• 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.

Rule clairifications and proposed improvment.

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JoeSixpack

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Hello I hope this is the right section I'd like to get some clarification on copy right policy as well as propose a change to the drive-by rule.

Copyright Policy
https://thefiringline.com/forums/announcement.php?f=12&a=94

Question:
"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."
~
"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."

A: If all works are considered copyrighted without unrestricted free use statement how does this apply to inpost loaded images ex: [*img*]website.com/images/picture.jpg[*/img*]
Which has no accompanying text to include such statement.

B: How would such statements be verifiable, Example lets say I post a picture I've taken, How can I prove it's actually my picture and I own the rights to it?

C: Since the only exception is works that are free and unrestricted use, Does this mean the posting of a image I own constitutes a declaration that the image is free to be copied and used.. essentially giving up my rights to control the images redistribution from that point forward?

Drive-BY Posts
https://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=418983

Question:
"One that contains a link and no meaningful commentary on the link."
~
"When making a post in an ongoing thread, please explain how your link/article is relevant to the thread. What may be self evident to you, does not mean others will find it so. Failure to do this will get your post deleted."

What would quality as a summery? At what point is that threshold met?
It's difficult to quantify how long or detailed an explanation of a link is to meet this rule.

Would a single sentence be acceptable? Is there a certain amount of of detail need to be met? EX:

Say im posting a link to a article about choke tubes, would "here's an article about choke tubes" be enough?

This would seem to be especially difficult when the subject of the link is a image.

If I posted a link to a picture of an choke tube.. what would be a good summery?
Would "here's an example of a choke tube" be enough? or must I be more descriptive such as: "here's a picture of a full choke, choke tube"?
Or further still "here's a picture of a full choke tube for a Remington 870"?
Or further still "here's a picture of a full choke tube for a Remington 870, I believe this is relevant because we are discussing deer hunting with shotguns."

which would be adequate?

Proposed rule change: Perhaps we could go on a word or character count basis, Say each link must accompany a 200+ character summery.

That would take some of the guess work as to whether we're complying with the rule.
 
A: If all works are considered copyrighted without unrestricted free use statement how does this apply to inpost loaded images ex: [*img*]website.com/images/picture.jpg[*/img*]
Click to expand...
That is called "hotlinking" an image. It is prohibited unless it is your image or unless you have the rights to use it.
B: How would such statements be verifiable, Example lets say I post a picture I've taken, How can I prove it's actually my picture and I own the rights to it?
Click to expand...
If you are hotlinking an image "legally" then it must be from your own website, from your account on an image hosting site, or perhaps an image you uploaded to TFL. If it's from a website that obviously doesn't belong to you and that isn't an image hosting website where you have an account and have uploaded the image, then you shouldn't do it.

In most cases, it's not going to be that hard to tell if the image is yours or if it's not. And if you manage to get away with it, all that means is that if there is legal action by the photo's owner, it's your problem, not TFL's since you were acting in violation of TFL's policy.
C: Since the only exception is works that are free and unrestricted use, Does this mean the posting of a image I own constitutes a declaration that the image is free to be copied and used.. essentially giving up my rights to control the images redistribution from that point forward?
Click to expand...
No, it doesn't mean that.
What would quality as a summery?
Click to expand...
'Summary' is a commonly used word with a simple and uncontroversial definition. There's no need to overthink this.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/summary

Summary: a comprehensive and usually brief abstract, recapitulation, or compendium of previously stated facts or statements.

Here's a simple rule of thumb. If you're trying to do the absolute minimum amount of text to go along with a link that you want to post, then you're not abiding by the spirit of the rule.

Presumably you think others will find the link interesting/relevant/entertaining and that is why you are posting it. The rule says that you should provide a summary--ideally explaining what the link contains, why others will find the link interesting/relevant/entertaining, and perhaps giving your thoughts on the topic.

If you don't have any thoughts on the topic, if you can't explain what's in the link, if you don't have any reasons why others might find it relevant/entertaining/interesting, then why post it? If you do, then post the link and provide that information.

There are no plans to add a word limit to the 'No driveby' rule; however, I can say with some confidence that if there ever is a word limit provided, it will be significantly more than three.
 
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