Copyright Infingement?

I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that if you copy 'n paste an entire article then you are guilty of a copyright violation. If you post just the headline with a link to the article then you are not. There is something in copyright law called "Fair Use" where you can publish a few sentences of a copyrighted book or article or a few bars of a song without violating the law. I don't know were the line is or even if a hard and fast limit exists.

I don't see how a link would be, as you are pointing to the original article, not claiming it as your own.

A copy of an article, as long as it is shown as a copy or quote and not presented as your own idea, shouldn't be a problem either. This is like a quote in a term paper.

I'm not an attorney either, so this is just my opinion. What does anyone else think about this?

As long as the copied material is less than 200 lines and the source of the material is clearly shown, then you should be within the guidelines. By providing a link to the complete article you also make the prohibition of "reproducing the material in any form or electronic means" more difficult to be used. But then I don't play a lawyer on TV either.

I honestly don't know about the copyright implications of quoting an entire article, but my observations are:

1. If the other website relies on page views for ad revenue then quoting the entire article potentially deprives them of those page views, which they probably wouldn't like.
2. If the other website requires registration to view articles then quoting the whole thing is inappropriate, even if that required registration is free.
3. If the post here includes a link to the actual article, then quoting the entire article here is unnecessary and, in my opinion, quite annoying.

Web sites *very much like it* when you post a link to the webpage without quoting material. No way is that considered a copyright violation. You can also legally summarize material and post a link to it. You could be sued for misrepresentation of what you summarize if you do it in a way that damages someone financially, but that's not a copyright violation.

Nearly all websites are also thrilled if you post a brief passage from an article such as the first paragraph (or a key paragraph) of an article from their website and then post something like, "To see the rest of the article, please click: [link]."

It's hard to make money running a website. When links get posted that direct users to a website, it drives traffic, which drives websearch results (you show up higher in Google results when this is happening frequently), and drives advertising.

Where things could technically get sticky with a website owner and copyright holder is when an entire article or most of an article from a webpage is posted. This is, however, so widely done anyway that enforcement of the copyright is very rare. And because it is so expensive to sue (legal fees and court costs), what almost always happens on the very rare occasion that someone wants to enforce a copyright this way is that the website hosting the copyrighted material is contacted and simply asked to remove the copyrighted content, and they comply, and that's the end of it.

Bottom line: don't worry about it.

Links alone and excerpts are OK under a "fair use" doctrine for commentary and criticism of the referenced article.

"Enforcement of a copyright" is entirely up to the copyright holder. There's no such thing as a Copyright Police division of the Library of Congress. The holder must 1st be aware of the potential infringement. Then usually they or their lawyer contacts the violator as noted above. Often the holder wants either "cease and desist" or "give me credit". If the violator says no, then its tort time.

I'm not a lawyer either but I'm a photographer and am pretty aware of this stuff as it relates to images and what I need to do to protect my images. Unfortunately, as in many legal things, it isn't always worth pursuing if you must get lawyers involved.

I understood that "enforcement of copyright" means a potential lawsuit between two private parties and not a police matter but truly appreciate the clarification in case someone else reading misunderstood me.

And my 'Don't Worry About It' should not be taken to mean that I think it's okay to rip off somebody else's creation whether that be a photograph or other artistic work or a written article, because I don't. Particularly where somebody passes off someone else's creation as his own and even worse tries to make money off it, then I think financial damages are entirely appropriate.

But I took this thread to be focused primarily on POI Factory users quoting an article on another website to illustrate a poster's point and whether that can get the poster or POI Factory in trouble in a lawsuit. The answer is, yes, it is a copyright violation and can be of concern to lawyers or copyright holders particularly when someone republishes the entire piece or most of it or omits the credit and link back to the original website, but realistically, that's what most of us and POI Factory probably don't need to worry about, in response to the OP. That specific type of copyright violation is usually ignored or at worst and only in rare cases "Cease-and-desisted" in large part because actual financial damages in that particular instance would be limited to the loss of ad revenue from visits to the original website and so be at most a token amount for each article quoted on a site the size of POI Factory. (They could also claim punitive or statutory damages which are more substantial and sue for those, but realistically, it's a tough argument in court in this particular context.)

If you want to be safe and observe proper website-quoting netiquette, quote at most a few sentences from an article and be sure to include a working link back to the original website with a suggestion to "read more about it here." As I suggested, the overwhelming majority of websites *welcome* that kind of quote because even though it's arguably a copyright violation, it drives traffic to the original website and in the case of large websites hosting advertising, drives their revenue and public attention.

Touchy subject. if we really want to get anal, i'd say a miniature picture of a bmp image for a poi file can technically be considered an infringement.

If you're not taking credit for the work, then it's not an infringement.