excerpt and almost always
attributed. (One should not use more of the work than is
necessary to make the commentary.) It should not harm the
commercial value of the work (which is another reason why
reproduction of the entire work is generally forbidden.)......
Please read the entire article at the authors link provided above.
There is also an excellent series of 6 articles by Terry Carroll
starting at
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/law/copyright/faq/part1/ which will give you
more information than you ever wanted to know about copyright law.
In order to keep us legal here on Christnet, in the future I will be
looking closely at long quotes of material which are republished here.
I will be looking for copyright notices and statements that permission
has been granted by the copyright holder to post their material.
A good example of how it is done is the daily devotions by John
MacArthur posted on Christnet.christianlife by Peter Chase.
Sorry for any inconvenience, and thanks for your consideration.
Deac
--If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more
thought.
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