Copyrighted materials

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bowman

Board of Directors, Webmaster
Neal
Staff member
Corporate Member
Just a reminder that sharing copyrighted materials on this site is a policy violation. If you have old magazines you wish to sell, you can do that, but scanning articles from those magazines and posting here is a violation. The same applies to copying images or documents from DVDs you have purchased.

Offenders will be warned, repeated abuse will result in being banned from the site.

The policy for posting can be found here: Posting Policy for This Site
 
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Jeff

New User
Jeff
Sorry Neal that happened on my request for a copy of magazine article. I was not aware of the policy for this and it will not happen again.

Dan

Interesting, and the subject has been raised before. How did your request for a magazine article attract the attention and ire of the NCWW police? Hey Dan, that's illegal!
 

marinosr

Richard
Corporate Member
I think it is a very good idea not to expose the site to potential copyright liability. There are so many publishing houses being bought up by vampire hedge funds, and any one of them could easily decide to bleed their assets dry by engaging in predatory "pay up or we'll sue you" copyright schemes on any copyright violators. I support very liberal interpretations of what qualifies as "fair use", but that's not the present state of US copyright law. It's easy enough, as Dan did, to request a copy and someone can discreetly message it to you. Publishing it for all to see on the internet invites problems for the organization.
 

bowman

Board of Directors, Webmaster
Neal
Staff member
Corporate Member
Let's just be careful, all I am saying
 

patlaw

Mike
Corporate Member
That doesn't violate copyright law if the photocopy is for personal and not broadly posted and distributed on a website.
What makes you think that it's not illegal to make a photocopy of a protected work?
 

sssfox

New User
Steve
I once went to the Library of Congress looking for a book. There were copy machines around every corner. I copied the entire thing at 10 cents a page.
 

ScottM

Scott
Staff member
Corporate Member
TBT I was the Administrator/Moderator who raised the matter and deleted the offending posts . I happen to serve in the same role on another forum. NCWW members are normally pretty good at following these rules. The other forum not so much. The Copyright Police are very active on the internet and even in the local NC community. Poke all the fun you want but this is serious stuff. I happen to know recently a vendor fair in the Wilmington NC area was visited by the "Copyright Police" and a vendor had their merchandise seized. I understand they were selling trademark items. They now faces serious fines and even possible jail time.

I am not a legal expert, but we normally tell folks on the other site this. If you need an magazine article first contact the publisher to see if you can purchase a copy. If not available find someone who has the issue and borrow the issue or better yet buy the issue from them.
 

Dee2

Board of Directors, Vice President
Gene
Staff member
Corporate Member
And that is why libraries are still valuable, particularly when they can/will order things for your use, e.g., inter-library loans. At least the campus library will. The rules are a little different for academics, however.
 

patlaw

Mike
Corporate Member
I happen to know recently a vendor fair in the Wilmington NC area was visited by the "Copyright Police" and a vendor had their merchandise seized. I understand they were selling trademark items. They now faces serious fines and even possible jail time.
Probably not related to copyright. It sounds like they were selling counterfeit goods. Like you said, that was a trademark matter.
 

Berta

Berta
Corporate Member
If I purchase a pattern from a scroll saw pattern designer I am allowed to make and sell or gift the wooden item as much as I would like. If I give the pattern to others, that is stealing from the pattern designer. Purchased plans should not be shared.
If I design and make copies of football, baseball, college teams, make items with that logo and sell them, the copyright police can take my stuff and fine me. I’m not sure about jail.
 

JimD

Jim
Senior User
I think the policy of not allowing photocopies of copyrighted material to be posted on this website are appropriate. It might not be illegal but it isn't a great idea. For those interested, these are the four tests for "fair use" which is not a violation of copyright law:

  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work
A personal email person to person is more obviously not of a commercial nature. A magazine was intended to be widely distributed so I think it would not be as strictly protected as a more private wok. A single article would seem better than the whole magazine. Whether the publisher still sells the material - offers back issues - would seem to be involved in the fourth test. I think one person photocopying or scanning and emailing an article that is not offered by the publisher is probably fair use. But a website re-publishing the material, in effect, could be looked at differently.
 

patlaw

Mike
Corporate Member
If I purchase a pattern from a scroll saw pattern designer I am allowed to make and sell or gift the wooden item as much as I would like. If I give the pattern to others, that is stealing from the pattern designer. Purchased plans should not be shared.
Correct. The pattern designer grants you a license to make derivative works from the pattern when he sells you the pattern.

If I design and make copies of football, baseball, college teams, make items with that logo and sell them, the copyright police can take my stuff and fine me. I’m not sure about jail.
The copyright police (there is no such thing, really) do not enforce trademark laws. While both copyright and trademark law come under the broader umbrella of intellectual property law, they are different. They have different statutes and are regulated and enforced by different agencies of the government (as well as the common law, in some cases.)
 

Jeff

New User
Jeff
Jim, thanks for posting that useful clarification of "fair use" in copyright law. I don't know what Danmart77 was originally asking for which was subsequently deleted by ScottM. An article from Fine Woodworking shared with another member may be "fair use" but posting that article on NCWW may be a copyright violation. ???????

 

patlaw

Mike
Corporate Member
I think the policy of not allowing photocopies of copyrighted material to be posted on this website are appropriate. It might not be illegal but it isn't a great idea. For those interested, these are the four tests for "fair use" which is not a violation of copyright law:

  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work
A personal email person to person is more obviously not of a commercial nature. A magazine was intended to be widely distributed so I think it would not be as strictly protected as a more private wok. A single article would seem better than the whole magazine. Whether the publisher still sells the material - offers back issues - would seem to be involved in the fourth test. I think one person photocopying or scanning and emailing an article that is not offered by the publisher is probably fair use. But a website re-publishing the material, in effect, could be looked at differently.
Most people who assert fair use do not understand that it is a defense to a charge of infringement. The statute actually says that "the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." To determine whether a use qualifies as fair use is not such an easy question.

Just saying it's fair use does not make it so. A lot of people skip to the fair use factors without bothering to read the entire statute. As such, you will often see that someone defends their copying of a work by saying, "We're not charging anything for the copies." As you can see in Jim's post, whether a copy makes money ("of a commercial nature") is only one factor. It is not the only factor. One of more of the other elements has to be met.

If anyone is left reading this thread, Rich Stim has a pretty good article about fair use at this link. It seems to me that posting a design on the forum for comment or criticism maybe fair use. Uploading to share it is probably infringement for which the fair use defense is not available. Your mileage may vary.
 

Pop Golden

New User
Pop
Right after the new rewritten copyright law was brought into use I was sent to a copyright school. This presentation was given by a copyright attorney who was involved with the rewriting. At the time I was staff artist / photographer for the City of Charlotte, NC Engineering Department. After several years the item falls out of copyright. HOWEVER it can be re-copyrighted. My reason for the school? The City Engineer wanted to copyright the city maps. WRONG! base material can not be copyrighted. When you see a copyright on a map, that means: indexing system, design, etc. is copyrighted, but the base material can not be copyrighted. All U.S. government documents payed for with tax payer funds are in public domain. BUT! watch your step, the government sometimes includes copyrighted material in their documents. They most likely paid the copyright holder for the use, BUT that part of the document still belongs to the original copyright holder.

Pop
 
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