Conference Reports - Copyright Violations?

[mcanerin]

One issue that has been raised several times is that "profit" has nothing to do with copyright law.

It does.

One of the defenses for copyright infringment is "fair use". This includes photocopies of personal research, backup copies for personal use, and so forth.

It does not cover selling the copies for profit. The same would also apply if there was no profit, but there was non-personal distribution, especially mass distribution.

The worst case scenario, of course, is mass distribution for profit.

Therefore the acknowledgment that a copy was made for profit (or distribution) removes the "fair use" defence as an issue and is therefore important to acknowledge, as it directly affects the outcome and treatment of the case.

A classic example of this is the "Happy Birthday to You" song. You can sing it at your kids birthday party, but if you record and sell it in recorded format (movie or CD) you owe royalties: http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.htm.

Ian

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Thanks Ian for a good summary on copyright law!

As you said, most (at least western) countries have signed the Berne Convention but some countries have gone further than that. I can't recall the name of all the other agreements on top of my head but I do know that there are some great differences to how copyright law is implemented in Europe versus the US. The basics are still the same but there are certain details that are different. For example, your protection of databases in the US (collection of data) is different than ours in Europe. As earlier pointed out the US also handle some suff under patent laws that we currently protect under copyright law (such as computer programs and code).

Anyway, the more chances we get to discuss these issues the more people will hopefully learn to better understand the differences in copyright law, trademark law and marketing law and how they work ...

[eurotrash]

Originally Posted by mcanerin

One issue that has been raised several times is that "profit" has nothing to do with copyright law.

It does.


Ian

Oh yes it DOES - IT REALLY DOES. Copyright law is almost purely about profit.

[PhilC]

Originally Posted by eurotrash

I also totally agree that it pays to be original, something that is really missing in today's music business - and obviously the SEO business now as well

I know you're just chatting but I have to disagree with that statement. It's not that originality is "now" missing in seo - it was *always* missing most of the time for most people. We all learned what we know from other people. Once in a while someone may discover something new, but it doesn't happen often, and, for most people, it doesn't happen at all

[BL Ochman]

It certainly has been interesting to listen to people discussing my report here, especially the ones who haven't read it.

In the interest of transparency, I have responded to these comments on my Blog, What's Next Blog, at

http://www.whatsnextblog.com/archive...esponse_to.asp

To that response, I'd like to add one important note to *Jill Whalen:*

The presentation of yours that you were disturbed about my covering a year or so ago verbatim was for the blog from AdTech New York -- where I was part of a team of bloggers invited by the show's producers to blog the conference live.

If you have an issue with your content being blogged, you need to take it up with AdTech, which continues to invite bloggers to their shows. Why? Because the more people learn about the shows the more interested they become in attending them. I'd have to guess you weren't aware of that fact. Because if you were, I can't imagine you'd have made your comments about my stealing your presentation by blogging it.

At Search Engine Strategies New York I blogged live from the show for MarketingVox and my own blog.

The most interesting thing you said at this show was "Don't get your information from search forums. You'll get lots of misinformation."

And you've certainly proved that true in this thread.

[Black_Knight]

This is tangental, as has been a lot of the discussion about copyright law, but there seems to be a danger that some equate profit only with direct monetary transactions. That is not the case. If you boost your reputation by reporting something, you have profited. The law does not base profit solely on direct financial gain. Nor does the law base damages purely on financial loss.

Everyman made some interesting comments about the evolution of journalism, and in how the law has changed. The law is always a living, evolving thing, adapting to the mores of the time of the society. The interesting note about journalism laws is that writing a biography is not treated the same way. Before writing a biography, there is no need to recontact all those involved and identify that you are about to produce a profitable written journal of events as a journalist is expected to in many cases.

It would probably be worth some folks taking a look at why the need for NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreements) arose in law, because copyright alone is not alone enough to protect ideas that you willingly disclose to others.

[Chris_D]

What qualifies me as a search engine optimization expert is the SEO work I have done for clients for the past 10 years, optimizing sites for natural and paid search.

Wow BL - that's pretty impressive! "10 years, optimizing sites for natural and paid search". Geez - Danny's only been a search guru for 9 years http://calafia.com/about/resume.htm and Yahoo! only had their 10th birthday a few weeks ago.

[Marcia]

My clients' sites consistently rank in the top of their categories and I have written extensively on SEO topics in my newsletter and blog and in articles published in MarketingProfs, ExpertPR and several others.

Then with all due respect, if there is a work you want to distribute for compensation then there should be no problem doing so on your own, comprised of your own original materials, using your own name and branding in order to market it, rather than utilizing the name, branding and credibility of an organization and persons other than yourself to attract customers.

I was part of a team of bloggers invited by the show's producers to blog the conference live.

And that, right there, demonstrates the crux of the problem. Blogs are open to public view, and widely distributed through feeds and inter-linking, in the true spirit of the open web, as well as being somewhat akin to open source/gnu/creative commons licensing. Reporting for public consumption to be freely distributed and widely read can be considered journalism.

Gathering materials, however, that cannot be seen except by buying a downloadable paper, which is much like selling an e-book, is NOT anywhere near being journalism, not in spirit or in concept.

So again with all due respect, if the fact that bloggers were invited to an event to be freely and openly reported on out in the blogging community is being brought up as a comparison with scraping information to sell before anyone can see it, then I'm afraid that is the root of the problem at its core - then someone just does not have the comprehension to see the difference between the two.

That IS the problem.

[Black_Knight]

Originally Posted by Marcia

Reporting for public consumption to be freely distributed and widely read can be considered journalism.

Gathering materials, however, that cannot be seen except by buying a downloadable paper, which is much like selling an e-book, is NOT anywhere near being journalism, not in spirit or in concept.

Sorry, Marcia, but I have to disagree strongly with that over-simplification.

The web has been around (as the WWW) only since 1991. Journalism is far older by thousands of years. Indeed, much of our knowledge of the ancient world has come from the journals of ancient Greek travellers who created the first travelogs.

Tell me what career reporters for the The Times, LA Times, NY Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, et al are engaged in? Are those Newspapers (in full) freely distributed or do you have to pay for them?

Sure, some newspapers have made some of their news available for free. But only some, in general. Most keep stories and features back and use only selected stories as loss-leaders to make you admire (and eventually buy) their more in-depth content. That may remind you of another example of journalism far closer to home right now.

Let's go back to the travelog format tho, which is still alive and well all these centuries later. A person travels to some place or event and documents it, reporting their experiences. It is published to a book and sold. This is journalism in one of its oldest and purest forms. The keeping, publishing and sale of a journal.

Biographies are another ancient form of journalism that is still alive and thriving today. The only twist with a biography (not an auto-biography) is that these are typically a journal of someone else's travels, events and experiences.

So, I argue that reporting for public consumption to be freely distributed and widely read can be considered amatuer journalism, and the greatest threat that professional journalism has seen since the invention of first Radio, and later Television, and finally Video/DVD. Each of which presented new methods by which journalism could be given away to the end consumer, thus potentially eating into the demand for print.

[Edited to add links to sellers of travelogs and biographies for emphasis/illustration of the point - BK]

[Jill Whalen]

Originally Posted by B.L. Ochman

The most interesting thing you said at this show was "Don't get your information from search forums. You'll get lots of misinformation."

See! I'm always right!

Originally Posted by Marcia

So again with all due respect, if the fact that bloggers were invited to an event to be freely and openly reported on out in the blogging community is being brought up as a comparison with scraping information to sell before anyone can see it, then I'm afraid that is the root of the problem at its core - then someone just does not have the comprehension to see the difference between the two.

Well, that's not really fair, Marcia, as B.L. only brought that up in response to my "problem" a few years ago with her blogging about my session in great detail. As I said, it was annoying to me at the time. But not enough for me to make a big deal out of it. Just annoying is all.

[debraM]

Ms. Ochman, I realize you're on the defensive and uncomfortable from the attention your special report has generated, but your comments regarding Jill Whalen are uncalled for.

And not that Jill needs defending (she does that fine on her own!) but I think you're dumping on her to deflect the issues surrounding your report.

If you'd like to go point for point on what I wrote, since I'm the ONLY one who's purchased the report - then fine, I'm happy to do that. Your comments in blue above don't really or adequately explain/defend the issues I outlined.

Move on. You're making it worse.

Debra O'Neil-Mastaler
Alliance-Link

[PhilC]

Be fair Debra. Jill's post came across as though B.L. had just about stolen and published Jill's stuff. Jill may not have intended it to read like that, but that's the impression that I got from the post. It turned out that the organisers had invited her to do exactly what she did, so it was official. I think it's fair for B.L. to point that out, and that's all she did.

[BL Ochman]

I am moving on. There is no new ground being covered, and I have made my public response through my blog. People are free to accept or reject it.
B.L.

[dannysullivan]

And I think that's a good point to bring this particular thread to a close.