The best things in life are copyrighted

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LEGAL BRIEF The best things in life are copyrighted By Max Stul Oppenheimer, Esq. At least on the Web. Even though there is a sea of material there fo
[See the full post at: The best things in life are copyrighted]

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DLivesInTexas, Microfix, SueW, abbodi86

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Question: Is everything here in AskWoody copyrighted (this comment, for example)? I ask, because the title of this thread is about the “best things in life”, so I am guessing it is.

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Question: Is everything here in AskWoody copyrighted (this comment, for example)?

Yes it is. Your post is your “itellectual property” and its protected. Officially.. In real life if someone stole your post, you must put enormous effort and money to win the fight in court. Only heavyweight fighters like China can effort to ignore copyright sometimes. Nobody really wants to fight against China.
If you have big ammount of money, copyright everything you can. Then you will have more money and you can copyright even more things

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Actually, my question could have been better phrased as: copyrighted by whom?

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I should say, that its automated process, that is done at the moment, you posted it. So it was copyrighted for you by the law. I dont know, does it make sense like this?

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My comment, yes, posted in a Web site that is someone else’s property.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

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Should Bloggers Register for Copyright?
Once a piece of IP is produced in its final form (for bloggers, this means hitting the “Publish” button) its author automatically receives protection under US copyright laws. The protection is instantaneous with publication and no official copyright registration is necessary to claim your ownership of the content. In fact, you don’t even need the little circled-C symbol © to indicate your ownership.

Source:
https://blogging.com/copyright-dmca/

But you raise good point, whether our posts here are copyrighted to AW, or us. Im not sure now, I thought that your posts belong to you, and my posts belong to me.

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There is, of course, one very fine point that should be emphasized.  Copyright laws protect the expression of ideas, but not facts.  Facts are not copyrightable, so feel free to use any facts in any published material (but do it in your own style!).

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Microfix wrote:

This brings me to something relative that’s intregued me for a while:
Scraping of paragraphs from source websites without quotations or link to the source on a different site is also breach of copyright, is it not?
Then there’s the questions of who is culpable, under what jurisdiction?

good questions. I was only dealing with US law, though most of the commercially important world follows the same pattern.

Whether it’s infringement is going to depend on how much you take and what you use it for – it might be “fair use”. Putting it in quotes and acknowledging the source may help with that argument. But simply putting something in quotes won’t make it non-infringing.

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It would have been much more helpful if the author had included practical guidance.  If that is outside the scope of this one article, then make this a series where you provide that actual guidance on the subject.  I don’t know of many people in the experience/age/education range of the typical reader of AskWoody, who are not already quite aware of copyright and (generally) how it applies to what’s available on the internet.

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OscarCP wrote:

Question: Is everything here in AskWoody copyrighted (this comment, for example)

If you want to be certain that your posts are copyrighted put a small © symbol with every post.

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But that’s been pointless for 32 years:

It used to be, if there wasn’t a copyright notice, the copyright was not claimed by the author.

However, the 1989 implementation of the Berne Convention placed the responsibility to respect copyrights firmly in the public’s hands. Now, whether a photograph, story, or painting bears the copyright symbol or notice or not, the public must assume that it is still copyrighted, or they may risk being responsible for copyright infringement. There is no legal defense for ignorance of this law.

Do I Need a Copyright Symbol?

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This brings me to something relative that’s intregued me for a while:
Scraping of paragraphs from source websites without quotations or link to the source on a different site is also breach of copyright, is it not?
Then there’s the questions of who is culpable, under what jurisdiction?

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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Microfix: At the very least it is plagiarism. However innocent the omission of quotes etc. might be, it walks and quacks like a copyright-breaking duck.

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Alex: ” If you want to be certain that your posts are copyrighted put a small © symbol with every post.”

Thanks for the advice.

Question: If, same as everybody else here, I don’t do that, whose copyright is it then?

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

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As I understand USA copyright laws, anything that I write in my own words on the AskWoody website is by default copyrighted in my name. That would apply to these words. However, AskWoody could require as a matter of contract, in compensation for providing me with the opportunity and place to post my comments, that I assign my copyright to AskWoody.

This is common for science research journals. In exchange for providing a place to publish my research, the editor requires, in return, that I assign my copyright to the journal. Fair enough. Each of us gains something and in turn provides the other something of value.

(Susan: I hereby assign my copyright to the foregoing text to AskWoody, with thanks for providing me with the opportunity to have my say.)

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OscarCP

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Absolutely right. One really technical wrinkle: Congress decided that authors weren’t capable of protecting themselves against publishers, so it added a provision that allows authors to terminate assignments—and provided that the right to terminate an assignment could not be waived by contract.

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Anonymous  #2347265 , That is news to me and interesting news, at that. It is, in fact, the very good news that, maybe, things might be starting to change for the better. Do you mind providing a link to somewhere this particular gem of information is explained in detail?

One disgraceful aspect of academic publishing, something that is crucial to people’s careers as teachers and researchers working in universities and in government laboratories, is the monopolistic power exerted worldwide by a few hypertrophied publishing houses.

Although the articles published in their journals are provided for free to them by scientists, engineers, etc., these, after writing them, for their work to ever see the light of day after they have been peer-reviewed (for free, by voluntary experts, for example myself, in my own field) and accepted for publication by the editors, the authors first have to pay to the publisher substantial “author’s charges” and also cede to them the copyright of their own written work (something Anonymous comment, if I understand it correctly, is no longer altogether so). And they also have to provide the articles in the exact format these will have when published: the publishers do not do their own page-setting, the author’s do it for them, which means these businesses save on staff costs. The whole thing is much the same as if someone offered me a lift when I am waiting for my bus in a rainy day, but then the kind driver had to pay me for the right to have me as a passenger in his car, had to arrange the car interior to my liking first and also had to accept that, when he gets me to my destination,  the driver has to sign off his car’s title to me, for free.

This was not always so: originally, publishing an article was the business of the corresponding learned society, but such societies were not that good at it, so some smart businessman found an opportunity in this and offered to take care of the publishing for a few of them. The people running these societies were happy to have someone taking the job of running their journals off their hands. The example was imitated by other societies, more and more of them as time went by. What they did not bargained for is how the whole thing then transmogrified into something quite different from what it had been since the days of the Renaissance, and something also quite frankly unsavory:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist

(By the way, this article has nothing to do with ‘socialism’.)

Excerpts:

“Everyone claims to agree that people should be encouraged to understand science and other academic research. Without current knowledge, we cannot make coherent democratic decisions. But the publishers have slapped a padlock and a “keep out” sign on the gates.”

” Of course, you could go into the library (if it still exists). But they too have been hit by cosmic fees. The average cost of an annual subscription to a chemistry journal is $3,792. Some journals cost $10,000 a year or more to stock. The most expensive I’ve seen, Elsevier’s Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, is $20,930. Though academic libraries have been frantically cutting subscriptions to make ends meet, journals now consume 65% of their budgets … “

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wavy

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I agree Oscar it is an obscenity. I mark the tragedy of one who tried to circumvent the paywall around science, Aaron Swartz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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OscarCP

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Bakershack wrote:

It would have been much more helpful if the author had included practical guidance.

We are being very careful not to offer legal advice, which is what “practical guidance” would be.

Bakershack wrote:

I don’t know of many people in the experience/age/education range of the typical reader of AskWoody, who are not already quite aware of copyright and (generally) how it applies to what’s available on the internet.

You may be aware that my other job is building Web sites for small businesses. My clients regularly deliver graphical assets for me to use on their sites, very often sourced from the Web. I have spent the last 15 years explaining why they can’t do that. And it’s why I bought a ton of royalty-free art that they can use if desired.

The Web has completely warped the view of copyright, even in AskWoody’s sophisticated audience.

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SueW

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Actually copyright was established explicitly to promote the useful arts and science, not to make someone increasingly rich forever. Copyright was also supposed to last for a limited time. But given the fact that it has been extended and extended again and again, to five times it’s original term, now longer than any human could ever possibly hope to live, that sounds like it has become pretty unconstitutional to me. And if that’s not enough to convince you, consider that companies are now selling people games and then disabling them later, or selling software and then retroactively reaching into the user’s system and removing features that were already paid for, in order to sell the features to the user (again) as part of an upgrade pack. That last example sounds like extortion to me, and both examples are about as contrary to “promoting useful arts and science” (remember, the actual purpose of copyright) as it could possibly get!

References:

1. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191204/09531743504/disneys-decision-not-to-renew-securom-license-bricks-tron-evolution.shtml

 

2. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/microsoft-to-remove-full-refs-support-from-windows-10-pro-push-workstation-sku/

Given the current state of things, I have decided to never support any of these big companies ever again, predominantly for two reasons. The first being that I believe in treating others in this world like they treat me, and the second being that the more money I give to them, the more unfairly they will stack the deck against me as a consumer.

That’s why I run Linux on my computers, and I proudly go out of my way to avoid ever supporting the entertainment industry.

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doriel, wavy, Cybertooth

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