Re: possible copyright infringement against postgresql writers, bloggers, and advocates

Hi Robert:

If the site does not host the articles themselves, but simply
summarizes an article and points to the article in its freely
available location on the Web, that sounds like a case of fair use
(known as "fair dealing" in Canada). Compare it to the New York Times
Book Review; the NYTBR is also a service you pay for (as part of the
Sunday edition), that summarizes books, even quotes passages from the
books, without funneling any money back to the authors of those books.

I am not a lawyer, but I am a librarian, so I do have to understand a
fair bit about copyright. From the guy's explanation, and a quick peek
around the sswug.org site, it seems like there is no copyright
infringement taking place; the site may appear to misrepresent the
services it actually offers (it's hard to tell before you sign up as a
member that the site is not actually the publisher of most of the
information) but that's not a copyright issue.

Dan

On 20/01/07, Robert Bernier <robert(dot)bernier5(at)sympatico(dot)ca> wrote:
> Guys,
>
> What started out as a bit of diversion has ballooned into a hunt for what could be construed as copyright infringement.
>
> This site, www.sswug.org, declares that it is "The Largest Independent SQL Server Help Resource On The Net". At first blush it appears to have datamined articles and documentation that includes, among others, the PostgreSQL and FreeBSD communities and many, many articles from Oreilly's own website. It seems that the only way you can access those articles is purchasing a subscription access using your credit card.
>
> Here's the response from the person who controls the site after recieving a request to remove the material:
>
> > Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 11:20:01 -0700
> > From: Stephen Wynkoop <swynk(at)sswug(dot)org>
> > To: 'Dru' <dlavigne6(at)sympatico(dot)ca>
> > Cc: tribich(at)ittoolbox(dot)com
> > Subject: RE: please remove copyrighted material
> >
> > Hello!
> >
> > Thanks for writing - we're not hosting the content on SSWUG at all. Just a
> > short summary and then pointing them to your site, promoting your article.
> > It's a service we provide for members on the site - making sure they know
> > about great content and then sending them to the right sites. We also
> > indicate that it's external content on the summary, and outline this in our
> > terms of service on the site.
> >
> > Hope this helps explain. I am an author as well, I would never republish
> > content. :)
> >
> > Let me know if you'd like an account activated so you can see how it works
> > - but rest-assured, it's not hosted on our site, just pointed to on your
> > site. For example, these two articles send people to:
>
> I found this link that says he pays for contributions from authors:
> http://www.sswug.org/columnists/editorial.asp?wdb=09/27/2006&id=38
>
> So what's going on? Personally, I don't mind if somebody posts a reference to an article but charging money while the author doesn't see a penny of it?
>
> FYI: I used the google option "site:www.sswug.org ...." to see who from the postgres community is referenced:
>
> Josh Berkus: 240 hits
> Andrew Dunstan: 183 hits
> Drake: 5 hits
> Dan Langille: 1 hit
> Bruce Momjian: 31 hits
> Elein Mustain: 2 hits
>
> OTHER HITS:
> postgresql: 1100 hits
> Dru Lavigne (freebsd): 133 hits
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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>