There has been a lot of discussion on the board about copyrights, the DMCA, infringement, piracy and "fair use". Lawyers seldom agree on these terms so it isn't surprising that we don't understand them.
I want to present some definitions provided by various law schools in the US. I had to check out some of these terms so I will guess many of you don't know what they are either.
DMCA = Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act Canada is working on its own DMCA as are many other countries that are not already covered under WIPO.
When you write an original piece of work, an essay, that is yours - comes from your head - you own it as soon as it is written. You have the legal right to change it, add to it, edit it as much as you want. it is yours. As soon as I post this thread for example this is my copyrighted piece of work. My ID here, Lady Lee, belongs to me, Lee Marsh. The copyright belongs to Lee Marsh aka Lady Lee. Since I am the owner of this post no one can legally take it and post it somewhere else without saying where they got it from or that I wrote it. To be really legal and picky about it if you were to quote me further down in the thread it would be legal to say something like
Lady Lee
The copyright belongs to Lee Marsh aka Lady Lee. Since I am the owner of this post no one can legally take it and post it somewhere else without saying where they got it from or that I wrote it.
or
The copyright belongs to Lee Marsh aka Lady Lee. Since I am the owner of this post no one can legally take it and post it somewhere else without saying where they got it from or that I wrote it. - Lady Lee
If the quote was from another thread it would be correct to post the link to that thread and then make the quote as I did above. But we aren't always so picky here about what we say or who and how we quote things amongst ourselves.
BUT if you are going to quote something you found on the Internet or in a book you MUST by law let your readers know where you got that information from. That is the law. That is copyright law. If for example you went to my website and copied one of my articles and posted it here and didn't say that you got it off my website or that I wrote it you would be breaking the law. it doesn't matter that I haven't registered it somewhere as my piece of work. My name is on it. It is on my website. I own it. And no one can copy and paste it legally without my permission. I have a note of that at the bottom of every page on my website but I don't legally have to have that copyright notice there. It is still mine.
I don't make any money from my website. That doesn't matter either. Placing a monetary value on my work does not add to the fact that I wrote it. It is still mine. I own the copyright on it whether or not I make money off the articles on the website.
Now people do contact me and ask if they can use an article on my website for a group they are using or for a school project. I do give permission provided they keep the copyright information on the page. They cannot remove my name and the copyright notice, print it out and distribute it to other people. That breaks copyright law.
In the same way we cannot copy and paste a book by the Watchtower Society On the Internet. It doesn't matter that they give the books away for free. or that the message is. . . well what it is. It still belongs to them. You would have to ask for their written permission to copy and publish the book either in print or on the Internet. And there is no way they would give that kind of permission. So if you copy the book and distribute it either in paper form or as a digital file you are breaking copyright law; you are infringing on the copyright of that piece of work.
In these cases people are asking to use an entire article or book. You have to ask permission. But what if you just want to use a small portion - like a chapter for example.
A while back I wanted to do a series of discussions on the book Captive Hearts, Captive Minds by LaLich and Tobias. But I didn't6 want to break any copyright laws to do it. So I contacted the publisher and both authors. One author, LaLich and the publisher both contacted me. They were in the process of re-releasing the book under the name Take Back Your Life. And they were willing to let me do the series and use large portions of the book. I used the first seven chapters quoting very large portions and using them to discuss how we can recover from the effects of spiritual abuse. But I had permission from both the author and the publisher and provided them with the links to the discussions in case they disapproved of something and I needed to make some edits. They did not ask for one change and actually hoped the discussion would help sales of the new book.
In the first chapter you can see how I use quotes from the book to make my points. I am not simply quoting them and leaving it for the reader to make the discussion or form an opinion. Under "fair use" I cannot just make quotes. We found that one out the hard way when the WTS forced the Quotes website to shut down. Quotes are used to make your point, to support your ideas so you have to tell your readers what you think about the point you are making and why you are using the quote.
Now I start my article (link is above if you want to read the entire piece) with a quote and then add my ideas for the essay and why I am using their book. I state:
Authors Madeleine Landau Tobias M.S. and Janja Lalich introduce their book with this comment: Captive Hearts, Captive Mindswas written to give former cult members, their families, and professionals an understanding of cultic techniques and the aftereffects of these techniques, as well as to provide an array of specific methods and aids that many help to restore normalcy to ex-cult members' lives.As we go through the various parts of the book I hope you will find some of the information helpful to you as you try to understand and recover from being involved with the WTS and JWs. Regardless of how long you have been out you may still have issues that you might not connect to the cultic experience. If you were physically or sexually abused over and above the spiritual abuse then you may find it hard to separate the physical or sexual aspects of your experience from the spiritual aspects.
Here I am quoting myself so I have used the quotation mark icon to move the text in. I could also use the Styles button and use "Quotes" and that will move it in and highlight it, or I could just use the indent icon to move it in. Any way you do it your reader sees this is something different.
Now to be perfectly correct I should have added the page number but the reader already knows we are in the introduction so I wasn't as strict as I should have been. In later chapters I do provide page numbers so my audience can look it up if they have the book.
This is very different than how the WTS uses quotations. They rarely let the reader know where they got their information from. This is intellectual dishonesty and copyright infringement. And just because they do it doesn't mean we can do the same to them. They can come after us if we take things too far.
Let's go back for a minute and discuss this issue of "fair use". George Washington University Law School states the following about "fair use":
When a copyright holder sues a user of the work for infringment, the user may argue in defense that the use was not infringement but "fair use." Under the fair use doctrine, it is not an infringement to use the copyrighted works of another in some circumstances, such as for commentary, criticism, news reporting, or educational use. The defense generally depends on a case-by-case judgment of the facts.
Fair use is codified at Section 107 of the Copyright Act, which gives a non-exclusive set of four factors courts will consider in deciding whether a use is fair or not. These factors are
- the purpose and character of the use,
- the nature of the copyrighted work,
- the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and
- the effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Of course, even with these factors, it is problematic and often unyielding to try to predict what uses a court will deem fair.
So there are very specific ways we can use quotations from the work of other people. One is as I posted above in using the book Take Back Your Life for an "educational purpose". I went through the chapters in the book and copies various portions that would make my points in helping people understand the recovery process.
Here, on JWN, we most likely would be offering a commentary or criticism of any WTS publication so that would be covered under "fair use". And here is where we might get into a bit of trouble. You can't use huge chunks of a work without making some kind of comment. Let's say I posted the entirety of chapter 1 but only offered one or two small comments. That isn't fair use. Quotes may have gotten into trouble partially because he had huge pieces of WT text posted on the website but he also did something else. By posting small pieces that exposed the WTS as being foolish it could have been interpreted by a judge that he was changing the purpose and intent of use for the pieces he was quoting. The excerpts were funny. They did expose the WTS flip-flops on their beliefs, ridiculous for their knowledge of science and health among many other things. He took the website down before the case ever went to court but there is a good chance he would have lost based on those two points alone. But then again a judge might have ruled in his favor.
Stanford University's website says:
In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and "transformative" purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. Another way of putting this is that fair use is a defense against infringement. If your use qualifies under the definition above, and as defined more specifically in this section, then your use would not be considered an illegal infringement.
So what is a "transformative" use? If this definition seems ambiguous or vague, be aware that millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent attempting to define what qualifies as a fair use. There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general rules and varying court decisions. That's because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit the definition of fair use. They wanted it--like free speech--to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation.
Most fair use analysis falls into two categories: commentary and criticism; or parody.
1. Comment and Criticism
If you are commenting upon or critiquing a copyrighted work--for instance, writing a book review -- fair use principles allow you to reproduce some of the work to achieve your purposes. Some examples of commentary and criticism include:
- quoting a few lines from a Bob Dylan song in a music review
- summarizing and quoting from a medical article on prostate cancer in a news report
- copying a few paragraphs from a news article for use by a teacher or student in a lesson, or
- copying a portion of a Sports Illustrated magazine article for use in a related court case.
The underlying rationale of this rule is that the public benefits from your review, which is enhanced by including some of the copyrighted material. Additional examples of commentary or criticism are provided in the examples of fair use cases. http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a.html#1
So it seems to be a safe bet that less is better then more. Just quote the part you want to discuss and leave the rest out. But make sure you actually discuss it. The quotation must support your idea otherwise just tell them to go get the book. At best Stanford says that "fair use" is a "murky concept in which it is often difficult to separate the lawful from the unlawful." http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-d.html
They go on to say (same link as above):
Two types of situations are especially likely to cause legal problems:
- Your work causes the owner of the original work to lose money. For example, you borrow portions of a biology text for use in a competing biology text.
- The copyright owner is offended by your use. For example, you satirize the original work and your satire contains sexually explicit references or other offensive material.
Well the WTS supposedly gives their literature away so the first might not apply. But the second is what most likely got Quotes into trouble. His selective quotes made them look bad and they took offense.
Now for those of you who wonder how to use WTS literature under fair use I have used several methods here to demonstrate how to quote them. Use small bits and reference everything including the name of the book (and year it was published because editions can be very different) as well as a page number or in some cases the paragraph number (just specify whether it is page or paragraph.)
OK that is enough to get us started. if you have questions feel free to post them and I or someone else will try to post some answers.