Important Copyright Information

[Mavs00]

Had an issue come up at ADKHP, so it will apply here to. Lots of pictures on the this site. After doing some research on this, the content below will now be considered Forum Policy.

Posting/Using of Written Information:
Whenever you make a post on here, be it an extensive trip report or just a comment in a thread, it becomes the shared intellectual property of the author, and (in a sense) Akdhighpeaks Foundation Community. Because our servers are used, we can be considered the publisher of the material and have standing in a proprietary sense. Because of the way our permissions are set up, authors do have the ultimately editorial rights on the material, up to and including deletion from the servers. Which removes any proprietary rights we had. This is pretty typical

As such, there are some exclusive rights granted to the author and this site. In other words, there are some protections inferred and reproduction (of full text) from this site (to be posted elsewhere on the internet) does require that permission be sought and obtained from the author and this site. In the online world, this is true of just about any content you may come across when it comes to written material on the web. There are very common "fair use" doctrines that apply to material that do not infringe on the rights of the author or publisher.

For instance, a very common "fair use" application of online material is the 4-line rule (or 1 paragraph rule). That is where a site will publish 4-lines (or a paragraph or two) of content found elsewhere, and then supply a direct source link back to the material. So example below of a recent trip report.

Marcy, March, March 11-13

Many trip reports that involve the Adirondack High Peaks, including accounts of my own solo treks, focus on the accomplishment of achieving a summit. We can sometimes extract much more from a hike if visiting a familiar place with friends, old or new, and seeing things from a fresh perspective. This is the story of one of those trips – a story of climbing “Marcy – the Hard Way”.

This is an accepted "fair use" practice. Offer a tease, then link them directly to the source material. We would ask that become the appropriate standard here, both for posting of material to this site and using of material from this website to others. It is important to note that this goes for material or articles you want to post here as well. DO NOT POST ARTICLES IN THEIR ENTIRETY, use the 4-line format (be sure to link back to the source material) if you wish to link to an article you post as a discussion thread.

If you see content from this site posted in any other context other then the 4-line (or paragraph) format on ANY OTHER WEBSITE, please direct that to ME (via PM) or to Neil (via PM). Unless of course, it is posted by the author of the material, such as occurs when people crosspost to multiple forums.

Likewise, if you find any post on here that posts any potential copyrighted information (such as new articles, or original works) posted in ANY format other then the 4-line (paragraph) format, please alert a moderator. Posting of copyrighted material on this forum is a serious offense and loss of privileges could result with multiple infections.

Thank You.

[Mavs00]

Continuing

Below is continuing information on Photographic content

Posting/Using of Photographic Content:
Often times, to accompany a trip report, authors will post photos they took along the way. 99% of the time, they are posting the photos "in-line" which means that the images are not hosted on our site, and are simply embedded content, and we have NO proprietary rights to those images. Those rights lie EXCLUSIVELY with the photographer and posting them here does not imply permission for viewer here to use the image for personal use.

If you want to use a picture seen here for any purpose (even if just for a wallpaper on your computer), you MUST obtain permission from the image's owner (photographer). It's not the "polite" thing to do, it's the legal thing to do.

In other cases, people will post images as an attachment. We will consider those similarly..... They do not belong to us and we make no proprietary rights over them.

When it comes to posting other peoples pictures here, there are several important things to consider.

1. If the picture is copyrighted, or appears as copyrighted material, you should get permission from the image owner to post the picture here. This should be done prior to any posting. Copyrighted images should not be posted without consent of the owner.
2. Before posting the any picture in-line, consider the folks that host that content on their server. Every time a photo is viewed here in line, it uses bandwidth from the server the picture is hosted. If you have an agreement with the server (such as it's a hosting company you have an account with), it's generally not a problem. In other cases, it may be. We are not a super-heavy traffic site, but a inline picture on a popular thread could easily be imprinted several thousand times.

There can be some exceptions to the above. For instance, if a plausible argument can be made that the copyrighted image is being used as an educational tool, then it may not infringe on the image owners copyright under the terms of fair use. If you plan to post under the "fair use" policies, you are requested to content one of us prior to doing it. These forums are after all considered an educational vehicle in our non for profit charter.

Hopefully this gives you a little more insight into how material that is posted and submitted to this website is, and should be considered. The bottom line when it comes to photographs here, if you want to use any for personal purposes, you need to contact the person that posted it and ask for permission. Most often, they will be flattered and give you permission. But the chance does exist, that if you are planning on using the photograph to make a million bucks, they might want in on the action.

[Mavs00]

Final thoughts......

The bottom line on all of this copyright information here is pretty simple and basic. We exist to share information about the NYS Forest Preserve we all so love and enjoy. This site is a success for that very reason, but at the very same time we do have to be understanding of the rights of our member, and the greater online community. We ask that you continue to share (your stuff and other interesting material), just be conscious on how and where you choose to share.

If you want to share it beyond the confines of our happy little community, we just ask for the same courtesy to apply that applies with other mediums.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

We're just trying to protect ourselves and the rights of those who freely share so much of their valued information here.

[DSettahr]

As such, your membership here, does not give you permission to copy any photograph seen on this site to your own computer,

Might want to re-word this part- in order for a person to view online content (including photos), it must first be downloaded to that user's computer. Every photo that users look at is saved to the users computer- at least temporarily.

Also,

1. Any material posted that was "taken" from another source, and then placed on a third-party server before being posted "in-line" on this site. (do not save a picture to your server, then post it here).

It's standard procedure on the internet to upload another persons images to your own server before sharing them. (I'm referring to "public domain" images here). Including "inline" images where the image is hosted on a server that you do not control (or pay for the bandwidth of) is considered a huge breach of internet etiquette. Might want to clarify this a bit as well.

[rADK]

I'll follow along with everyone else, but just wondering...is there a double standard for large and small forums and copyright rules? (not a rhetorical question). I post at a couple other places, and it seems like the smaller forums are very strict about copyright, I've actually seen members get infractions for repeat postings of full articles. But the larger forums couldn't seem to care less. One that I know of (over 1 million members) doesn't mention copyright at all, anywhere! People post full text articles all the time. Am I missing something?

[Mavs00]

Hard to say rADK....

It probably has more to do moderation. Hard as hell to moderate huge forums with 10-15 thousand posts a year. Our forums are really modest in size (on the smaller side really) as forums go. However, they are pretty big given the specificity of the topic.

Might also have to do with the content. For instance, the incident on the other forum really boiled down to images, some of which were very high quality. Some are taken by weekend warrior photographers who don't really care what happens to their pictures, but others might have been taken by skilled photographers. It's a pretty prickly topic for them.

A well taken mountain photograph can make $$.

[Mavs00]

Made a few changes to the text....

[ALGonquin Bob]

Good info, Tim, except my TR was actually titled Marcy, March 11-13, but i'm glad somebody's reading it!

Wait a minute..... I wasn't credited in my quote that you used in this thread on both forums!!