Hello all, I have a website that is hobby related. There is a lot of good information about the hobby on the net but more and more some of the older articles/projects/information become lost as personal websites and/or old websites vanish. One of the "missions" of my site is to preserve this older information. I never reproduce content without asking the author for permission first as well as properly crediting and linking to them. My question is what to do when I find older content from personal pages or old EDU student pages, etc. In many cases I have no way to contact the author to ask permission. If I have exhausted all efforts to contact an author is it ethical/legal to use the content if I provide a link to the original web page as well as properly credit the author? Any advice would be appreciated.
From a legal stand point you can't publish the content without the owners permission. In reality I don't think anyone would make a big fuss about it. Especially if it's a hobby type subject and you gave the author credit for it. The worst that would happen is that someone will contact you and demand that you remove it. I think most people would be amused if they found a old article they wrote in college still floating around.
Thanks Raisin, It seems more ethical to me to copy the exact article and credit the author for it then to take the idea and rewrite an article. I guess I will try it and see if I get any complaints.
Not sure about the US but in the UK I think it's OK to use 10% of the publication as long as the original author is credited...
It depends if at any stage you plan to monetize any of the pages on your website. I am not a lawyer but I think "fair use" allows you to reprint the articles, giving proper credit, as long as you dont make any money from them. It doesnt matter if you are making money indirectly through any means on your website, I wouldent even go down that route. You will also have to take down any content if the original author requests.
I agree -- as soon as you start making money from other peoples work then you can rapidly get into hot water.
As Raisin noted, it's illegal to reproduce content without the author's direct permission. However, I doubt anyone will make a huge deal about it. It's up to you, but you'll have to take the content down if someone contacts you and requests the information be removed.
That's not correct. The Fair Use Doctrine doesn't allow you to take and use entire works regardless of your intent or attribution. In the USA, it's not a set % you can use. The context determines applicable usage. Also, the worst that can happen isn't just a nice note to take it down. The company can bill you for its usage and take you to court for damages (plus legal fees) if you refuse to pay.
I have submitted hundreds of articles to article directories and that information has been republished thousands of times with my expressed permission. Webmasters have their own agreement with the article distributor to pick up articles and redistribute them from their end. Attribution is the key word with any type of content or article reprinting. Protect yourself by contacting the website owner and ask them for reprint permission. Do a whois if you cannot readily find that information out.
If you read the original post you'll see that we're not talking about information that's owned by any companies. The guy has a hobby site and he wants to post info written by enthusiasts of that hobby whose older sites have been abandoned and are now beginning to disappear. I highly doubt that any of the content owners who object to their work being republished, are going to spends thousands of dollars to take the guy to court so they can get the $30 worth of adsense revenue. Sure someone can decide to do that anyways, but 99.8% of the time a "nice" note to take it down is what you can expect.
Agreed. A hobby site is much less likely to attract attention. Besides, if someone really wanted to battle this guy they could send a nastygram to the hosting company and pressure them to shut his site down.
I just said company, but I should have said OWNER. It's foolish to assume that content owners won't object to not being paid for the use of their content just because X excuse and Y excuse. But, it's your life, assets and business. Do as you please.