From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2002-01-25 19:04:00 UTC
Subject: Before you forward someone else's work [Note reviewed by
all moderators]
--
Here's an important reminder: if you are going to copy something
another person wrote to anyplace other than the Ferret Health List
you need to get that person's permission beforehand. We moderators
have a blanket permission as part of the joining procedures, but
folks own what they post under copyright laws so others must ask the
writers first.
There is a lot of confusion in the general world about this, but the
upshot is that the reason that folks like Stephen King can experiment
with an on-line novel, and newspapers can put up their stories
on-line is because things that appear on the Internet are as much the
property of the writers or publishers as things that appear on paper.
Nor do they need to have the copyright symbol; that is merely a
reminder but is not required for ownership.
In the rules you will note that cross-posting by writers of their OWN
work is permitted, in case that might help them get helpful
information most rapidly and thus save a ferret.
That means that there are three forwarding subsets:
1. People may cross-post their own work as they choose.
2. Moderators may snip and send posts that appear on the FHL to
other places due to the joining permissions.
3. In keeping with copyright laws everyone else must first get the
permission of the authors before they carry over posts to anywhere
else. Note that under copyright laws small quotes are permissible if
the author is credited, and certainly a person can always give the
URL of an FHL post to others. For instance, if you find someone who
is confused about what is or is not "cancer" you can send them
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ferret-Health-list/message/10434 which
is a URL for an informative post.
Someone's going to get hurt due to the lack of understanding of such
protections sometime so let's make sure that it isn't an FHL member.
One of the FHL moderators had her reputation temporarily hurt years
ago due to a couple who lacked understanding of copyright laws, who
took her words and attached her name -- then indiscriminately wove
their own incorrect data in with her verified data on a website. It
would be best if such pain not happen to anyone else. FHL members
are expected to know and respect the copyright laws on media they
use, and the FHL is not responsible for those who have not taken the
time to do so, as per stated joining documents that make writers
responsible for their own actions.
To help reduce confusion I will be changing the name of the posts
which I (as a moderator) forward to places like the FML to avoid the
misnomer "cross-post" in the future; bear with me while I get used to
changing that habit.