Forums and Copyright

T

Thor

"Pfft, Rebel scum!"
Valued Senior Member
I have ANOTHER question to ask. This one regarding certain legal aspects of forums.

If I wrote something on a forum and it was a really groundbreaking idea then I found out someone else had stolen or used it would I have legal rights to take that person to court? I guess it's the same as any other method of copyrighting something (something as simple as mailing the idea to yourself and not opening the letter) as the relevent posts will include the dates I cam up with the idea (if left unedited).

So yeah, do I? Huh, huh?
 
This is a public forum, whatever you say becomes part of the public unless you copywright it before you post it.
 
But what? That doesn't make a lick of sense. Surely as I am the one who said the idea I would be the owner of it. You can get the idea listed but as soon as you create it it should be copyrigihted. I'm just wandering if you can use forums as proof.
 
jadedflower said:
nope. none. moral: keep it quiet, copyright it.
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Are you quite certain?

You DO know how simple the copyright process is... right?

To copyright something you simply put the little c and circle it at the bottom, along with a signature and a means to date it. To prove YOU wrote it you can put it in a letter and mail it to yourself or something, having a postmark as objective proof of the date... (note however, on sci, you have that without having to mail stuff)

Honestly if you wrote something groundbreaking on a forum and could support the case in court that you had been directly plagerized, I don't see how you wouldn't have a good case for it.

Patents work somewhat differently. For instance, I wouldn't post a patentable something up here, but then again, I'm pretty sure if you can show (within a reasonable amount of time) that you had the idea first, I'm pretty sure you would win a patent lawsuit. Something like that.

It's much more plain than I thought, as I've investigated this a bit. However, I'd imagine that "proving" something can be much tougher than it sounds, reasonable doubt and all.
 
i don't know about copywrites, but if someone passed off something you said but is uncopywritted it's still considered plagerism. is that illegal? (i don't think it is)
 
On copyrights

Cosmictraveler said:
This is a public forum, whatever you say becomes part of the public unless you copywright it before you post it.
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"Copyright it before you post it" - This is easily-enough done.

PC users - check your character map.
Mac users - Option-G

If I write a story and send it to a magazine or publisher, all I have to do is write, "© 2004" or whatever year it is I wrote the story along with my vital information when I submit the story. The copyright is established until legitimately challenged.

So if it is a concern, just mark all of your posts. (See bottom of post.)

Note on Edit: It occurs to me to mention as well that if you choose to cite other people's work, such as I have even insofar as one uses the quote function to excerpt another point, those must be given reasonable academic citation if you are going to declare copyright over your work. Take a look at the Sciforums copyright, and you'll get a hint on how to do that. It does well enoguh to cite the author's pseudonym (User ID), but it's a lot easier to protect yourself if you use your real name when you list your copyright.

______________________

• Cosmictraveler. "Untitled." Forums and Copyright. Sciforums.com, May, 2004. See http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=35970

___________________
Portions © 2004, B.D. Hilling​
 
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Excellent. Thank you wes and Tiassa. You've comfirmed my thoughts. And wes is absolutly correct when he talks about the posting thing. You can get your idea on a list but it's just as simple to post it to yourself. But you'd have to go through the whole legal process and pay stuff you know.
 
Jadedflower

Which part? The simplicity of it? In such a case I would refer you, the next time you're in a major bookstore, to seek out the reference section and thumb through the current year's Writer's Market. The standards may have changed, but on the first page of an article or story you declare your copyright very simply (e.g. "© 2004 by B.D. Hilling") and dictate the publication rights you seek to negotiate (e.g. "First Serial Rights," &c.)

The note on edit is a little less clear, as it regards an informal, not-for-profit form of publication.

But those copyrights will hold up if someone tries to steal the story. Then, of course, you have to get into the standard prior-workmanship arguments, but paying you the fifty bucks for a story or hundred bucks for the article is a lot cheaper than stealing it and responding in court.

Nonetheless, it's best to seek official legal advice if the question has any consequences--I am not an attorney and cannot give official legal advice.
 
wesmorris said:
Are you quite certain?

You DO know how simple the copyright process is... right?

To copyright something you simply put the little c and circle it at the bottom, along with a signature and a means to date it.
Click to expand...

Let me guess, Wesmorris, you're a Jim Carry fan, because you sure do love talking out your ass (Oooh zinger)!

Copyright does not require the little c with the circle in it, that is entirely superfluous and does nothing but show others that you intend to exercise your exclusive copyrights to a particular body of work if it comes to that (so hands off!) legally it means very little.

Also, even if you put the little c there, you're still essentially unprotected. Unless you register your copyright with the US patent office (there are fees involved!) and they have it on their records, then in court you're going to be utterly helpless, and the judge will laugh at you and probably sentence you to time in jail, or community service just for having such awful misconceptions about US copyright law.

Additionally, even if you have a registered copyright, but have no financial concern with the copyrighted body, and no foreseeable gains or uses for the copyrighted item, then I understand that you'll have a hard time asserting your right to your own work (in other words, if we have to people, one draws a pretty picture on one of these Japanese named internet drawing boards, posts it for all to see, moves on, and then someone else steals that drawing and claims it as their own, then essentially not even the court gives a crap about the drama that ensues, despite your legal rights on paper).

One last bit of information which may be of interest to this specific topic: The way Thor worded his initial post leaves me a bit unclear as to exactly what he’s talking about. Depending on the nature of this “groundbreaking” think that he would have hypothetically written, and then was stolen. If what was stolen was the actually body of text that you had written, word for word (or just poorly paraphrased) then you would have grounds to assert your copyrights and sue this guy, or get him to take it down off of his site, or whatever it is you’d like for him to do. However, if he wrote down his own “groundbreaking” post which expressed essentially the same idea that you did (or something extremely similar to your idea) in his own words, then he is safe, and that post is his. If you wrote down a really amusing premise for a novel, or something, and then someone else took that premise and wrote a book based on it, then they would have the copyright to that book, it would be theirs, and it doesn’t matter where their inspiration came from. They could even give the characters the same names that you did!

In other words copyright does not exactly protect your rights to an idea, it only protects your rights to a certain tangible existing body of work. Copyright protects pictures you’ve made, sounds you’ve recorded, large bodies of text you’ve written. It can’t cover your really great idea for a sitcom, or ideas for a car that would be really cool.
 
You're all wrong

There are all sorts of bizarre myths floating around the internet about how copyrights work, and it’s disappointing to see them repeated here at sciforums.

Assuming you live in the United States, any creative work – including a forum posting – is automatically copyrighted as soon as it’s recorded onto a permanent media. If you write your idea down, post it on a internet forum, or even make an audio tape that describes the idea then you automatically have a copyright to it. It is not necessary to include any sort of copyright notice, and you don’t lose any of your copyrights simply because you post an idea to a public forum. If anything, posting something in a public internet forum would make your copyright stronger because it would be easy to prove when it was created.

The only time you need to actually file a copyright claim with the government is if you want to sell your copyright to someone else.

I have no idea how copyrights work outside the United States.

Edit:In order to head off the mass of “you’re wrong” replies, I’ll offer these quotes from the Government Copyright Office’s web site:
“Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work.

The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration.

Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is "created" when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. "Copies" are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device, such as books, manuscripts, sheet music, film, videotape, or microfilm. "Phonorecords" are material objects embodying fixations of sounds (excluding, by statutory definition, motion picture soundtracks), such as cassette tapes, CDs, or LPs. Thus, for example, a song (the "work") can be fixed in sheet music (" copies") or in phonograph disks (" phonorecords"), or both.

The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U. S. law, although it is often beneficial. Because prior law did contain such a requirement, however, the use of notice is still relevant to the copyright status of older works.

Notice was required under the 1976 Copyright Act. This requirement was eliminated when the United States adhered to the Berne Convention, effective March 1, 1989. Although works published without notice before that date could have entered the public domain in the United States, the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) restores copyright in certain foreign works originally published without notice. For further information about copyright amendments in the URAA, request Circular 38b.”
Click to expand...

But don’t believe me, check for yourself:
http://www.copyright.gov/
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wwp
 
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Mystech said:
Additionally, even if you have a registered copyright, but have no financial concern with the copyrighted body, and no foreseeable gains or uses for the copyrighted item, then I understand that you'll have a hard time asserting your right to your own work (in other words, if we have to people, one draws a pretty picture on one of these Japanese named internet drawing boards, posts it for all to see, moves on, and then someone else steals that drawing and claims it as their own, then essentially not even the court gives a crap about the drama that ensues, despite your legal rights on paper).
Click to expand...
At one time this was true, but not any more. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, violating a copyright is a federal crime with stiff penalties, even if the copyrighted work in question has little or no value. Of course in practice no one would be interested in prosecuting someone because they violated the copyright of a worthless drawing, but it could happen.
One last bit of information which may be of interest to this specific topic: The way Thor worded his initial post leaves me a bit unclear as to exactly what he’s talking about. Depending on the nature of this “groundbreaking” think that he would have hypothetically written, and then was stolen. If what was stolen was the actually body of text that you had written, word for word (or just poorly paraphrased) then you would have grounds to assert your copyrights and sue this guy, or get him to take it down off of his site, or whatever it is you’d like for him to do. However, if he wrote down his own “groundbreaking” post which expressed essentially the same idea that you did (or something extremely similar to your idea) in his own words, then he is safe, and that post is his. If you wrote down a really amusing premise for a novel, or something, and then someone else took that premise and wrote a book based on it, then they would have the copyright to that book, it would be theirs, and it doesn’t matter where their inspiration came from. They could even give the characters the same names that you did!

In other words copyright does not exactly protect your rights to an idea, it only protects your rights to a certain tangible existing body of work. Copyright protects pictures you’ve made, sounds you’ve recorded, large bodies of text you’ve written. It can’t cover your really great idea for a sitcom, or ideas for a car that would be really cool.
Click to expand...
It depends on how blatantly the ideas were stolen. If I create something based on your copyrighted work (like in your example of someone ripping off a book idea) then my work is considered a ‘derivative work’ and you would hold the copyright to it, not me. All you would need to do would be to convince a judge that I stole the ideas from you. In practice this can be very hard to prove in court; I would probably just claim that I came up with similar ideas on my own, and it would be hard for you to prove otherwise. Of course if (as in your example) I went so far as to steal the character names, it would probably be pretty easy.
 
Nasor said:
It depends on how blatantly the ideas were stolen. If I create something based on your copyrighted work (like in your example of someone ripping off a book idea) then my work is considered a ‘derivative work’ and you would hold the copyright to it, not me. All you would need to do would be to convince a judge that I stole the ideas from you. In practice this can be very hard to prove in court; I would probably just claim that I came up with similar ideas on my own, and it would be hard for you to prove otherwise. Of course if (as in your example) I went so far as to steal the character names, it would probably be pretty easy.
Click to expand...

Right, but what I meant was if his earthshaking idea was just the premise for a larger work (Ie something like "I've got a great idea for a movie. . .what if a jew and a black guy fought crime together, yadda yadda) without actually producing the work, then, unless the actual text of that proposal was stolen and used in the final project, creating a movie which followed his description to the T would be just fine, because, though it's based on his idea it isn't actually stealing any tangible item that he created. Names, of course are kind of hazy, and certainly not subject to copyright law, though perhaps in special cases it might be aplicable. . . in the event of a really creative name. . . I have no idea :p

This reminds me of a bit of my own digital media! I've recorded a "rant" on this very subject not long ago

http://mystech.furchives.org/rants/copyright.mp3

Feel free to give it a listen! I reserve all rights to this recording, however, haha. Hmm but I think I lay that out in there, so I won't say any more.

Oh and just because I'm a plug happy attention whore, you can find a few more of my recordings at http://mystech.furchives.org/rants
 
Yeah, can aliens sift through the rubble of our once great civilisation and 'find' sciforums and then read our posts somehow? (keep in mind aliens have awesome technology, all of them, even extra-terrestrial plankton).
 
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