Copyright and Internet

Since joining this forum I have seen an awful lot of copyright infringements so I thought it would be useful to provide people with information on the legal implications of reposting copyrighted materials without the permission of the owner of the copyright.

Simply put "copyright" means that the person who created the piece has the right to say where and by whom that piece can be reprinted. Under international copyright law and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act this includes not only books and the like, but also the contents of websites on the internet. Nor is it necessary that the creator of the work be making money off of his/her work for copyright to apply.

So basically if you're reprinting copyrighted material here to this board you are in effect stealing. And if the person who wrote the original piece discovers it here they have every right to have this site shut down. I know, I have done it to some sites that stole my work and they refused to take it down when I asked them to. I have seen Ray Buckland shut down a message board because people were reprinting his books there without his permission and failing to stop when he asked them to. I'm sure no one here wants to see this site vanish, so keep that in mind when you find something you want to post somewhere else.

Now, under copyright law it is permissible to reprint a very limited portion of a work without it being a copyright violation. For a book that would be a paragraph or two. For an internet posting it might be just a couple of lines. So if you want to have people read something that you found on the net the best and safest way to avoid copyright issues is to post a link to the article rather than copying and pasting the article here.

Here's some websites that explain what most of us need to know about copyright in basic terms that anyone can understand:

http://whatiscopyright.org/

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

http://www.efuse.com/Plan/copyright.html

Remember, copyright violation is stealing just as certainly as taking someone's purse or car. Don't do it! And don't do it here and get this site shut down or we all end up losing.

-Lark-

let me know which posts lark. Personally if I use something I find on the net I let people know, but this coven shouldn't be plagerizing. Sometimes I get side tracked by outside things, and don't see everything, so please feel free to send me an email with a list of the thread names in our coven forum.

I'll keep an eye out for them. Sure don't want to see this group get punished or shut down.

-Lark-

Most truly you are correct there Lark. I don't want this coven shut down either.

Many spells in our spellbook too are breaking the copyright law, meaning popele never give credit to the author.

If the spell is from some other website , it should have been noted so.

I have seen some spells by Valerie Worth , Judika Illes, some Cunningham material , and others . Sometimes even I forget to add copywrite, but that is why I occasionaly check and add copyrights where I forgot.

Not to mention forum. Excellent point and thank You for the thera

Remember too that information on a website is considered to have been copyrighted by the author, so if you cut and paste a large article it is still copyright infringement even if you cite the source. A better solution is to post a link to the other site instead of doing the copy and paste.

-Lark-

For the spells, Pet has actually asked not to add names in if it can be helped. There are a few on there that I have added from my own personal book of shadows, however, I do believe that some of them came from other sites. Since their entry and remake of my BOS every couple of years, the names of the authors have been lost.

As for the articles, anyone found from here on out not giving credit to the author of the article, will be removed from the coven and will not be allowed to re-join.

Hi Lark and thank you for this post!
Now i haven't copy/pasted much i much rather just write up an article myself even if i do it rarely...but i have to say that i haven't added copyrights to one of my thread on scrying methods...but i did now (i couldn't remember where i found it earlier just stumbled back on that page) and i want everyone in this coven to respect the copyrights as well. If you see an article/post that is braking copyright rules, i want you to post a link to that article right here, and the priestess and I will deal with it in one way or another...even if it is outside the coven (but not outside this site) you tell us Vixen and I are both moderators here and we will solve the problem!

Thank you again Lark, I don't want to risk the coven either!!!
Blessings!

Oh and it'd be a good idea to post this in the general discusiion too (if it has not yet been posted)...just to make people aware.

As I pointed out to Snowvixen in an e-mail, all of WhiteBuffalo's posts on Druidry had been lifted from other sites without acknowledging where they came from. And several of those sites state specifically that the material is copyrighted and not to be reposted without the author's permission.

As I mentioned before the simplest thing to have done rather than cut and paste the whole article is to mention that there is a good article on such and such a site and then post the URL link to that site.

Right now all of those posts on Druidry are in violation of international copyright law. Perhaps you might want to think of removing them from the board?

-Lark-