copyrighted material

The parent company of the Last Vegas Review Journal and Las Vegas sun has brought 74 blog owners up on copyright infringement charges.

Although I put up a copyright notice anytime I cite an article, it may be better not to reproduce whole articles, but to reference them in your own words. You can still link to the site where the original article can be read. Respect their intellectual property.

Quote: pacomartin

It may be better not to reproduce whole articles, but to reference them in your own words. You can still link to the site where the original article can be read. Respect their intellectual property.

good practice for just about anyone; it's just sleazeball to make it look like your own research etc

You can quote from an article, as long as the quotes are short and you attribute the source (writer, publication, etc).

You can also post entire articles if you have permission from the copyright holder.

Quote: Nareed

You can quote from an article, as long as the quotes are short and you attribute the source (writer, publication, etc).

You can also post entire articles if you have permission from the copyright holder.

wheres the line between whats considered just a quote and whats considered an article?

Quote: rudeboyoi

wheres the line between whats considered just a quote and whats considered an article?

The same line as less than a full paragraph and several pages.

When it comes to what's considered fair use, there is no hard and fast line. You are free to directly quote portions of articles with credit, and you're free to summarize as much as you'd like (in your own words).

I would err on the side of caution and avoid pasting anything on this board more than a couple of paragraphs, or about 60 words. It's nice to acknowledge that you don't hold the copyright, but afixing that little symbol won't protect you unless you've received advance permission from the newspaper to publish its intellectual property elsewhere.

I would encourage everyone to use links and drive a little traffic to the newspaper responsible for the reporting.

I don't know how they are resolving these cases, but it seems as if they would treat the postings by guests on a forum differently then posts by the owner of the blog. But the lawsuits are for $75K apiece and some of them are for bloggers who talk about kitten care and other innocuous stuff. The wizard will probably shut down the site if he gets a lawsuit or thinks he might get one.
So err on the side of caution. Put a headline, and cite the source and author, a quick summary of the pint and add a link.

I am going through my old posts and deleting whole articles to help clean it up a little.

This issue bothers me. Personally, I don't think it's stealing someone's material unless you don't give acknowledgement to who wrote the document or who performed the research, or in some way get proper credit where credit is due. Writers on this form (such as pacomartin and others) always include acknowledgement of what they are posting, and I think that is sufficient. I feel like, in reading his posts, that he cites exactly what someone else says, and he makes it easy to see what is someone else's words and what are his own. This I feel is the spirit of copyright regulations.

I understand that there are plenty of people who don't cite original authors and steal material, and yes I feel that they should be punished in some way. But I think that the posters here on this forum haven't been doing that.

I think you're confusing the standard for plagiarism with the standard for fair use. Indeed, nobody could accuse Paco or likely any other regular poster here of plagiarism because their quotations are well cited.

Still, the reporting is a newspaper's core "product," and the R-J is wise to protect it. The newspaper has paid the salaries of the reporter and his editors and set up the newsroom infrastructure that supports their work. Copying and pasting an entire article might not seem like stealing, but in a way it is. If you link to the article instead, you're rewarding their honest work and removing any gray area regarding copyrights.

The one issue is when newspaper articles expire and are not available online any more. Instead you have to go to the library. How far back does the RJ and the Sun keep their articles on their site?