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A note about plagiarism and copyright and posting

posted September 19, 2006 - 6:38am
A note about plagiarism and copyright and posting

We are more than happy to have posts that are reprints from other places.

However, if it is not your original work then you must give credit where credit is due and have consent to reprint that material. Simply stating the name of the person will not normally be enough. You will need to state where you found it, whether that is a book, newspaper, television show or what have you.

Also you cannot re-post copyrighted material without the consent of the original creator. Especially if you are changing the media of the presentation.

More can be found about copyright law at Wikipedia - Copyright.

Another good place to read about it is What is Copyright?.

Essentially when a work is created it is owned by the author. Unless those rights are sold or given away no one has the authority to reproduce that work.

Imagine if someone decided they liked your work, a work you are having published and expect to make money from. That person thinks it is interesting and decides to copy and paste it all over the internet. Now, people do not need to read the book or subscribe to a website or anything else to read the information. They can simply look on another site and read it for free, without paying you or even knowing you originally wrote it.

How would you feel?

Most copyright protection lasts between 25 and 75 years depending on the country the material was produced in, the medium of the material and other key factors.

In the course of cleaning up the categories I have run across what I see to be blatant and excessive copyright infringement. In an effort to reduce the possible risk of litigation to Xomba and the community I feel it is time we begin to deal with these posts.

If you have a post that is a reprint of someone else's material I suggest you either post empirical evidence that you have the right to reproduce it or you at the very least correctly cite the source of the material and the copyright information that pertains to that particular piece of work.

More to come on this topic after I speak with the Admins and they make a decision as to what will be done with these posts.

Thank you.

PG.

Author: PoisedGuru
-A +A


Comments

Technically speaking...

PoisedGuru - Thu, 2006-21-9 4:01 pm
The law actually states that anything that is in a physical media is covered by the copyright protection. Thus these would fall under the copyright protection. The length of a copyright for anything published prior to 1977 is the author's lifetime and 70 years after the author's death. Anything published in the USA prior to 1923 is now public domain. (I would take this to mean anything created and not published as well.) If the work was published between 1922-1978 the protection is 95 years from date of first publishing. If it was created and not published prior to 1978 it's protected for the author's lifetime and 70 years after their death. As to the writings of your parents. If they were never published then they probably fall into one of the above situations. I am not a copyright lawyer, this is solely my opinion: As the copyright protection is designed to ensure the financial security of the creators and their estates if you are in legal possession of the estate then you also hold the copyright. If you are the sole descendant of your parents than you should technically also be the holder of the copyright of all works that were not for-hire (these have a completely different set of rules.) So if you have no siblings, or if your siblings waive their right (I would suggest a legally binding contract here) to any of the proceeeds that may be gained from the publishing of said works then I would believe that you are in possession of the copyright provided you have the physical media on which the works were originally created. Thus said, the copyright protection would extend for 70 years since the death of the creators and you would most likely be the holder of the rights to those works. Again, I'm not a lawyer, it is simply how I read and interpret this particular set of laws. So I cannot be held responsible for anything that results from following said advice on the topic. Poised Guru Xomba Moderator

Poised Guru
Xomba Moderator

What if the original writer is deceased

Celanith - Thu, 2006-21-9 3:43 pm
My parents both had things they wrote, never published, both are now deceased. Dad August 1997 and mom April 2005. I am now in possession of thier writings, works, songs, poetry etc. So how would I go about that with the copyrights?

Celanith

Hello everyone, stop and set awhile.

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