Copyright

[bindeweede]

Jack,

We know you are a legal expert. I came across this...




Copyright
The entire content of the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons website remains the property of the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons and is thus copyrighted © with all rights reserved except as detailed herein.
You must not copy, distribute, or publish any material from this website. Any other use of copyright material belonging to the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons requires the formal permission of the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons.




So, is it illegal to quote just a small amount from a site such as this?

[Mongrel]

Jack,

We know you are a legal expert. I came across this...





So, is it illegal to quote just a small amount from a site such as this?


Not a Lawyer...

Small excerpts would fall under Fair Use, generally a couple of sentences and a link to the full article should be fine.

[bindeweede]

Not a Lawyer...

Small excerpts would fall under Fair Use, generally a couple of sentences and a link to the full article should be fine.

Well, that was the conclusion I came to when I found this, but after a little while, my eyes went all funny.........

http://ahds.ac.uk/copyrightfaq.htm#faq18

[Mulder]

As I understand it, copyright applies to how something is presented or written. You cannot copyright facts, only the way you write about them. So, you can rewrite someone else's article and, though it may be plagiarism, it may not necessarily violate copyright. You can quote an article, provided it's not too long ("fair use").

I'm not a lawyer but I write a lot so I make myself aware of copyright issues. The copyright on photos is much stricter. Obviously, you can't quote a photo so the whole thing is copyright unless otherwise stated. Despite this, copyright photos are routinely plastered all over the web, probably mostly through ignorance.

If you want to criticise a web site without violating copyright it is probably best to challenge any facts they give. This is usually the best way for skeptics to go, in any case.

A grey area is reviews. Obviously, if you are invited to review a work by its author, publisher or agent, you can say quote from it pretty freely. Some people, however, review works that they've never been invited to by anyone connected with the publisher. This might be problematic. I'd be interested to know what the legal people think of this question.

[Tim the Mage]

As I understand it, copyright applies to how something is presented or written. You cannot copyright facts, only the way you write about them. So, you can rewrite someone else's article and, though it may be plagiarism, it may not necessarily violate copyright. You can quote an article, provided it's not too long ("fair use").

I'm not a lawyer but I write a lot so I make myself aware of copyright issues. The copyright on photos is much stricter. Obviously, you can't quote a photo so the whole thing is copyright unless otherwise stated. Despite this, copyright photos are routinely plastered all over the web, probably mostly through ignorance.

If you want to criticise a web site without violating copyright it is probably best to challenge any facts they give. This is usually the best way for skeptics to go, in any case.

A grey area is reviews. Obviously, if you are invited to review a work by its author, publisher or agent, you can say quote from it pretty freely. Some people, however, review works that they've never been invited to by anyone connected with the publisher. This might be problematic. I'd be interested to know what the legal people think of this question.

Copyright relates to content/ideas as well as words so your first scenario (re-writing someone else's article) would be a serious breach of copyright if you claimed it as your own work.

On web-sites the best approach is to provide a link to the page with the info on which is not a breach of copyright rather than risk a direct quotation. Importantly direct quotation is usually allowed so long as the source is acknowledged.

As to reviews, this is covered by 'fair use' - assuming you don't quote everything there is no problem.

I would suspect that the copyright statement (pretty standard words and recommended for anyone selling services of this type) is to protect from other psychics rather than those who disagree.

[Mulder]

I'm pretty sure you can't copyright ideas and I'm not sure about content either eg http://www.artquest.org.uk/artlaw/copyright/29491.htm

[FarSideOfTheMoon]

...
I would suspect that the copyright statement (pretty standard words and recommended for anyone selling services of this type) is to protect from other psychics rather than those who disagree.

I think they also use it to try to try to give some respectability to their position. If it's copyright, it has to do with legal stuff, and therefore if they have legal stuff they must be reputable. Obviously nonsense, but all part of the con to impart some sort of degree of integrity.

[Tony Williams]

As I understand it, you can copyright ideas but not facts. So if you write a novel with a killer new plot idea, or a song with a particular tune, and someone issues something very similar shortly afterwards, you might have a case. Remember the case over 'The Da Vinci Code'? The plaintiffs lost that one, but clearly there was a case to be heard.

On the other hand, if a diligent researcher comes up with some new factual information and publishes it, it is then open to anyone to write about it (as long as they don't copy the words used).

[Croydon Bob]

Remember the case over 'The Da Vinci Code'? The plaintiffs lost that one, but clearly there was a case to be heard.

Indeed, if Baigent and Leigh had admitted that Holy Blood Holy Grail was a work of fiction they would, almost certainly, have won. But trying to pretend that it was real history undermined their case and meant that their ideas were fair game for Brown to use.


if a diligent researcher comes up with some new factual information and publishes it, it is then open to anyone to write about it.

Or if three hack fantasists invent new information but pretend that it is real?

[Tim the Mage]

As I understand it, you can copyright ideas but not facts. So if you write a novel with a killer new plot idea, or a song with a particular tune, and someone issues something very similar shortly afterwards, you might have a case. Remember the case over 'The Da Vinci Code'? The plaintiffs lost that one, but clearly there was a case to be heard.

On the other hand, if a diligent researcher comes up with some new factual information and publishes it, it is then open to anyone to write about it (as long as they don't copy the words used).

Although it did require the original authors to at least imply that their great work of history was in reality a work of untruth.

The origins of copyright lies with the 'Statute of Anne' in 1709 which replaced limited common law protection for writers' work. Crucially this Act conferred economic rights allowing for the development of the publishing (as opposed to printing) industry. There had been an earlier Act (1662 Licensing Act) that produced a register of books published and their authors but stopped short of prevent copying or piracy. This earlier Act in effect created the book repositories (British Library, Bodleian, etc) as it required the depositing of a copy of any book published.

A brief history: http://www.lawdit.co.uk/reading_room/room/view_article.asp?name=../articles/The%20History%20of%20Copyright.htm (http://www.lawdit.co.uk/reading_room/room/view_article.asp?name=../articles/The%20History%20of%20Copyright.htm)

[Mulder]

As I understand it, you can copyright ideas but not facts. So if you write a novel with a killer new plot idea, or a song with a particular tune, and someone issues something very similar shortly afterwards, you might have a case.

After reading around, it seems you can only copyright ideas if they are manifest in a physical way that can be copied (which makes sense) eg. an artwork or book. Ideas themselves, as intellectual entities, cannot be copyrighted.

If you're writing factual material then other people can re-write what you've said in their own words. It is only if they use your actual words that there is a problem. I assume it depends how many of your words they use before it is a copyright violation - something for the courts to decide, presumably.


Copyright relates to content/ideas as well as words so your first scenario (re-writing someone else's article) would be a serious breach of copyright if you claimed it as your own work..

So, I could re-write someone else's article provided it is factual and I change the wording substantially. If, however, they expressed their own ideas on the facts in the article, I could not use those.

All of this is a strong case for being original when writing. It's more interesting anyway!

[Tony Williams]

After reading around, it seems you can only copyright ideas if they are manifest in a physical way that can be copied (which makes sense) eg. an artwork or book. Ideas themselves, as intellectual entities, cannot be copyrighted.

Well yes, that's fairly obvious. I recall being told in a seminar about copyright about an incident (early in the 20th century IIRC) in which a politician made an off-the-cuff speech which was recorded verbatim by a shorthand reporter and reproduced in his paper. The politician sued for breach of copyright and not only lost, he was told that as the reporter was the first person to write it down, the copyright for that speech lay with the reporter!

[Tim the Mage]

Well yes, that's fairly obvious. I recall being told in a seminar about copyright about an incident (early in the 20th century IIRC) in which a politician made an off-the-cuff speech which was recorded verbatim by a shorthand reporter and reproduced in his paper. The politician sued for breach of copyright and not only lost, he was told that as the reporter was the first person to write it down, the copyright for that speech lay with the reporter!

It is even moot as to whether the speaker would have copyright if they read from a prepared speach (i.e. written down) unless they had published that speech in some way - such as giving a copy to the Chairman or to the journalist present.

[brettdbass]

Two words for ya, to bring to the Intellectual Copyright angle of this thread:-



Raj


Persaud.

[Tim the Mage]

Two words for ya, to bring to the Intellectual Copyright angle of this thread:-



Raj


Persaud.

"Plagarists Anonymous"?

[Jack of Kent]

Hello everyone,

I logged on this morning to see if anything interesting had happened in the last few days. And I see this thread and the entire "legal issues" section had been introduced! Moreover, I am a moderator! Wonderful surprise. (I will soon have more administrative experience than Barack Obama...)

Now, copyright is a rather strange fish. It is a form of "intellectual property right". IPR in turn is not an exact legal term, it is just a general label for a number of areas of law which operate in different ways.

For example, some IPRs need to be registered - for example patents and trade marks. In these cases, the protection is absolute, effectively conferring a monopoly, and so the IPR holder does not need to show any copying. Even entirely independent creations are barred.

Copyright in England isn't like that. The right, as the name suggests, is generally in respect of "copying" . It also covers related activities, such as making things available to the public, making it available for translation, etc. The copyright holder can either do these activities or licence others to do them. These are the rights which are reserved, as in "all rights reserved".

Copyright thereby does not protect ideas but the form in which those ideas are manifested. (Ideas can generally be protected by the laws of confidentiality, in the private domain, and patents, when in the public domain.) Copyright also does not protect works when someone else has come up with the same work independently.

Copyright works in stages. There's a lot more to it than what follows, but this will give a steer.

First, the work has to be capable of being protected by copyright. This means it has to fall into a prescribed box - "literary work", "artistic work", "dramatic work", etc. Not all works fit very neatly in these boxes, if at all. For example, there is case law on game show formats and on video editing techniques - neither were protected by copyright.

(Computer programs are "literary works" even though nowdays a program can be stored, transmitted, and run without the program ever being reduced to symbolic form! Some very interesting caselaw to come on that one, but that is for another time.)

So, to use Tony's good example above, the reporter created an original "literary work". The politician was not protected, as his remark would not have constituted a "dramatic work" or a "public performance" of a "literary work".

Second, if it is a work protected by copyright, an infingement only occurs if the work or a "substantial part" of it is copied. What is a substantial part? This is what you pay lawyers to find out! But usually the threshold is quite low. If it was worth copying, the maxim goes, it is worth protecting. But it will not cover trivial copying or (usually) the titles of works or mere sentences of literary works.

Third, then there are defences - the "permitted uses". These include the fair dealing defences referred to above - research, private study, criticism/review, and news reporting. These permitted uses are strict and their general effect is to bar commercial exploitation. For example, quoting TS Eliot in a seminar paper may be permitted, but quoting him in a commercially-available biography is not.

So, as for our friends...


"Copyright
The entire content of the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons website remains the property of the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons and is thus copyrighted © with all rights reserved except as detailed herein.You must not copy, distribute, or publish any material from this website. "


Any other use of copyright material belonging to the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons requires the formal permission of the Unity Of UK Psychic Surgeons."

This would not restrict copying when such copying is (a) not of a "substantial part" of the copyrighted work or (b) a permitted act.

Any way, this is all general guidance and not legal advice! O0

I am currently being crushed by Larkin's Toad - work - so I may not post again too quickly, but I would be happy to help with any queries.

All the best, Jack of Kent

[Mojo]

Third, then there are defences - the "permitted uses". These include the fair dealing defences referred to above - research, private study, criticism/review, and news reporting. These permitted uses are strict and their general effect is to bar commercial exploitation. For example, quoting TS Eliot in a seminar paper may be permitted, but quoting him in a commercially-available biography is not.


By the way, there's been a potentially important amendment relating to "commercial exploitation" (see Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003): it now refers specifically to "research, for a non-commercial purpose", so making a copy of part of TS Eliot's work in the course of the research for the commercially available biography might, strictly speaking, be illegal even if the copy isn't quoted in the book.