HI Ivor,
Yes .. things are starting to hot up generally!
First off it seems the
everthing2.com site brought in the changes
in response to the new American Copyright law. I think it's safe to say
openguides.org is still under UK copyright law (it's run by UK residents?)
which is still the same.
That's always been considered bad form, as in
"it's always better
to link" (note that E2 does not have the ability to link outside).
This sounds like a safe, smart policy. It has the advantage of
encouraging authors to provide their own original content too.
I wonder if we should consider a copyright statement
on the site, and a © message on each page (via the template of course). What do
others think?
For a content facilitator site like
openguides.org I think it's
important that when someone submits their review etc. that they agree to:
* licence their review to openguides and that they are the original author
* if not, that they have an implied or explicit licence to use the material
* finally, that
openguides.org (Earle, Kake, Ivor) disclaims all
responsibility for copyright infringement
** you should also disclaim responsibility for libel (e.g., a
competitor writes a nasty review).
The best way to do this is with a terms and conditions text box on
submit of the article/review? You can place it in a small HTML text box if
you don't want to bore people with the details, but do include a "I have
read the terms and conditions" check box.
So that should help protect you for content going into your site
but what about people cutting and pasting off yours?
Well openguides owns the copyright ... so there's lots of
flexibility here - it's up to openguides! :-) ... you could go for a
recursive GPL type thing, or if any use is made it must be acknowledged
with a link back etc.
Whatever you choose you could have a copyright link on the footer
of your content pages that states your licence. If someone connects to
your RDF feed maybe include a terms and conditions box (with a check box)
prior to downloading the feed details.
I hope this helps on the legal side ... good luck with it!
NIge
p.s. are you guys planning to accept advertising on the site?
Ivor.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ivor Williams" <ivor.williams(a)tiscali.co.uk>
To: <openguides-london(a)openguides.org>
Sent: 02 August 2003 11:43
Subject: [OpenGuides-London] Copyright
This is a subject that has come up at a few
social meets, and we had Nigel's talk at the last tech meet. I feel we need some kind
of
statement on the London site of the copyright
status.
Disclaimer: IANAL
All material on the site
http://openguides.org/london is copyright OpenGuides.
You are free to use the textual content of any page in any way including copying it,
provided that any copies acknowledge that the
source of the information is
openguides.org, and that the copyright applies to any copies
of the information.
You are free to make use of the metadata supplied by openguides, but openguides reserves
the right to change or correct the
metadata.
Openguides accepts no liability for consequential loss as a result of material found on
the site. If material is found to be
factually incorrect, the onus is on the individual discovering the error to make the
correction.
The underlying software of the site is open source, and is covered by the licence
included in the distribution on CPAN.
_______________________________________________
OpenGuides-London mailing list
OpenGuides-London(a)openguides.org
http://realprogrammers.com/mm/listinfo/openguides-london
--
Nigel Hamilton
Turbo10 Metasearch Engine
email: nigel(a)turbo10.com
tel: +44 (0) 207 987 5460
fax: +44 (0) 207 987 5468
________________________________________________________________________________
http://turbo10.com Search Deeper. Browse Faster.