Copyright infringement and the Education Forum

[Mark Stevens]

I'm not a moderator, so maybe I shouldn't be even mentioning this, but...

This site has a huge problem with copyright infringement and there are quite literally thousands of instances of copyright infringement on this forum. There are between 10-100 just on the first page alone.

On internet forums, a poster is not allowed to post an entire article which they did not write, or they do not hold the copyright to, even if they link back to the source or otherwise "credit" the source. In these instances, the only thing allowed under Fair Use is an excerpt of the article with a link to the article (not just saying "you can find it on YouTube").

Moderators have to step up and not only disallow this behavior, but efforts have to be taken to clean up posts that exist on this site with copyrighted material in them. If not, this entire forum is at risk and the entire forum could either be shut down through legal action, or offending posts would be taken down. If either of these happens then a great wealth of information and research will be lost forever.

Please, all members, stop posting entire articles, blog posts, or other websites to the forum. Only post small snippets of the information and then link back to the complete material. 

Moderators, please start policing this before all the work and effort which has went into this site is lost.

It won't take but 1 disgruntled current or former member to get all of this blown up. We all know there is no shortage of disgruntled ex-members of this forum. Any author or even "lone nutter" could use this to have the website shut down or severely "damaged" by post removal.

For more information check out these links, or do your own searches...

Fair Use for Forums (and How to Explain to Your Members That They Can’t Quote Entire Articles)

Be Proactive in Preventing Content Theft and Copyright Infringement

[W. Niederhut]

Mark,

Interesting, thoughtful warning.

Is your call for more strict "policing" of the forum possibly related to your recently professed abhorrence of censorship in the U.S.?

Also, do you happen to know anyone, in particular, who might be interested in shutting down this forum-- using the pretext of "copyright infringement?"

Just asking for a friend. 🤥

 

 

[Matt Allison]

This site should have a DMCA policy, as otherwise it does indeed put itself at considerable risk.

[Mark Stevens]

21 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Mark,

Interesting, thoughtful warning.

Is your call for more strict "policing" of the forum possibly related to your recently professed abhorrence of censorship in the U.S.?

Also, do you happen to know anyone, in particular, who might be interested in shutting down this forum-- using the pretext of "copyright infringement?"

Just asking for a friend. 🤥

 

I'm not exactly sure how the two are related. I also don't have any "recently professed abhorrence" of censorship in the U.S., I've always professed abhorrence to such practices and often to those that are for them.

Censoring the discussion of thoughts and ideas is an entirely different thing than staying within the guidelines of copyright law as to ensure our/your/their work on this site is not lost. Post whatever topic you want, talk about whatever you want (that conversation is up to the moderators), but in doing so please do not open this forum to litigation or other forms of legal action.

You really do put who you are on full display, not matter what huh.

Even in a situation such as this, you can't refrain from in some way making the issue about the person making the post instead of the message contained within the post. In any event, what I said is a real and legitimate risk and if something isn't done to contain and control this then it won't be a matter of if, but when.

No good deed, eh?

[W. Niederhut]

35 minutes ago, Mark Stevens said:

I'm not exactly sure how the two are related. I also don't have any "recently professed abhorrence" of censorship in the U.S., I've always professed abhorrence to such practices and often to those that are for them.

Censoring the discussion of thoughts and ideas is an entirely different thing than staying within the guidelines of copyright law as to ensure our/your/their work on this site is not lost. Post whatever topic you want, talk about whatever you want (that conversation is up to the moderators), but in doing so please do not open this forum to litigation or other forms of legal action.

You really do put who you are on full display, not matter what huh.

Even in a situation such as this, you can't refrain from in some way making the issue about the person making the post instead of the message contained within the post. In any event, what I said is a real and legitimate risk and if something isn't done to contain and control this then it won't be a matter of if, but when.

No good deed, eh?

You're dead wrong again, Mark, in your latest (of several) recent off topic, ad hominem attacks on me in our discussions.

How ironic that you would accuse me of adopting your own methods.

The truth is that I'm an issues guy.  I rarely ever engage in ad hominem attacks on anyone here, with the exception of occasional forum jokes about Lance Payette, Fred Littwin, and Rob Wheeler during the past year or two.

 In your case, I'm generally curious about what prompted your sudden interest in the subject of this historic forum being policed and, possibly, shut down.

Any particularly concerning threads?

And I'll ask again.  Do you know anyone, in particular, who might be interested in shutting down the Education Forum on the pretext of copyright infringement?

Lone Nutters?  Anti-9/11 Truthers?  Frustrated cognitive infiltrators?

Instead of attacking me, kindly answer the questions.  (After our strange debates about Fletcher Prouty and the NIST Report, I won't hold my breath.)

 

 

 

[Steve Thomas]

13 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

 In your case, I'm generally curious about what prompted your sudden interest in the subject of this historic forum being policed and, possibly, shut down.

W.,

This Forum has been in existence for 17 years.

Steve Thomas

[W. Niederhut]

25 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

W.,

This Forum has been in existence for 17 years.

Steve Thomas

Indeed, Steve.   And yet, according to Mark, it's now, apparently, in danger of being shut down for copyright infringement.

It seems somewhat Orwellian.

I wonder if this has this happened to any other "Deep Politics" type forums in the U.S.

[Guest]

I’ve come across this on other forums concerning sport. I have a couple of questions for you @Mark Stevens

- What was your thought process that made you think of this? What was the particular post? 
- Is the forum profiting from this or these infringements of intellectual property? When I have had my own IP infringed, that has been the chief criteria. 
- Whether rightly or wrongly, I was under the impression that should a complainant raise an issue regarding their IP, that it would be customary for the said content to be removed by the forum. 
- Other forums just pop things in their T&C’s that puts the responsibility on the poster, not the forum. How are Facebook & Co dealing with this particular issue? 
 

Thanks

Chris

[Lawrence Schnapf]

well, this is an "educational forum". One could argue any discussion of copyrighted material falls under the "fair use" doctrine. as far as i know, no one is profiting by the use of copyrighted materials. While I dont practice copyright or intellectual law, my recollection is that the education exemption requires:

 The purpose of the use is non-commercial
2) Where practical, there should be sufficient acknowledgement of authorship of the work
3) The use of the material is fair  

[Matt Allison]

I can tell you from my experience working in the music industry, that any website that does not have a DMCA policy is putting itself at risk by almost anyone that wants to cause it trouble. Just because the site has not had any problems with it in the past, does not make it immune to any in the future.

[David Andrews]

On 7/30/2021 at 6:05 PM, Lawrence Schnapf said:

well, this is an "educational forum". One could argue any discussion of copyrighted material falls under the "fair use" doctrine. as far as i know, no one is profiting by the use of copyrighted materials. While I dont practice copyright or intellectual law, my recollection is that the education exemption requires:

 The purpose of the use is non-commercial
2) Where practical, there should be sufficient acknowledgement of authorship of the work
3) The use of the material is fair  

One of the progenitors of the current Fair Use law was a move to outlaw sale of course packs by for-profit colleges and universities.  Instructors would photocopy and collect copyrighted material that was too time-consuming and costly for students to find and purchase (standalone book chapters, journal articles, etc.), and college bookstores would sell these course packs alongside assigned textbooks for the courses.  In my senior year, 1982-1983, publishers sued my university in a test case to change the law, which worked.

So if the Forum is not-for-profit, that gives it a legal edge.  I would argue we sell books by posting excerpts.

Edited August 1, 2021 by David Andrews

[Micah Mileto]

Booooo. Abolish all intellectual property laws. Shame to those who feel entitled to a profit from something which has no scarcity.

[Vince Palamara]

One thing I would really like to know--HAVE copyright laws loosened in the last 5-10 years? On Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, etc., you can post many (many!) copyrighted photos and face 0.0 penalties. Back in 2009-2010ish, Facebook would ONLY allow photos YOU yourself took and even had a disclaimer...heck, they even only allowed a small amount of photos to be posted back then. Now, the sky is the limit.

As an important JFK-related side note:

Researchers DO realize that the vast majority of the amazing photos of President Kennedy (including assassination-related photos [not necessarily the actual assassination films/photos on Elm Street]) have largely only become available post-2008-2012? I vividly remember the period from 1998-2007 when the online JFK Library site, quite frankly, sucked: only a handful of boring photos of JFK we have all seen a million times. Then, soon after, thousands became both digitized AND public domain, as White House photographer Cecil Stoughton passed away (Robert Knudsen was already deceased by this time).

People are always so amazed at my JFK (in life) and 11-22-63 related photos, yet many do not realize how "new" they are, so to speak: they were buried, undigitized and unpublished for decades/ generations until recently. In addition to the ARRB file releases, this is an amazing thing.

 

 

Edited July 31, 2021 by Vince Palamara

[Denny Zartman]

I'm not sure about the other sites, but if you see one of your pictures on Pinterest and you don't want it there, you can report it and Pinterest will take it down while also sending an alert to whomever had it on their boards explaining why it was removed. They certainly don't shut down Pinterest permanently, they just remove the unauthorized picture.

[Vince Palamara]

1 hour ago, Denny Zartman said:

I'm not sure about the other sites, but if you see one of your pictures on Pinterest and you don't want it there, you can report it and Pinterest will take it down while also sending an alert to whomever had it on their boards explaining why it was removed. They certainly don't shut down Pinterest permanently, they just remove the unauthorized picture.

Thanks. That has happened to me just a couple of times. Then again, over a span of 11-plus years and over 15K photos, that is a drop in the ocean. No penalty occurred: like you said, they merely remove the photo.