Ask Slashdot: A GPL-like Copyright Tagline for Text?

murrayc asks: "I need a short GPL-like copyright message to put on the end of my online articles. I'm no lawyer so I don't know what would be valid. I recently discovered that a commercial site had ripped-off one of my web pages word for word. Compare my article with their copy. They removed any mention of me or my web site and put their copyright on the end of it. When I complained they added my name to the top of the article, but they still have their copyright notice on it, saying that people have to ask their permission before copying it. I don't want to prevent anyone from copying my articles, but I want to retain control over them. No, the articles themselves won't be of much interest to Slashdotters." It was only a matter of time until the digital version of the plagarism spectre reared it's ugly head. What's one to do if they want to protect their content, yet still make it available to all?

Comments

Check out the OpenContent License

[VanL]

A friend of mine is working on this very thing, called the OpenContent License. Their FAQ:
1. Why do we need the OPL?

Computer software can already be made free for public consumption and improvement by distribution under one of several Free Software licenses as mentioned above. If you're developing executable code with instructional potential, please consider licensing it as "Free Software" so that it can both be a part of the Bazaar development cycle and freely accessible to everyone. Other Content (Learning Objects) such as graphics, images, sound bytes, video clips, models, lecture notes, tutorials, HOW-TO's and anything else that can be "referenced during technology supported learning" can not be released under these licenses because they are written specifically for computer software. The OpenContent License has been created to provide instructional designers and content specialists the same benefits, protections and assurances programmers gain from Free Software licenses. The OPL (pronounced "opal") is always open for comment. This version draws inspiration (and some verbiage) from the GPL and Debian's Social Contract.

2. Where did you get the idea that people would be willing to give their work away?
(I'll do my best to refrain from restating the question as "What kind of idiot would actually consider sharing? What kind of idiot would actually expect anyone else to share in return?") If you can honestly ask this question, it seems clear that you have never used the internet. What do people do on the internet more than look for information and find it? and find it available for free? Have you never looked anything up online? You may want to review the project's purpose. Although this idea may seem crazy to those entrenched in academia or higher education (or those who are just greedy), the idea of working hard and freely sharing the valuable results has been in practice for a long time, and is the essence of the Internet ethic (if you don't subscribe to these ideals, maybe you should go on somewhere else.) Richard M. Stallman played a key role early on in the Free Software movement by writing out and evangelizing the idea. He has included Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU's Goals in the GNU Manifesto. He answers questions like 'why should software be free?', 'why would anyone do all that work for free?', "won't programmers starve?', and others there. The transfer from the computer programming paradigm to that of education should be easy enough. For a better understanding of the principles underlying OpenContent's organization please read around the Free Software Foundation and Eric S. Raymond's OpenSource.org.

3. How do I get involved?
1. read the OPL
2. agree with its tenets or make suggestions
3. create Content
4. make it freely available under the OPL
5. spread the word

They have no right to republish your work

[Bruce Perens]

Although you could use a license, this company has no right to republish your work even though you have not placed one on your work. When you don't otherwise license it, it's automaticaly copyrighted by you with all rights reserved. Find out who accepts process for their corporation, or write their president giving the URL and stating that your copyrighted material is being infringed. If they don't respond, take them to court. They can be found liable to pay you a royalty fee for their use of the work so far.

You are entirely in the right here, the company is in infringement. Don't let them waffle and don't be pushed around.

Thanks

Bruce Perens

Re:Sue, period.

[scrytch]

Actually, unlike trademarks, you cannot lose a copyright by failing to defend it. There is, however, probably a statute of limitations on the actual offense, which is of course renewed each time it's exploited. Simply send them a cease and desist letter and tell them you hope that legal action will not be required. If that doesn't work, give 'em a lotta shit for PR if they're a company. Unless there's actual monetary damage, there's not any point in getting a lawyer though.

Lawsuits, copyright, notices.

[Surak]

While I am not a lawyer, I play one on the Net :-)

First of all, you have a lawsuit on your hands. You own any content you publish, regardless of form, as long as the work is original and the work is only yours: it doesn't include a substantial amount of work from someone else and you did not do it as a work for hire (meaning, you did not write the thing for an employer). The work does NOT have to have a copyright notice on it if it was written in any of the countries that have signed the Berne convention. (Which means most western countries.)

Note that you only have lawsuit if you can substantially *prove* that the work is yours and and that you published it *before* they did. One lawyer told me that the only way you can do this is by mailing the thing to yourself via registered mail: it will have a postmark on it proving the date of publication. OTOH, another lawyer told me that the only thing that this accomplishes is the wasting of the stamp and needless tying up of the postal system. I'm if you had 20 different lawyers on the subject, you would get 20 different opinions.

I don't think a whole license would actually be necessary for content. I think just a notice like:

Copyright (C) 1999 Rob A. Shinn
This text may be redistributed in unmodified form only, as long as this notice remains intact.

would suffice. While copyright notices are not necessary, they make it much, much easier for you to win a lawsuit. In fact, in most jurisdictions, it is impossible to win statutory damages without a notice. This means that your lawsuit could probably only win actual provable damages for this particular instance.

Unless of course you want people to modify and pass it along, akin to GPL. But, IMHO, this is a mistake: modified content can hurt the reputation of the original author far more easily than can modified, redistributed source code can.

Once again, disclaimer:

I am NOT a laywer. It is up to you to seek the counsel of a qualified, competent attorney if you indeed desire a truly useful opinion.

My sources for information include the Software Developer's Complete Legal Companion, by Thorne D. Harris III. This is an excellent work and you should consider getting it if you are interested in copyright law....

Re:Intellectual Property

[Arandir]

Some /.'s believe in IP and some don't. Some don't even realize that copyrights are IP. Eliminating intellectual property altogether would invalidate the GPL, a nice little paradox :-)

However, the post assumes that the author is keenly interested in his IP rights. Otherwise he would not have been concerned with someone else using his work "unfairly". After all, if it's not property, it can't be stolen. If you feel it's been stolen, then you must agree that it's property!

A post can be put under the public domain and then no one would ever be able to own it for themselves. However, they could change the wording a bit and then claim it. If you don't believe that information should be owned, then put your stuff in the public domain, otherwise you are inconsistant. But if you don't believe in IP, but continue to use the GPL, understand that many people will see you as inconsistant and maybe even hypocritical.

Wired did this to me in 1995

[K-Man]

A few years back I wrote a smart-ass response to somebody on Usenet, snickered quietly to myself, and then forgot about it. A few months later I saw someone mentioning a funny rant in Wired that sounded suspiciously similar to what I had posted. I went over to a newsstand, paid $4.95, and saw my rant in the letters section, authored by "anonymous". At no time did I recall every giving Wired permission to publish my incoherent ramblings, so I checked around, posted to one of the law newsgroups, and even flamed a few people in alt.wired. The basic facts I established were: I have until something like 75 years after my death to sue them; I don't need a copyright notice; damages are mainly limited to proven commercial value (none, I will freely admit, and I would probably have given them permission *if asked*), and, when you get right down to it, Wired is for ding-dongs. During that time period, Wired was attracting large numbers of zealots who thought that a pink-and-green dead trees publication was somehow revolutionizing the online world, and that things like copyrights, honesty, etc., were obsolete. One guy even seemed to think that Wired was actually an extension of Usenet, and therefore the magazine could freely profit from whatever it could grab there. True, there are some questions as to where Usenet actually ends, since, even more than the web, it's a distributed, multi-copying system, but I'm sure most would agree it stops somewhere short of overpriced, advertisement-laden lifestyle magazines sitting in traditional newsracks. In any case I have something fun to do in my old age, should I ever get the desire to sue them.

Re:Food for thought.

[Arandir]

Quoting or referencing an article is "fair use".

Now here's some food for thought...in the same way, dynamically linking to a library is also considered "fair use" by many people, and if such a case ever makes it to a court, there is a good possibility that it will be determined legal to link to a GPL library! It can be justified as "fair use" since linking to a library is the whole purpose of the library, and in many cases, you aren't even including code at all, only a "#include ".

The same thing also goes for any proprietary dll's you happen to have laying around. You may not have any rights to distribute the proprietary library, but you can still dynamically link to it and distribute your own stuff.