Maybe not, but perhaps you should shut down any news posts.

And even if FT does not, perhaps you should think twice, or maybe even three times about posting any news events yourselves.

Why? Well, essentailly since I've been informed by Essexjay, in no uncertain terms, that "You are in serious voliaton of your TOS with Flyertalk by posting copyrighted material that you do not own." Cease and desist

In summary, she has in effect threatened to turn me in to the Associated Press.

Who am I to argue this? I don't even know if I need to retain legal counsel. Since I do not want to be doing any "time" I will simply refrain from posting.

Perhaps FT can simply eliminate all my "inviolate" posts.

If not, I can edit them out, if necessary, slowly but surely, one by one, as I've done with the offending one under which the threats to me were made.

I'd hate for FT to suffer from my misdeeds.

Again, I recommend that perhaps the "IN THE NEWS" aspects of the board be shut down.

I have another recommondation. The Doc Bulletin Board. All Doc. All the time. Everything he thinks you might be interested in.

And I mean everything!

I have appreciated the news reports and would miss them very much.

I just finished posting my thought on copyrighted material, but I have some more thoughts...

First, news is public information.

Second,

I seem to remember the U.S. Supreme Court(for everyone currently in the U.S.) ruling that it is ok to make copies of copyrighted material so long as it is for person use. In relation, the posts on this board are generally for the personal sharing of information, thoughts, ideas, etc., not commercial or for profit as in - I do not receive profit from someone reading my post. So, by posting a copyrighted article on this board, a person is really doing no more than passing a newspaper to the person sitting next to them. So, I conclude that unless a person is trying to profit from a news article or take credit for the article, I can't see anything wrong with posting the article on here although it might be better and easier to just post the link to the article.

Anyone with further thought on this?

News is indeed public information, but the version I wrote (and copyrighted) is my property - not the public's.

Second, if soemone grabs the news release and stores it on their HD, I would consider that personal use. But positng it on a medium where you do not know who many eyeballs this is getting - I would hardly consider that personal sharing of info.

Lastly, just because it is not commercial or for-profit, it does not mean you can use copy righted material without permission - for example, the common practice in US colleges of compiling/assembling textbooks from various sources.

Yeah, I have further thoughts on this. From the General Travel Talk section -->
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum94/HTML/001056.html

I could show you about a thousand more like this from the same poster. How would you like it if everyone on this board posted whatever "they" thought others would be interested in, without control, considertion, or regard to theme? Yes it's an open forum. But we do have a general theme here don't we? This person has shown time and again after many pleadings both public and private, to be incapable and unwilling to "put a lid on it".

Randy has said many times he appreciates the "self-policeing" aspect of this board. I think you should read between the lines as to what Essxjay is trying to accomplish here.

If this guy could show a little self control and cut down on the dribble by about 80% and keep his news stories somewhat controlled, no one would mind. But the sheer volume of this stuff is getting to people. And that's a fact Jack!

It's not about his right or even if some find value in his off-topic posts, it's about FlyerTalk and it's charter. Is it a personal dumping ground of news stories that some guy thinks the world should enjoy with him, or is it about a community of Frequent Flyers that want to keep the volume/noise ratio down in order to avoid losing valuable members?



[This message has been edited by Dr. PfP (edited 03-01-2000).]

Nearly all of us have posted news articles at some time or the other. I find news articles of interest, though most of the times I have read the article and simply skip it unless there are followups. The followups can be interesting too.

essxjay once proposed that there be a digest of news articles, but there was a fair amount of disagreement from the "community" on that.

If there is one thing more offensive than censorship (euphemistically called "self-policeing") it is selective censorship.

[This message has been edited by PG (edited 03-01-2000).]

I agree with PfP on this one. The chatter to information is approaching USENET levels on the general areas of FT.

As to copyright and profit, there is a common misconception that if you don't make a buck off the copying, then it's not illegal. In reality if you do it for profit you violate criminal and civil law, whereas not for profit you violate only civil law. [Note: I am not a lawyer and do not play one on television. Nothing stated here should be construed as legal advice [/CYA]) The copyright holder is within their rights to request a court restrain your illegal copying and to attempt to recover damages. And don't scoff at damages, "damages" are what a court and jury decide they are, not what one might consider reasonable.

For me, I would not make a habit of reposting copyright material from a gigantic organization on an easily accessible site.

I don't think anyone disagrees that news is public information, but that's not what a copyright applies to. It applies specifically to how to a story is reported and written by a particular person. It becomes their (and their publisher's) intellectual property. News organizations basically produce only one good - ideas - so they must vigorously protect their stock in trade from theft (plagarism). That's what a copyright does.

No need to shut the news boards down, doc. But if you're going to report the news, do it in your own words. And please be judicious in the amount and type of news to pass along. Yes, I find some of your posts interesting, but we're all quite capable of picking up a newspaper, flipping on the telly and browsing CNN online for our general and airline-related news. Keeping us informed without clogging the board would probably make you more appreciated.

[This message has been edited by essxjay (edited 03-01-2000).]

if one really feels the need to post news items maybe a single post each day with several links to the ORIGINAL sources would suffice. That could be helpful for those who dont have time to look for all the news on their own and it should also not take up space and cause unecessary controversy and of course it wouldnt violate any copyright laws.

Just an idea

Thank you, indogulf. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Yes, right! Just say it again and again- enough so and people will begin to believe it.

BTW-"Self-policing" aspects, NOT "lynching!" Of course, what do I know, you're the "Sheriff!"

Yes, and Randy has also commented numerous times about the massive growth in the number of posts on FT- and the point is?

Simply put, as many of you well already know, the comments expressed are untruthful nonsense.

Help yourselves to an exhaustive search/ critique if you like. Here's just one thread where this discussion has come up before:
http://talk.flyertalk.com/forum/Foru...ML/000491.html

The result was always the same and by a substantially wide margin.

I have always tried to accomodate all on the board as best as I know/knew how to- and that is evident in any past post(s) or exchange(s).

There will be some who will never be pleased no matter what I or anyone does, as I've noted previously.

Incidentally, you may want to do a search of "Dr.Pfp" to help evaluate their contribution to FT. Please enjoy as you read!

Again, it's a mute point as I said. I'm not going to post news items in a "community" under threat of prosecution- period.

This is no great loss for anyone on the board, or for me. Others will be picking up any slack and I have a bit more time to read, etc- and maybe I could even learn to criticize others!

While I'd always tried to give proper source credit and/or paraphrase, increasingly I've been "sloppy" and have copied more stories rather than provide a link. This is my mistake. When you're wrong, you are wrong. I admit to that.

Ironically, this is because many FTers like essexjay, who specifically encountered a recent dead NY Times link, could not read the story that been posted.

Thanks for listening/reading this far!

With apologies, especially for ranting,
Mark

PG this is not about selective censorship, IMHO. This is a community, a society. There has to be some self control or you have chaos.

I don't think this really has anything to do with copyrights. That's just the total frustration coming to the surface, IMHO.

I hate to say it but I too agree with Dr. PFP. We have gone over this before in:


http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum94/HTML/000834.html

As I suggested in that thread, what's to stop me from posting hundreds or thousands of stories about cigars, toys, collectibles, cars, wine, goldfish, pavement tar, sheep, television or whatever else I want to post here? Inherent guidelines, hopefully. But if not, self control. And even peer pressure.

Doc, I honestly get so sick of some of it that I feel like literally flooding the boards with "my" favorite news stories, just to make a point.

As I mentioned in the above thread, I think everyone welcomes posts that defines a person, or that shows what they are interested in. That's what helps develop a community. But Doc, there's a limit to what some people consider appropriate quanitity, let alone quality or relevance.

Hey, we all have a little fun here with our personal stuff and that's great. But like so many others have said time and again, we can get our general news elsewhere. And we should! And I do! I don't want FlyerTalk to become my one source for everything! I want to talk about the airlines, hotels, programs and the personalities here!

In so many other threads Doc, you seem unwilling to admit errors in judgment. In others you do and promise to change. But we always seem to end up right back here. You seem to argue that because many readers appreciate some of your posts, that is justification for using this forum to continue, and perhaps even increase the flow. I think that is an error in judgment.

Sadly, if things don't change we will lose some more very high quality people who came to this board from others and other newgroups to get away from the spam of unrelated stuff. I would hate to think that NJDavid was right in his final assessment of things in the last post of the above mentioned thread.

IMHO.

I'll come off my soapbox now.

I'm sorry PremEx - it is selective censorship. We already have more than enough posts about sheeps, cigars, cats, silly spelt articles which qualify for OMNI awards, etc.