• Anything ‘published’ on the web is viewed as intellectual property and, regardless of whether it displays a copyright symbol or not, is therefore copyrighted by the originator. The only exception to this is if there is a “free and unrestricted reuse” statement associated with the work.

    In order to protect our members and TFL from possible litigation, all members must abide by the following new rules:

    1. Copying and pasting entire articles from another site to TFL is strictly prohibited. The same applies to articles from print or other media, and to posting photographs taken of copyrighted pages or other media.

    2. Copyright law provides for “fair use” of portions of a copyrighted work. You can copy no more than a SINGLE paragraph from the article to your post (3 or 4 sentences at most).

    3. You must provide a link to the article along with the name of website. For example: ww.xxx.yyy/zzz (The Lower Thumbsuck Daily News).

    4. You must provide, in your own words, a brief summary of the article AND your reasons for believing it will be of interest to TFL members. Failure to do so may result in the thread being closed or your post being deleted as a “cut and paste drive by.”

    5. Photographs and other images are also copyrighted. "Hotlinking" of images (so that it appears in your message) from other sites is also prohibited unless you own rights to the image. If you wish to share an image, provide a clickable link to it.

    Posts that do not follow these new guidelines will be altered or deleted by staff. Members who continue to violate this policy may lose their posting privileges at TFL.

    Thank you for your cooperation and your participation in TFL, the leading online forum for firearms enthusiasts.

Copyrights and postings

LoneStranger

New member
Could someone inform as to the proper procedure to post material that is copyrighted.

Reason being, At times I have found myself in possesion of material that might be relevant to a discussion but it is copyrighted and I do not wish to get anyone into trouble.
 
I believe the correct procedure is to provide a link to the actual copyrighted material. You can follow it with a short passage from the material if necessary. If there is no link available, e.g., a book, I believe you can safely quote a short portion of it as long as you clearly state where it came from, title and author. You may not quote an entire article or book without a reference to the original, although that is done often and I doubt that the Net Police ever do anything about it.
 
The entire contents of an article can be posted for the education of our readers. TFL is a non-commercial, educational site. Therefore, the laws pertaining to copyrights are different under the rule of "Fair Use."

Do a search on "fair use, title 17, United States Code" to learn more.

Personally, I tend to adhere to Mal's guidelines just because it is the responsible thing to do.
 
Back
Top