A reminder about copyright

Once again, we are having to remove copyrighted material, from TCS. Just because something is on the Web, does not mean that it is free for the taking. This also applies to pictures and written material, that you may have received in an e-mail. If you didn't take the picture or you didn't write the item, please do not cut and paste or remote link them here.


A reminder of our copyright policy:

TheCatSite.com asks its members to please respect the copyright issues of other users, sites, print-work, photographers etc. Users reposting copyrighted information on TCS without express permission from the original owner will receive a warning and their post will be removed.

Copyright law is mostly based with civil law. To violate this law, meaning if you take someone else's work and post it in a place the author, or photographer, or artist is unaware of, then you open yourself up to be sued, or worse yet, put this website at that risk.

Just because you see it on the Internet, does not make it a free for the taking. Respecting the original creator of the words, the best way to share whatever it is you see is to put the link here, and leave the words where the original person can find it.

This applies to photographs, stories, news articles, drawings, cartoons. It all is copyrighted unless underneath the item are the words "I grant this for public domain." That means anyone and everyone can have the item and do with it what they wish.

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If you have something funny or interesting and wish to share it, please post a link from the site itself.

Does this include pics like this?

This makes me laugh as it reminds me of my chubby Krissy sooo much!

Unfortunately yes it does. If you didn't take and create it or there isn't something specific on a site saying it is OK to distribute, then it isn't allowed here.

Well that's unfortunate

Okay, got it. Thanks.

I took this and Sylvia looked shocked so I gave it this caption lol

Bumping this up as a reminder.

Giving this another bump.

AbbysMom said:

Giving this another bump.

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Ok I have a question.  Why is it that my other two cat boards allow me to post just about anything I want, pics and graphics and text not actually taken or made by me.  Why is TCS so strict about this when other boards don't have these strict rules.  These boards have never been in trouble so what is the problem here, thanks.  Just very curious.

Has TCS been in trouble before??

LaRussa said:

 
Ok I have a question.  Why is it that my other two cat boards allow me to post just about anything I want, pics and graphics and text not actually taken or made by me.  Why is TCS so strict about this when other boards don't have these strict rules.  These boards have never been in trouble so what is the problem here, thanks.  Just very curious.

Has TCS been in trouble before??

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I'll chime in and answer this.

Copyright is a law. A real actual law.  TCS follows the law.  Apparently the other boards you frequent don't.

Plain and simple.  If you didn't write it, make it, take the picture yourself, it isn't yours to just grab off the internet and use.

I entered a writing contest  a couple months ago. I needed a picture to accompany the image. I didn't have one of my own. I did a Google search, found a company in Alaska that had a picture of what I needed, so I sent them an email asking if I could use their picture with my story.  They granted me permission. I added their website name to the picture before I used it, so that they would have proper credit for the picture.

Sites such as Icancheezeburger are some of the worst offenders of copyright violation. They grab pictures from all kinds of places and slap on a caption and post it on their website.

If people who have their copyright violated want to press the issue, they can not only have their pictures removed from the offenders website, but they can also have the website closed down.

If you want to show an Icancheeseburger picture, you can.  Just don't post the actual picture here. You can post a link to the picture, where when you click on the link, it takes you to the picture.

I do art as a hobby and am a member of several art sites.  There if you violate copyright even once, because Ignorance is no excuse for law breaking, you are perma banned from the community. At those sites there are no second chances.

Thank you for the info, I guess when I want to post something and not want it removed, I'll post it on another cat board.  I certainly wouldn't want this wonderful site to be closed down on my account, tsk tsk, no I certainly wouldn't want to do that.

Natalie_ca said:

If people who have their copyright violated want to press the issue, they can not only have their pictures removed from the offenders website, but they can also have the website closed down.

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Expanding a bit on this, and a disclaimer - it's not okay to violate copyrights.

Websites and services based in the U.S are protected by a "safe harbor" provision in § 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. In summary, this law says that hosts or providers of services will not be treated as publishers of information or content not generated by themselves. In other words, in a Web 2.0 context, any comments, content or pictures posted by users of the websites are not directly published by the site owner, therefore, the site owner may claim immunity under the CDA.

It isn't as straightforward though. Generally, website admins must show that they have taken good faith steps in minimizing copyright violations on their sites, and the content must be auto-generated (for example, a forum post would be automated, while if a comment requires approval before being published, it is not). In TIffany v. eBay, Inc, Tiffany & Co. brought a suit against eBay because users were selling counterfeit Tiffany items on eBay. They claim that eBay is directly responsible for trademark infringement because they allowed such sales to take place. Tiffany lost because the court found that eBay takes reasonable steps to minimize the sale of counterfeit products (via prompt removal if a report is received, terms outlined in the seller agreement, etc).

None of the above changes the point of this thread though - copyright violation is not a trivial matter. Even if the host website is immune, the actual party who made the posting isn't. Anything you use that was not created by you, and you do not have permission for, in the first place is grounds for a copyright claim. There are "fair use" provisions, but even those will not always protect you.

For our web design course's end-of-term project, we had to present a website that we create to the class. Mine was about cats. I wanted to use a statistical table from the ASPCA in my website. This was just a site that is saved on my flash drive and not an actual one. I got in touch with their legal department, and asked if I could use the table. They allowed me to after asking a bunch of questions, but with like 20 different conditions, and I had to delete my website, or the table, by the end of the day after we were supposed to give the presentation.

Some great replies here. And to answer your specific question, @LaRussa, yes we have received complaints in the past. We can't actively monitor everything posted to the site, so occasionally things get uploaded and we do get requests to remove images or text from a post because it infringes on someone's copyright. Needless to say, we always comply as soon as we can. I don't know about other boards you visit, but can only guess they either ignore such requests, or maybe they're too small to attract the attention. I'm in touch with several other big boards owners, so I know that such letters from lawyers do happen elsewhere too.

Anne said:

 
Some great replies here. And to answer your specific question, @LaRussa, yes we have received complaints in the past. We can't actively monitor everything posted to the site, so occasionally things get uploaded and we do get requests to remove images or text from a post because it infringes on someone's copyright. Needless to say, we always comply as soon as we can. I don't know about other boards you visit, but can only guess they either ignore such requests, or maybe they're too small to attract the attention. I'm in touch with several other big boards owners, so I know that such letters from lawyers do happen elsewhere too.

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Thanks for more info Anne.  Maybe you're correct and the other boards are not as large as this one.  In any event I do enjoy being able to do what I want as long as I don't obey any rules.  The only rules they do have are to not submit pics or graphics which are larger than allowed.  There really are no other rules except of course language.

Anyway I will try not to post pics or graphics that I should not.  The graphics I have posted of the holidays were ok tho since I posted a lot of them, I guess they were ok?

Happy New Year!!!

To take this a bit further, I'm thinking that maybe your other cat forums are completely private, meaning people can't even lurk on them without joining. But people don't have to join here to lurk, even for months and months or longer. So they can see what everybody is posting without joining the site. When a forum is completely public, I think you have to be a little extra careful about what you post. And let's face it, this site is huge, compared to the smaller forums that we were used to in the past. 

LaRussa said:

Anyway I will try not to post pics or graphics that I should not.  The graphics I have posted of the holidays were ok tho since I posted a lot of them, I guess they were ok?

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Did you create them yourself or have permission from the creator to use them? If not, then they are not OK. You can't assume that if we don't remove something that it is OK. You are expected to follow the rules of the site. Not getting caught doesn't make it OK. We are volunteers and can't possibly moderate every post every day, especially during the holidays. If we see a violation of the rules it will be removed and unfortunately repeat violators will be facing disciplinary action.

AbbysMom said:

 

LaRussa said:

Anyway I will try not to post pics or graphics that I should not.  The graphics I have posted of the holidays were ok tho since I posted a lot of them, I guess they were ok?

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Did you create them yourself or have permission from the creator to use them? If not, then they are not OK. You can't assume that if we don't remove something that it is OK. You are expected to follow the rules of the site. Not getting caught doesn't make it OK. We are volunteers and can't possibly moderate every post every day, especially during the holidays. If we see a violation of the rules it will be removed and unfortunately repeat violators will be facing disciplinary action.

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Sorry about the harsher regime. I'm sure it must be more fun not to have to deal with rules (hey, I hear that from my kids a lot   ). I can see how someone might start a site or a board and run it without rules. They're taking a risk and they could be taken down if someone files a DMCA with their host. Been there, done that (to others who stole my content). It's much easier than what you might think, because copyright infringement is very serious and hosts will take down sites pretty fast if someone complains. I'm talking about legitimate legal hosts, the kind that Google likes. If you run off a web host located somewhere were they let you host everything (copyright infringement is just issues, there are others), you have other problems.

Anyway, with TCS, I aim at running a family-friendly educational website. We're here to help cats by educating cat people. It's very important for me to keep things legal and make sure Google likes our site. Fun is important too, but it's not the first consideration around this board, sorry  

I think all of us still have a little of the rebellious kid in us, unfortunately there are rules that have to be followed.  From someone who isn't at all tech savvy with PCs and the internet, links are easy to do.  If they weren't I wouldn't have been able to figure out how to do them.

Anne said:

 

Sorry about the harsher regime. I'm sure it must be more fun not to have to deal with rules (hey, I hear that from my kids a lot 

 ). I can see how someone might start a site or a board and run it without rules. They're taking a risk and they could be taken down if someone files a DMCA with their host. Been there, done that (to others who stole my content). It's much easier than what you might think, because copyright infringement is very serious and hosts will take down sites pretty fast if someone complains. I'm talking about legitimate legal hosts, the kind that Google likes. If you run off a web host located somewhere were they let you host everything (copyright infringement is just issues, there are others), you have other problems.

Anyway, with TCS, I aim at running a family-friendly educational website. We're here to help cats by educating cat people. It's very important for me to keep things legal and make sure Google likes our site. Fun is important too, but it's not the first consideration around this board, sorry  

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AbbysMom said:

Did you create them yourself or have permission from the creator to use them? If not, then they are not OK. You can't assume that if we don't remove something that it is OK. You are expected to follow the rules of the site. Not getting caught doesn't make it OK. We are volunteers and can't possibly moderate every post every day, especially during the holidays. If we see a violation of the rules it will be removed and unfortunately repeat violators will be facing disciplinary action.

Click to expand...

Anne said:

 

Sorry about the harsher regime. I'm sure it must be more fun not to have to deal with rules (hey, I hear that from my kids a lot 

 ). I can see how someone might start a site or a board and run it without rules. They're taking a risk and they could be taken down if someone files a DMCA with their host. Been there, done that (to others who stole my content). It's much easier than what you might think, because copyright infringement is very serious and hosts will take down sites pretty fast if someone complains. I'm talking about legitimate legal hosts, the kind that Google likes. If you run off a web host located somewhere were they let you host everything (copyright infringement is just issues, there are others), you have other problems.

Anyway, with TCS, I aim at running a family-friendly educational website. We're here to help cats by educating cat people. It's very important for me to keep things legal and make sure Google likes our site. Fun is important too, but it's not the first consideration around this board, sorry  

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I took the holiday graphics from sites that allowed you to c/p them for your own use so no problem there.   I will try to use links as far as text goes in the future. 

I've been having to remove more copyright photos again, so it is time to bump up this reminder. :nod:

Giving this a bump.