I see a lot of copy and paste of copyrighted news articles into forums and blogs. I thought for sure that this is illegal unless permission is obtained. The articles might be written by AP or other syndicated news sources. The forums I see reproducing the news articles are occasionally non-profit groups. I see wikipedia grabbing stuff word for word. Do they have a special waiver? Since the forums are contributed to by users who may not understand copyright law, is it the responsibility of the forum owner to ensure that the material users post is not violating copyright? If they are allowed usage of copyright material without obtaining prior consent, and get away with it, their serp will usually be much better than those who write their own articles and post only with permission. How do you feel about that?
In general, it is not allowed to directly copy complete articles without the permission or explicit license form the copyright holder. You can usually quote snippets of the text under the doctrine of fair use. However, the terms and conditions of press releases often allow direct copying, so that may be what your are seeing. For example, from PRWeb: http://www.prweb.com/about.php I believe that forum owners are probably protected under the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions, as long as they promptly remove any copyright infringing material upon request. NOTE: IANAL, so don't take that as legal advice. (Oh, and they "get away with it" because a copyright holder simply can't find every violator quickly and easily. That doesn't mean they will be safe forever.)
Not exactly and if you do run across a direct copy and paste wikipedians like to be informed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CP So it can be removed.
Copy/paste especially in blogs and forums are pretty common. It is an infringement of a copyright unless the original source is quoted; however, you won't sue someone for posting your words once or twice. Another thing is when someone is doing it on a regular basis. What concerns Wiki, they, indeed have a disclaimer for direct copies.
Actually providing the source or credit line doesn't protect against infringement. You need to have the copyright holder's permission to post their article. So if you post the article, and you don't have permission, you are infringing even if you link to the source and provide a credit line. Posting excerpts of the article is allowed though under the fair-use policy.