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Berhael
Post subject: Copyright
Posted: Mon 04 Apr , 2005 3:28 pm
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*gets out shiny can-opener and holds it in one hand, can of worms in the other*

Is anyone here aware of copyright law and the situation of RP threads regarding it? I'm asking, because while in Glasgow, the issue of a certain RP story came up. I was told that "lifting" an RP thread from TORC and bringing it here was a breach of copyright, since TORC owns copyright of the stuff posted to its messageboard.

I was stunned. :Q I told the person in question that I believed that the writer owns the copyright, but they insisted, that was not the case. However, TORC would not prosecute us, magnanimously*, for breach of copyright.

Is TORC playing the part of a publisher, and if so, do they *really* own the copyright of the material written there? Does anybody have any idea about htis issue? Because I have only a very superficial knowledge of copyright law, but my instincts tell me that anything written for non-profit belongs to the writer.

Anyway, thoughts, reflections and opinions are most welcome.

* sarcasm on my part, obviously.

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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Mon 04 Apr , 2005 3:39 pm
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I don't know the actual law either, Ber, but I can't imagine a message board wanting to own copyright of the posts. For one thing, if the board was the author for copyright purposes, then it would be the board that was sued for anything actionable posted on it. That can of worms dwarfs the one you just opened, I think.

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Berhael
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Posted: Mon 04 Apr , 2005 3:44 pm
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That's what I thought, Prim, especially with regards to the messageboard, since there have been many contentious posts that, I would imagine, the board owners would want to distance themselves from (I'm thinking in particular of Kelannar's infamous "PJ is raping the text" and similar statements).

I'll repost what laureanna posted in the other thread:
Quote:
COPYRIGHT 1999-2004 - Tolkien Online - The One Ring
Reproduction of material from any Tolkien Online - The One Ring pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. The views represented on Tolkien Online - The One Ring are those of the Author(s) alone and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication. Certain materials relating to the media covered within this online publication may be the copyright property of their respective studios / production companies / publishing companies.
Certain design elements of this webpage are copyright John Howe and used with permission. The orignal artwork can be foundhere.
Two thoughts. First, that notice is at the top of the Reading Room (I haven't checked if it's in the messageboards too); and second, the copyright dates are 1999-2004. We're in 2005... :scratch

Anyway, food for thought.

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Berhael
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Posted: Mon 04 Apr , 2005 3:49 pm
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Here's what the TORC TOS have to say on the matter:
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Plagiarism and Intellectual Property

The staff of Tolkien Online encourages respect for the work of others. Inappropriate use of another person's intellectual property (this includes all forms of media and written materials) may result in the removal of the item and discipline of the member up to and including revocation of their posting privileges. This rule applies to anything posted on the Message Boards or in the News section and includes material posted in Member's signatures. Before submitting any item for publication (including signature pictures) please either obtain the owner's written permission or ensure that the image is not copyrighted. If you are the owner of material that has been used on this site without your permission please contact us at admins@tolkienonline.com.
It seems to refer only to outside material posted on TORC, not material taken out from TORC.
:scratch

I think I might start a thread in the One Ring Forum over there, just to be sure.

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vison
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Posted: Mon 04 Apr , 2005 4:25 pm
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We went through this whole song and dance on another site I belong to. In the end it was decided that the author of the work had the copyright, BUT by posting on that site you gave the site owners the right to use the material as they saw fit. Including in advertising, etc., but I don't think it ever actually came up. I daresay that would be true at TORC, too, but I haven't read all the fine print.

The site owners took NO responsibility, though, either for the content or as a guarantee that the material was original to the poster. You could quote Shakespeare all day and unless someone recognized it, other posters would just think you wrote funny. :D

We were free to post our stuff where we liked, and most of us did. Only good manners, however, prevented us from posting things written by someone else, either with or without attribution.

For awhile we used to put the copyright sign in our posts, but that died away.

After all, once again, IF you post something on the internet, you really can't control what people do with it. Someone could take a bit of your poetry or role-play and use it as their own, and what can you do about it? Nice people won't do it, but there are a lot of not-nice people floating about in the ether.

Students lift essays from websites and pass them off as their own. If they get caught, what happens? The sickening truth is, there have been cases where the student was not punished! In a recent case at a university the argument was that NO ONE TOLD the student he couldn't do it, so he didn't know he was doing anything wrong and how could they expel him? It really happened and I guess you can imagine how I feel about it. :rage: They actually had to put it in writing: you are not allowed to plagiarize from ANY source. For the luvva pete. :rage:

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EdaintheRanger
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Posted: Mon 04 Apr , 2005 5:22 pm
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This issue has occurred to me in the past, especially considering my creative writings. What is there to stop anyone lifting text that you may have poured your heart and soul into and then passing it off as their own? Due to the nature of the internet, there is very little to stop that happening I would think.

Eitherway all the more reason to not get too hung up about your creative writing posts, for once on the net it's anybodies. ;)

Having said that I vaguely recall from a mailing list I am part of, regarding any text you create, you basically "Own your own words", that is the text typed out belongs to the author alone. Seconding the opinion that it is the responsibility of the poster/author, not the owner of the site.

As for Torc being able to prosecute that smacks of scaremongering to me, any such legal action would be ridiculously expensive to be worth bothering with. :roll:

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Nin
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Posted: Mon 04 Apr , 2005 8:36 pm
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Berhael, I have asked this question, because I thought I might not have the right to post this text of mine chosen for being published.

In which I was btw right - I may not. Not so much because of the reading issues, but because I have subscribed that this text will not be submitted for any publishing within the next twelve months, and someone might do so with a text published on the Internet without my knowledge.

But all this only becomes an issue, if text get published with a financial background. Everything which is free can be shared freely - hence no copyright issues, but also from the author's side no ownership claims.

That's what Zoé Maison Edition told me.

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Holbytla
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Posted: Mon 04 Apr , 2005 10:43 pm
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IMO that is a whole lot of crap.
My first suggestion would be to ask Ellienor because that is her profession.

I will give you an example of why I think it is crap.

If I write a novel/poem/song or whatever and post a portion or all of it on TORC, does that mean they own it? I don't think so. Neither do they own the sig pics or anything else.
Perhaps they may have a claim to an entire thread written by multiple people posting on their site, but my words are my words. Period.
Any poster can repost anything that they have written here or anywhere else.

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vison
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Posted: Tue 05 Apr , 2005 1:18 am
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Emma Peel!!!!!

There is hope for you after all. :D

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Holbytla
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Posted: Tue 05 Apr , 2005 1:22 am
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Just a foll's hope. :)

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Impenitent
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Posted: Tue 05 Apr , 2005 3:36 am
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RE:

COPYRIGHT 1999-2004 - Tolkien Online - The One Ring
Reproduction of material from any Tolkien Online - The One Ring pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. The views represented on Tolkien Online - The One Ring are those of the Author(s) alone and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication. Certain materials relating to the media covered within this online publication may be the copyright property of their respective studios / production companies / publishing companies.
Certain design elements of this webpage are copyright John Howe and used with permission. The orignal artwork can be found here.

Has anyone considered that perhaps the emboldened bit above is for the protection of the rights of posters? That on behalf the posters, the MB invokes copyright - that one is not permitted to plagiarise the words of others simply because they appear on a public MB?

Just askin'...

Beyond RP's I have had serious thoughts about the Virtual Tolkien Study Group threads. The discussion on SOME of those threads was absolutely sterling! The scholarship that was brought together unique and I really want to know - who owns them?

The threads are the product of multiple minds - and while each individual owns their own words, who owns the whole, which is greater than the sum of the parts?

Could TORC, for example, sub-edit and publish the results of those discussions? There could well be a market for it, you know.

And what about the major project Roarc and Arphy and wilko and Queen_B and others are still involved in - the Annotated LOTR? Who owns it? The whole thing, I mean?

Voronwe, wherefore art thou? Legal opinion would be very useful - though I recognise that copyright law is intricate and a far cry from civil rights law. :)

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samaranth
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Posted: Tue 05 Apr , 2005 1:53 pm
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I think you are right, Impenitent. The copyright notice (which is out of date, as others have pointed out) covers the whole contents of the site, and so protects use by one person of another's posts. However, it is my understanding that copyright of the actual posts rest with the original creator, and they can assign these as they wish.

I think Truehobbit mentioned in another thread that we had, once upon a time, considered putting some of our Frodo's Kitchen posts into a publishable form. I (on behalf of some of us) wrote to Jonathan, Ted (and there was some other person involved at that time) advising our intent and seeking clarification of TORC's requirements, particularly in regard to approval. The letter stressed that we would only be using the content of some of the posts, not posts from all the posters to the Kitchen, and not using any of the images or artwork from the TORC site.

Jonathan replied saying "Primarily, we would want to know what
you will include into the publication, and we'd like some sort of final
review given to us too..." which indicated to me that they really didn't understand the potential effect of the copyright notice, and that we would need to pin them down a whole lot more if we wanted to proceed with the project. Which, in the end, we didn't. Pity really.

But it also indicated that they had no in principle objection to the use of material which had first been published on their site. So it might be useful to write to TPTB and see what they think the position is with the RPs.

I would be very interested to hear Voronwe's views on this too! :)


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truehobbit
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Posted: Tue 05 Apr , 2005 6:58 pm
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Impenitent wrote:

Has anyone considered that perhaps the emboldened bit above is for the protection of the rights of posters? That on behalf the posters, the MB invokes copyright - that one is not permitted to plagiarise the words of others simply because they appear on a public MB?
I'm hoping that this is the case. I don't know the first thing about copyright (except that US copyright is a lot more restricting than German copyright).
But ideally, I would hope that it means you are not allowed to use other people's contributions without their permission.

I also think that the book project the kitchen-folk had in mind (hi sam! :) )is very different from just taking an RP-thread to a different message-board. We hadn't intended to make any profit, but still, printing seems to me a bigger deal than reposting something elsewhere. So if there was no general objection to our book-project, re-using RP-threads should be even less so.
Quote:
Voronwe, wherefore art thou?

I think Voronwe's purpose is to be a model and an encouragement for us all! :D

(LOL, couldn't help that - seeing "wherefore" used wrongly makes my toe-nails curl, although you probably meant it as a joke, Imp. ;) )

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Impenitent
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Posted: Tue 05 Apr , 2005 10:58 pm
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:D Indeed!

I always remind myself when using that quote (okay, misusing that quote) that it should actually be "what-for" art thou? ;)

I think V doesn't come into this forum - I might drop him a PM - and also our other attorneys on board - asking for a more informed opinion.

There are so many people contributing so much learning and insight and energy into those scholarly projects, I think it's prudent to consider the implications.

With regards to TORC, it is in their power to remove those threads and use them in whatever way they wish (I'm not suggesting they would; but it IS in their power to do so) and unless folk have had the foresight to save them to their own archive they (and I, in the case of the VTSG) could lose all access to what was supposed to be a public resource. I mean, what if the MB were to shut down permanently?

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*Alandriel*
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Posted: Wed 06 Apr , 2005 4:41 pm
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the lovely Berhael wrote:
.... while in Glasgow, the issue of a certain RP story came up. I was told that "lifting" an RP thread from TORC and bringing it here was a breach of copyright, since TORC owns copyright of the stuff posted to its messageboard.
Now I'm also going :Q :Q :Q

They can't be serious! And no, I have no idea much about copyright laws but have read through the posts here and though I've not peeked on TORC in ages I still remember reading those bits. I was the first who 'lifted' an RP from over there to here. Have I got any emails about it? Any warning? Any letter to appear before court? ;) No, of course not! It was agreed via email amongst the group of writers for Seekers to move the whole lot over here - and so we did.
I did not see it necessary to ask for anything beyond having the RP and OCC locked over there.. but this whole discussion has me go now: :scratch hmmm, perhaps I should email them and ask them to delete it. Would they agree to do that or would it end up in a non-viewable 'storage' area?

I can't for the life of me immagine that TORC 'owns' anything we post over there. Now that would be a major trespass on copyright if you ask me... but then I might be painfully wrong when it comes to the law.

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Frelga
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Posted: Wed 06 Apr , 2005 7:56 pm
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Now you got me very interested, because I am considering submitting a story I put in the Scrip for a magazine publication (not that it stands a chance, but I can dream, right?). By putting it into Scrip first, what sort of rights did I confer to TORC?

Submitting a publication for a magazine, for example, usually gives them "first North American serial and electronic publication rights." Meaning, the right is non-exclusive and I am still free to sell my story somewhere else - for an antology, say, or even to another magazine as a reprint. I certainly can't imagine that by putting a post on a message board I give that board exclusive rights to my story.

I vaguely remember that the author retains copyright to their work unless it's work "for hire" and they have been specifically comissioned to produce it. I would imagine TORC would have to put a big notice in TOS saying that by putting your writing there we transfer our copyright to TORC, wouldn't they?

I'm no lawyer, but that whole "sue you" comment strikes me as ridiculous. To quote Rocky, "sue me for what?" Even if they did own the copyright, wouldn't they have to prove damages before the courts would even look at the lawsuite?


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Nin
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Posted: Wed 06 Apr , 2005 8:39 pm
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Frelga - submit it. When I submitted my story, I did not believe in it. And look what happened!!!!!

If you want to be sure, edit it all out of TORC....

Alandriel - I would willingly edit all posts of Tibo away if you want it.

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Berhael
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Posted: Wed 06 Apr , 2005 8:51 pm
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Thanks for all your input, I'm reading this thread avidly and will probably contact TORC soon to clarify the issue. :)

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Nin
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Posted: Wed 06 Apr , 2005 8:59 pm
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I would not contact TORC honestly... what they don't know, it does not hurt them.

Or just ask a general question - in fact it might attract their attention to the question and make them wonder about recently closed RPs.... by people of whom they know they are on b77 now.

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Frelga
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Posted: Wed 06 Apr , 2005 9:04 pm
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Nin wrote:
I would not contact TORC honestly... what they don't know, it does not hurt them.
I second that. I don't think b77 is in the wrong in any way, morally or legally, and I really don't see a reason to stir things up.

Last edited by Frelga on Wed 06 Apr , 2005 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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