D
DWFII
Guest
Hello,
I am desperately in need of some advice.
I am the webmaster for an internet discussion forum very much like this one. The forum is sponsored by The Honourable Cordwainers' Company--a 501 C-3 non-profit, educational organization. This is a discussion forum for bespoke boot and shoemakers and has members from all over the world. It has been in operation for about four years. Needless to say, there are many posts on this board and we are quickly threatening to overload the server space that we have alloted to us.
At the request of several members--among them members of the board of directors of this organization--I have created an autoloading CD of old posts, consisting of the text from each discussion as well as photographs and illustrations that accompanied the posts.
Now, the copyright issue has been raised. Can we distribute, on CD, the self-same material that is on the Forum istself for all the world to see?
My own thoughts run somewhat along these lines: Everyone who has posted to the forum, did so knowing that they were placing their work in a public venue, for literally everyone in the world to see. There are forums all over the net and the contents even get reproduced, endlessly, by search engines. More than that, every time someone opens the forum, and reads a message whether it be from the archives or a current message, the post is reproduced on someone's screen and can even be printed. If there are copyright issues, they have to originate then and there and the resulting logic suggests that if a copyright problem exists , it exists with the Forum as it now stands. . Since the CD's are going out to folks who likely have already reproduced the posts over and over, I can't see how the CD materially differs from the Forum itself.
I live in Oregon, the Forum is hosted in California, I think, and the HCC is registered in Virginia.
I would greatly appreciate some clarification here...
Thanking you in advance....
D.W. Frommer II--Bootmaker
I am desperately in need of some advice.
I am the webmaster for an internet discussion forum very much like this one. The forum is sponsored by The Honourable Cordwainers' Company--a 501 C-3 non-profit, educational organization. This is a discussion forum for bespoke boot and shoemakers and has members from all over the world. It has been in operation for about four years. Needless to say, there are many posts on this board and we are quickly threatening to overload the server space that we have alloted to us.
At the request of several members--among them members of the board of directors of this organization--I have created an autoloading CD of old posts, consisting of the text from each discussion as well as photographs and illustrations that accompanied the posts.
Now, the copyright issue has been raised. Can we distribute, on CD, the self-same material that is on the Forum istself for all the world to see?
My own thoughts run somewhat along these lines: Everyone who has posted to the forum, did so knowing that they were placing their work in a public venue, for literally everyone in the world to see. There are forums all over the net and the contents even get reproduced, endlessly, by search engines. More than that, every time someone opens the forum, and reads a message whether it be from the archives or a current message, the post is reproduced on someone's screen and can even be printed. If there are copyright issues, they have to originate then and there and the resulting logic suggests that if a copyright problem exists , it exists with the Forum as it now stands. . Since the CD's are going out to folks who likely have already reproduced the posts over and over, I can't see how the CD materially differs from the Forum itself.
I live in Oregon, the Forum is hosted in California, I think, and the HCC is registered in Virginia.
I would greatly appreciate some clarification here...
Thanking you in advance....
D.W. Frommer II--Bootmaker