Mike,
Since you have never before contributed anything here you were automatically still on moderation as are all new members to prevent spamming.
However, I approved your message because it gives us all a chance to air this matter out which seems to pop up on many Yahoo Groups from time to time.
This matter has already been looked into in great detail by the ownership and management here as it has on many other groups.
Thank you for sharing your opinion and for sharing your great links and we appreciate and hope our members will take a gander at them for their own edification.
However, to be quite honest they do nothing to clarify anything nor do they contain any new information we have not seen before.
Contrariwise, they serve to further demonstrate just how murky and gray and convoluted and wide-open the entire matter is.
Go back through the pages of the links and notice what I mean: lots of speculation and hypothesizing and theorizing and generalizing and general wishy-washiness.
Contained therein is not a lot of legal precedent applicable here or really anywhere as it pertains to anything remotely in our circumstances as not much case law even exists because not a lot of lawsuits of the sort that involves us ever happen.
The one big court case mentioned was 11 years ago and it was against a politically active, for-profit, large-circulation Conservative rag and was almost certainly a politically-motivated lawsuit. No mention of any suits involving any online forums or email lists, not even big groups unlike our medium-sized one
Just about every line or element in these links serves to tell us what we already have come to notice and have debated before on other groups or discussed amongst ourselves which is that while one element of what we are doing could in theory bother somebody that is not very likely given our particulars.
Yes, in theory posting articles in their entirety might piss off a copyright holder but what we are doing is not what they are concerned about in the first place and they have much more important fish to fry than a Yahoo Group with a mere 1500 members, some of whom are members of the very media owning copyrights to which we are discussing.
Yes, we have newspaper and TV reporters here and they aren't too worried about what we do. In fact they monitor the posts for their own edification.
By posting an article in full one can read it uninterruptedly and can view it in the full context of both itself and all the other content on the group relating to what is being discussed be it a fire or an earthquake or some new study about some future hazard or some new research about some past event, etc. just as is mentioned in your links.
Yes, they mention this is not in and of itself a defense but neither is it an indictment....like with this entire matter, it's very gray and vague.
I am not aware posting entire articles keeps people from checking out the article on the website of origin. Speaking for myself I ALWAYS go to the website of origin when others post an article because I want to see the accompanying photos and any links on the margins to similar or related articles, etc.
Perhaps I'm being Kim-centric believing others do, too, but I believe others indeed do likewise or else I wouldn't do something that I thought caused any harm to a newspaper's profitability or actually broke any laws as they are actually enforced in the real world as opposed to the world of legal theory.
Other than the percentage of article reposted here there is very certainly nothing else we do that could logically and reasonably be construed as a problem to anybody as it pertains to reposting copyrighted material and Fair Use given our particulars.
In our favor is that we are a non-profit enterprise, we are a discussion group filled with not only regular folks but also specialists and other type authorities in fields relating to what we cover, and the material we repost is not highly artistic like fiction but is fact-based which as your own material acknowledges is less thorny unlike highly-creative works of fiction.
I have yet to hear to date of a single Yahoo Group or forum or other email list get a cease & desist order let alone a lawsuit and I have seen other groups that are not well-managed (unlike this one) where articles are posted in their entirety without links and without a lot if any effort made towards making adequate attribution and nothing has ever happened there nor probably ever will.
For this reason we continue to see this as a non-issue and a tempest in a teapot. We have never knowingly broken the law as it is interpreted and enforced nor encouraged or allowed others to do so.
What we claim and charge is that the law is inexcusably vague and even more vaguely enforced as to cause additional confusion.
This is neither our fault nor our concern.
However, in deference to the one hypothetical and theoretical soft spot we might have I will start reposting partial articles (instead of complete) and encourage others to do likewise (and call it our "Steve" policy since he started this tonight) to eliminate any lasting concern anybody might have for the financial well-being of the LA Times as it pertains to California Disasters reposting their content. ;-p
So Mike, with that out of the way, feel free to contribute stuff here about disasters and such as well. ;-p
Kim Patrick Noyes ~ California Disasters Legal Defense Team
Actually Mr Noyes, I don't know if you are a lawyer or not, or what your experience is in Fair Use/Copyright claims are, but what you have posted is very incorrect and can get you, and others who follow it, in quite a bit of a legal mess.
I'd like to recommend that you read a wonderful summary found on the groundwire.org website at:
http://groundwire.org/support/articles/fair-use
It lists 4 test cases as well as a judgement against FreeRepublic.com in 1999 for doing exactly what you say is allowable. Here is a quote from the article:
"The fact that the newspaper articles were republished in their entirety also weighed heavily against the fair use defense. Where media criticism is concerned, one can well understand a critic arguing that an offending article must be viewed in its entirety to assess the context and any subtle bias of the author. But the Court was unmoved by that argument, and it held that the Free Republic had failed to show how full-text copying was essential to its discussion forum. The Court implied that posting summaries of the articles or providing a link to the newspapers websites where the full articles could be read were alternatives that Free Republic should have employed. Finally, because the availability of the papers articles in full text on the Free Republic site fulfilled at least some demand for the original works on the papers own websites, and because widespread copying of this type would have a deleterious effect on the papers markets, the fourth factor weighed against the fair use defense."
The link on that page to the EFF's page is also a wonderful tool which also links to the Stanford.edu page which is a wealth of information. A good shortcut link is:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/commentary_and_analysis/2003_07_minow.html
One key thing to take from that site is:
"If you're found to be an infringer (and don't have reasonable ground to believe your use was Fair Use), statutory damages are set by law at a minimum of $750 and a maximum of $30,000 per infringement, "as the court considers just." If the court finds that you've infringed on ten photographs that have registered copyrights, for example, you may be facing a $300,000 lawsuit. If the copyright owner can prove that the infringement was committed willfully, the court has the discretion to increase the damages up to $150,000 per infringement. Further, the court may determine that the losing party must pay the winner's costs and attorneys fee"
Of course another great resource for all things, not just legal or Fair Use doctrine is eHow which has had one of the best articles I've ever read on the subject at
http://www.ehow.com/about_4793360_copyright-laws-fair-use-issues.html
One should take away from that link the following:
"Misconceptions
Contrary to popular belief, there is no hard and fast rule as to the number of words which can be reproduced from a copyrighted work under the doctrine of fair use.
Non-profits do not automatically have free license to reproduce copyrighted work without attribution or compensation.
.....
Merely showing attribution for reproduced work does not provide complete cover from the law--attribution is necessary but not sufficient to establish lawful use of copyrighted material."
Yahoo and Yahoo groups are covered under the Safe Harbor clause, but you the owner, moderator, and sell professed legal team, as well as anyone who posts a COMPLETE article, is pretty certain to be violating US Copyright law and not acting within the confines of the Fair Use doctrine.
The basic rule of thumb is that you are never allowed to post/republish someone's work in its entirety without expressed permission. That's almost always a given fail of the Fair Use doctrine. You are allowed to summaries, link to, use parts of, quote, and discuss an article to your hearts content, but republishing in its entirety, even for non-profit or educational use, is probably not going to win in any US courtroom.
In the situation of the article posted here, it is obvious to see that by posting the entire article here, there is no reason at all to go to the originating website which is ad-supported. By posting it here, and having it remain available in perpetuity, you are probably violating the 4th test of Fair Use by infringing on the market for the article.
I am not a lawyer, but I am a part of various groups that work hard on promoting Fair Use standards, and the rights of copyright holders and content creators. These articles are some of the best that give one and all a better understanding of the murky waters of US copyright law, and the legal and financial dangers they can find themselves in even if they meant no harm.
Mike
--- In californiadisasters@yahoogroups.com, Kim Noyes <kimnoyes@...> wrote:
>
> Steve,
>
> "Fair Use" laws make posting articles for discussion on online forums where
> there is obviously no profiteering and proper attribution is shown entirely
> legal or else Yahoo Groups and many, many other forums and lists would have
> been shut down years ago while a large percentage of the content posted
> thereon over the years had to be methodically removed.
>
> By posting articles with links included (as we always do here) we are
> actually providing a free service to the publishing source by providing them
> with free distribution and publicity and potentially drawing more folks to
> their website which in turn brings them more revenue.
>
> Kim Patrick Noyes
> Legal Team ~
> California Disasters Group
>
>
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