Just wondering what the situation is on message copyright?

• Does BAUT take copyright?
• Do message authors retain copyright?
• Is the an open GNU-type copyright?
• Perhaps a creative commons copyright?
• Or no copyright?

ie. Can our messages be copied, and/or published elsewhere?

Regards,
Ian Tresman

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Ian Tresman
plasma-universe.com

My understanding is that your writings are copyrighted by default unless you specifically waive that right. However, it's not clear to me whether your postings on here belong to you or to BAUT. My guess would be the former.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

You own the copyright to anything you write. That's the default copyright law, whether or not you put the copyright tag on it. So, we don't own it.

If you want to post something you've written here in other places, that's up to you. Submit it as an article to Science Journal, post it on another forum, or just add it to a book you're writing. It's your copyright.

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

I found this website very useful as it pertains to copyright law of USENET postings.

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"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

I would think that BAUT would hold some ownership, otherwise to my fuzzy understanding, moderators wouldn't have permission to edit/remove posts as you'd be altering/removing copyrighted material...

So where am I wrong on that thinking?

They have the right to remove/edit stuff on their own board people have posted, according to their own rules. Copyright, as I understand it, relates to the right to republish your own work elsewhere unless restricted by prior contract.

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N6MAA10816
'Forensic anthropologist! That's why no gun'
Are you a Bright?

Yeah, it sort of goes unsaid that you're granting us a license to print your words in the forum, since that's where you're posting them. It would be kind of bizarre if someone made a post and then demanded we remove it for copyright infringement.

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

Not quite what I meant. I meant could it be considered infringement if a moderator edits somebody's post? Although now that I've "said" it, I think I see where my thinking was off. It probably would fall under editorship like a publishing company edits books before they're published.

It's clearly stated in the rules for the board that the moderators have the right to moderate.
Therefore, by posting on the board, these rights are implicitely granted by the copyright holder to the moderators.

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Would it be radical to suggest that all posts could be placed under a "Creative Commons licence, and you'd just need to make this a forum rule?

Regards,
Ian Tresman

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Ian Tresman
plasma-universe.com

Lets get real here Ian.
One cannot copyright a scientific idea. (or any other idea like that - look at Dan Brown).
In fact we want other scientists to quote our work and let it become 'mainstream.'
As scientists we look for 'priority.' That is, we want other scientists to recognise that we did it first.
So what do we do?
On the one hand we want recognition.
On the other hand we want publicity.
What to do?
We publish our ideas in copyrighted jounals such as scientific journals, our own websites, and discussion forums.
Whilst our ideas are not copyrighted, these transport mechanisms are.
If you post here, on BAUT "Ians theory of everything" then your idea is not copyrighted but the BAUT forum is. Anyone quoting your idea has to recognose the BAUT forum and that you said it first. i.e they have to give you 'priority'.
Why do you think original posters post here? We get 'priority'.
The more forums we post our original ideas on, the less likely it is for someone to stand up and say "it was my idea first!" - they would look silly.
There is no need for 'extra rules' - we need forums such as BAUT to give us priority! more people see an internet site than a published journal. However, the copyrighted journal gives us 'priority!'
cheers,
lyndon
P.S. We are awaiting a rteply from you on the halton Arp forum

Indeed, ideas can not be copyright. But the Creative Commons licence allows for copying ''with attribution''.

Regards,
Ian Tresman

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Ian Tresman
plasma-universe.com

The terms of service, which you must agree to in order to join, grant the forum staff the right to edit or remove any post. In order to join you must agree to allow this. There is no clause, however, waiving copyrights to material you post, therefore since you did not explicitly waive them you retain all legal rights to your posts except the right to prevent the staff from modifying them, which you did explicitly waive.

However, as for quoting, that probably falls under fair use. Although it is not exhaustive, this list shows uses of copyrighted material that are looked upon most favorably in terms of fair use:

* Criticism
* Comment
* News reporting
* Teaching
* Scholarship
* Research

I doubt anyone would have any troubel arguing that quoting falls into one or more of these categories, especially the first two. The relative amount of the work copied is also important, usually it is considered best to use only what you need to accomplish the goal with which you undertook the copying.

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I've seen quite a few boards where posters will quote a long post and only reply to a small part of it... this is just the thing to put an end to that behavior. *evil grin*

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I have a habit of parsing up long posts with multiple questions into several smaller quotes, and then responding individually to each smaller quote. Am I violating the copyright of the OP by doing so?

Probably not, because you need all the smaller quotes in order to carry out the criticism that is the whole point of the quoting. If anybody sends you a cease and dissist letter I would probably obey it, but otherwise you are probably safe.

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

By the way, I was mainly thinking out loud. When Fraser said said the poster owned the rights to their post, it just got me to wondering excatly where is the line between poster's ownership versus the hosting board's right the edit/delete. More of an exercise in thought rather than an actual question.

Part of the blurry definition of fair use is that what's fair use depends on the medium as well, and includes established good behaviour within that medium.

In webforums, my impression is that etablished practices tells us that:
Quoting just a bit of a post (or all of a short post) and commenting on/answering that is definitely fair use.
Breaking it up in bits and commenting on each bit is also fair use, provided there's no doubt about which is the quoted text and which is comments.
Quoting and commenting on multiple posts at the same time should be done so the different posts and posters quotes can't be confused with each other.

Quoting two posts in a way that makes it look like they where part of the same post is definitely over the line and is not fair use.

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