Would you mind?

[Calum]

Hello, well VoidMain has just written a really informative post about permissions in UNIX, with some really good links, so i have saved the lot as a text file. In fact i have saved all the useful looking contents of this UNIX/Linux forum as text files on my hard drive for easy reading (since i don't have internet access at home).

Now what i want to ask is this.
The text files i have on my hard drive are the words that you people have written at one time or another, especially VoidMain, but a lot of other people too, who have added some pretty good stuff over the months. Also, the stuff in my text files was copied ad lib more or less, from this website.

Now, copyright definitely subsists in these words, they are intellectual property. What i want to know is, am i allowed to copy the text files for somebody? i can see myself in the future having to help somebody with linux, and wanting to let them have some of these text files, as they are straightforward and easy to understand, so am i allowed to do that? The thing is that while only i have copies (like now) i know they are not going to move from my hard drive, but if i copy them for just one person, your words could be being copied and read all over the place for all i know, and you might not want that.

Where does the copyright lie anyway? with the website, or the author, or both?
I reckoned that some of you might not mind having yr words copied if it was under the GPL, is that the usual way to do this? I'm not publishing them or making money mind, just want peace of mind if i ever want to copy them, that's all. Also would this mean i would have to include the GPL at the start of every text file i copied?

Basically i want yr input guys, is this okay or is it not, if not why not please?

thanks.........

[ March 20, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[badkarma]

This is a public forum, so I reckon that the content is public too, it would be nice however to give a little mention to the people who originally posted it

[Centurian]

Hey,

I am not really sure how to answer that. I have heard that it is against the law to publicly post an email that you recieved from someone without their permission. However it is legal to forward that email to XXX million people.

This being a public forum anyone posting here should realize that their post are (once posted) public knowledge. So if someone comes to this forum they can read the posts. However if you were to email them to someone would that constitute a violation of the law? Also would that violate the content of the existing website where the post was found?

To bring in yet another point you can repeat something that someone has said. You are expected if necessary to be able to reveal a source and possibly prove it was said by that person. Based on that the public post should be legal to forward but........

I don't know one way or the other on that. Sounds like an issue that could go before the courts. I suppose that an attorney would have a better idea of the answer to this one.
Personally I think what your doing is a cool thing but that is just me.

[voidmain]

Well, google is going to stick all this stuff in their database and they don't have any problem doing it, why should you?  It's public domain stuff. The site does not require a password to read the information.  But if you must, you can stick my stuff under the GPL license. That means you must include a copy of the source code along with the text files (just copy *.txt to *.c and you'll be covered).  

[dbl221]

Here is a thought, create and post a policy on the site that states that any post are covered by the CNU Free Documentation Licence and can be distributed accordig to this licnce.

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

[Calum]

that's a very good idea, but maybe it would only apply to posts that got posted after the arrangement was in place, either that or people could be given a grace period to take their own posts down, if they didn't agree with the licence being backwardly applied to their words.

I'm glad you guys think like i do and want to share the knowledge of how to do stuff, if somebody asked me this about something i'd posted on here, i'd say they could use it to their heart's content so long as they didn't change it to make me look bad.

I was just a little concerned about the legal details, i thought though that if you all said it was okay, that you'd be unlikely to prosecute!

In my text files i have always credited with people's names (as quoted on the posts anyway!) when i can and usually the date et c. because i am a stickler for that sort of thing.

As i say, i'm not out to make money or anything, but i have a mate and a sister, both of whom might be installing dual boot systems soon, and it would be nice to be able to copy them some info.

[dbl221]

Originally posted by dbl221:
Here is a thought, create and post a policy on the site that states that any post are covered by the GNU Free Documentation Licence and can be distributed accordig to this licnce.

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

[ March 21, 2002: Message edited by: dbl221 ]

[kinky]

this is my post, dont make me sue you!

im not sure if anyone would ever know, or care, that you have text that was posted by a buncha weirdos on a fuckmicrosoft.com forum... i mean people might get mad if you sell their words and become a billionaire... unless you used the money to get rid of bill gates.

[Calum]

i know    but i thought i'd ask, and if anybody objected, then i could make sure and not copy any posts by that person.
the point is that i might copy the stuff for my sister. she knows a lot of other linux users and the text files would no doubt end up getting emailed all over the place, so if somebody didn't want that to happen, i'd be happy to nip it in the bud before i copied them for anybody.

better to be on the safe side than the suicide, as my mother would say!