Copyright and HTLAL and reposting logs

[dampingwire]

There's already a thread about copyright here. I'd like to check the position regarding threads over at HTLAL.

If I want to keep my existing logs somewhere that seems more likely to be available than HTLAL (which is down as I type ...), can I start new logs and copy the old ones over message by message? I'd (try to) be careful to copy only my messages. Would that be OK? (I wrote them, so I think the old forum doesn't own them exclusively).

I presume, if the idea is OK in principle, that I'd have to avoid copying other posters contributions (unless I asked them individually ... and life's too short). Would I also have to edit out quotes (where I've quoted someone else)?

Anything else I've not thought of?

[Zireael]

Dampingwire, I've been keeping my log both at old HTLAL and at UniLang, posting to both simultaneously. If I wanted, I could probably repost the UniLang one here without problems.

[rdearman]

Quoting is probably covered under fair use section of most copyright laws as long as it is less than a few sentences. What you wrote is yours.

[emk]

Unfortunately, nobody here can really give you legal advice on copyright law, which varies from country to country. (I mean, even if a forum member is a lawyer, they're not your lawyer. ) When you signed up for the old site, you probably agreed to certain terms.

However, that said, we'd strongly prefer to be as respectful of other sites' administrators as possible. If there's any possibility of creating legal headaches for rdearman, please be very cautious about reposting your content from elsewhere. In particular, please avoid any kind of large-scale content import from the old site. We'd still like to get in touch with the administrator and try to figure out some mutually agreeable solution for helping him keep all those years of wonderful archives from disappearing.

But if you have a handful of interesting posts from elsewhere (including your personal blog, a log at Unilang, etc.) that you wrote, and that you're quite sure that you hold all the copyrights yourself, then see what rdearman said above. He's the one paying for this site.

[dampingwire]

When you signed up for the old site, you probably agreed to certain terms.

If I could get to the old site, I'd check Mind you, I can't find an obvious statement here for this site (although I have found that the FAQ is in Italian, so it's been a useful diversion ).

In particular, please avoid any kind of large-scale content import from the old site.

Well that sounds like "please don't copy across your logs wholesale, at least for now", so I won't.

That means, I suppose, that the only sensible thing to do now is to continue my logs here.

My reading of http://how-to-learn-any-language.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=906 is that if this happens again (I'm sure it won't but ...) then I will be able to take any logs I've posted here and re-post them elsewhere (minus other people's contributions, I suppose) elsewhere. Is that the general view? I realise that it's not a legal opinion, I just want to gauge how the admins and mods feel about that.

I could just start my own blog and then there would be no doubt, but then there wouldn't be much of a community, I think ...

[arthaey]

Surely we can wholesale copy our own posts from the old HTLAL, even if it's dubious whether we can do so for others' content, right?

[emk]

Surely we can wholesale copy our own posts from the old HTLAL, even if it's dubious whether we can do so for others' content, right?

Legally? I could make certain uninformed amateur guesses for the US, but I won't. For other countries, I've had it pounded into my head that I don't know the first thing about how their copyright laws work. France has nothing like the US concept of "fair use", for example, but merely a restricted list of statutory exceptions to regular copyright law (or so I understand it). Germany used to have some really weird third-party litigation stuff. Different countries have whole categories of copyrightable stuff that I don't understand at all. And so on.

But at least until the moderators hear from the administrator about his plans for his forum, I would like to encourage everyone to avoid even the appearance of potential impropriety here. I know this isn't the answer anybody wants to hear. But we really would like to avoid souring that relationship if at all humanly possible.

I have a complete backup of both my logs, and I'm not happy to see them go offline again, but I haven't done any kind of large-scale reposting here. I'm hoping the other site will be back up soon, and I'm hoping that there's some way to keep it around in the future. I hate seeing that much data potentially lost to the public.

[rdearman]

Just to reitterate this is my opinion only.

I've basically written off anything I've written over there. I copied three of my posts, which didn't have any quotes from anyone else, and was all my work. Otherwise, let them have it, I've moved on.

[Hrhenry]

Just to reitterate this is my opinion only.

I've basically written off anything I've written over there. I copied three of my posts, which didn't have any quotes from anyone else, and was all my work. Otherwise, let them have it, I've moved on.

That's pretty much my approach too. Not that I think I ever said anything of great importance on the old HTLAL, but I posted there, not here. Now that I'm here I'll concentrate on current and future posts and just not worry about the past.

I have the utmost trust that anything important will not necessarily be reposted, but will be reframed in new posts here. Hell, we reposted the same topics many times in the old forum.

R.
==

[kimchizzle]

I was thinking earlier today about this a little bit.

I would guess that the copyright that FX has on the site is protected and enforced by Swiss copyright law, or the country FX lives and registered the site in, and people of other countries must respect the copyright as applied to the Swiss interpretation of copyright law. I know that copyright law is different in other countries with countries like the US having quite stricter standards compared to other countries.

I'm wondering if there is some provision in the copyright that if the old HTLAL doesn't come back up within a certain reasonable amount of time, say 6 months, then the copyright will be automatically nullified since the owner is doing nothing with the copyright. It would make sense that certain countries would have a provision like this in their own copyright laws since copyright is effectively a protection from other people from making money off of something you created or obtained the rights for through an agreement. But if a person does nothing with their copyright theirself, then it would be like they are copyright squatting and only hold onto the copyright so that no one else can have it even though they don't have plans for it either. Seems like this type of behavior may be looked down under some countries copyright law.

I hope nothing I wrote was wildly inaccurate, it was mainly just some thoughts I had been thinking of and wondering of a way we could legally post some old threads or information from the old HTLAL if it just never came back.

There are so many great old threads there and I was reading through some of them from 2011 recently. One called super vocabulary building methods where Iversen went into lots of detail about his word list method and other polyglots were giving their methods as well. It was really fascinating reading through the thread. Also I read through a long multi-year thread for people to ask questions in Dutch, there were many friendly native speakers helping out and answering in lots of detail questions about Dutch language. One of the Dutch learners who wrote lots of questions in that thread, Toomas, is a member of this site now as well I believe.