Recently, lawsuits claiming copyright infringement have been filed against several websites on behalf of at least one newspaper.
The suits claim, among other things, that participants of the website copied and pasted whole articles from the newspaper’s website in violation of copyright laws.
Anything ‘published’ on the web is viewed as intellectual property and therefore copyrighted by the originator. This includes newspapers, magazines, e-books, blogs, and posts on websites if there is no “free use” statement.
At this time there is no way of telling what the outcome of these lawsuits will be, but it is expected that there will be many more of them as other newspapers, magazines, etc., sign on in an effort to protect their intellectual property.
In order to protect our members and APS from possible litigation, all members must abide by the following new rules:
1. Copying and pasting passages from or entire articles from another site to APS is strictly prohibited.
While copyright law provides for “fair use” of portions of a copyrighted work, fair use is open to significant interpretation. It’s easier and safer to avoid the entire question by not copying any of the copyrighted work.
2. If you wish to call attention to an article, you must provide a link to the article along with the name of website. For example: www.xxx.yyy/zzz (The Lower Thumbsuck Daily News).
3. In keeping with our prohibition against “cut and paste drive by posts” (a link to an article with no substantive commentary by the poster) you must provide, in your own words, a brief summary of the article AND your reasons for believing it will be of interest to APS members.
Posts that do not follow these new guidelines for dealing with copyrighted material will be deleted and the member reminded to follow this policy. Members who continue to violate this policy may lose their posting privileges at APS.
Thank you for your cooperation.
