Hi Emma
Please could you give some clarification about copyright issues?
A member recently posted a complete article written by a journalist from a health website, inadvertently without including any quotes, nor a link, nor anything to indicate that it was not her own words. This was subsequently picked up by other members who provided the link and then pointed out the copyright issues – which then led to some er... discussion, but it looks like the issue was not resolved completely.
As I (and others) frequently post extracts from all sorts of sources (with links and quotes as well as chunks of the information) we need clarification please on the position with respect to press/journalist articles.
The Forum Registration agreement says this:
You also agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or you have consent from the owner of the copyrighted material.
The section of the Forum guidelines “Information for Members†states this:
Members are kindly requested to give references (eg links) to any health/medical information they provide, when it is not personal experience. Personal experience is anything the person has undergone himself/herself.
My understanding of this is pretty clear – we must credit any authors of anything that is reproduced from elsewhere and also give links (as long as it is not a commercial link) but what is not clear is how far we can actually reproduce articles (rather than just link to them).
I imagine that we can freely extract sections from scientific papers and abstracts etc, as well as public/charity scientific organisations such as BMS, or NHS etc provided that it is clear where it is from? However is it OK to reproduce press/journalist articles provided they are in quotes and a link given or does copyright preclude any reproduction? Perhaps this just applies to entire article eg we sometimes include quotes (ie reproduce whole sections) from relevant online newspaper article, rather than the whole article?
Your clarification of this would be appreciated as it would be helpful to many of us. Thanks.
Hurdity