Looks Like we made the

[b]ok now that i have that off of my chest time to go watch KU win!!!!

mommaof2 wrote:

ADMIN: feel free to delete this at any point!!!

No need, you did not violate any rules.

But thank God he placed a copy of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution right above the spread. Admin....perhaps you might want to put a copy on top of the forum too. cuz we were completely unaware of THAT amendment.....when did congress add that one

To be fair to Mr. Lowery, (who cannot, with a full time job, hope to entertain the curiosities of every poster on the thread he started) i think it's important to make some remarks about some of the things the posters in this thread have made.

First of all, there is no legal problem with the Hays Daily news quoting this forum. It is public information because it is on the internet, publicly accessible. No personal information is given when Mr. Lowery qutoes the site. All you had to do was give an email address and create an avatar/pseudonym to write posts here. You don't even have to let anyone see your email. Claims of some sort of encroachment on your internet rights really are sketchy, at best.

Secondly, the Hays Daily News requires you to submit your name to be published with your letter when you write one to the reader's forum section. I'm sure most reasonable people here with integrity and an understanding of the Bill of Rights would agree with this open-forum policy. Similarly, Mr. Lowery's comments about users on this forum "not using their real name" to confront him were probably motivated by his position as an editor for a newspaper. Newspapers in general practice this policy.

Third, I sense a bit of hypocrisy among the posters on this thread. A few of you seem to think Mr. Lowery belittled you by literally copying and pasting the thread to the HDN, portraying you badly. Well, maybe he should have edited all the poorly written sentences and fragments of questions to make them appear more well-thought-out. However, I personally think the most accurate way to report to the public is to submit unedited sources. In this case, they were simply direct quotes. Mr. Lowery clearly took the matter seriously, and i think everyone who respects Mr. Lowery as a person is obliged to as well.

For the few of you who want this forum's serious threads (the ones pertaining to community issues and other important political venues) to be considered a real "threat" to the HDN's current monopoly on journalistic integrity, i'd suggest taking the publisher's proposal of a "clear discussion" more seriously in the future. He took on what could have been hundreds of well-written and well-researched questions by himself and was met with less than 5 good questions and dozens of jabs. Everyone here had the chance to try and challenge him legitimately. There is plenty of time to do this by either making another debate, or writing to the paper. (Sorry guys/gals, but you'll have to clench your teeth and submit a name, in that case.)

I think there are hundreds of excellent readers of the HDN who could also be excellent contributors to this forum. There are many in Hays willing to debate calmly, and we all should realize that the finger-pointing and empty accusations do nothing to foster a "public forum" attitude.

Why did you put the exact same post in two different threads?

The Other One wrote:

Why did you put the exact same post in two different threads?

LukeTHr wrote:

Wise guy, eh?

Wow guys, you should try inserting as many emoticons as possible to ridicule me. I put the post in both threads because i didnt know which one people were more inclined to look at. Is it that confusing?

**insert mildly amusing yellow circles***


Mommaof2: You're right, when someone is reporting a news story, omitting important facts is bad journalism. But you're forgetting something. Editorial-writing is not the same as investigative journalism. Lowery can say what he wants. But even besides that...he didnt omit anything critical to understanding the mood of the thread he started: "lets poke jabs at him and try to mock his little forum debate" I hate to point fingers, but you guys all started it.

GeoPhilip06 wrote:

To be fair to Mr. Lowery, (who cannot, with a full time job, hope to entertain the curiosities of every poster on the thread he started) i think it's important to make some remarks about some of the things the posters in this thread have made.

First of all, there is no legal problem with the Hays Daily news quoting this forum. It is public information because it is on the internet, publicly accessible.

GPVI: Yes, Mr. Lowry has a fool time job. Of this we are aware. Were you aware that most of us have full time jobs? Many of our jobs are as demanding, if not more so, as his. It is not necessary for him to answer our questions or accusations in real time. He spent just slightly over 24 hrs initiating and closing (on his part) a conversation that could have and should have lasted much longer if his intent was to garner the truth. As others have pointed out, he did not attempt to field the tougher questions.
He has checked in on this forum on a daily basis. He could have answered one tough question per visit and it would have only cost him a couple of precious moments.
And if there is no problem with him quoting this forum without permission because it is on the internet, then we should be able to quote his paper just as freely since it is also posted on the internet. Your statement makes it abundantly clear that you are more suited for physics than you are for a law degree.

GeoPhilip06 wrote:

Lowery

Are you misspelling his name on purpose because of his snooty comment to steinem when she misspelled it? If so, that's damn funny. Might be considered poking jabs at him and mocking him, but it's still funny.

mommaof2 wrote:

So who cares who started it...the fact remains he kept dodging and redirecting answers.

maybe he is practicing for a future political career???

LukeTHr wrote:

mommaof2 wrote:

So who cares who started it...the fact remains he kept dodging and redirecting answers.

maybe he is practicing for a future political career???

There is already all kinds of politics behind the running of news papers. He's getting all the practice he needs, on a daily basis.

I am very aware most people here have full-time jobs. If i insinuated accidentally that they did not, i apologize..

Ah, the irony of calling Mr. Lowry a fool! it seems to be the view of many here that he tried to make some of the posters seem foolish themselves by publishing their comments...

Still though, he could have only made a fool out of the Pseudonyms/avatars you all have anyways, considering noone knows who your actual names are...so no worries, i suppose. That's my view..

As to the jab about my capacity to understand law law, oops on your part. I hate to turn the tables, but the administrator should have been aware that the HDN couldn't have stopped you from quoting their articles in a forum, as long as posters accurately sourced the quotes with date and author. There would be no infringement of copyright law.


In that sense, if the administrator had been aware of those commonly-practiced laws and what your rights are, then there would have been no fear of legal retribution, and the "cease and desist" letter would have been recognized as bogus. I side with the forum when it comes to this issue, 100%.

As to misspelling Mr. Lowry's name, oops on my part I think he should change his name to Lawry, like the brand of seasoned salt. It's all i can think of when i see his name in print!

Is it not unlawful to litter?

I guess the fact that his response that the best way to stop receiving the Extra (a.k.a. litter), was to subscribe to the HDR. He claimed that even if you called to have the Extra stopped, that he could not guarantee that you would start getting it the next year due to that they base the circulation of it off of the phone directory. Guess what? My # is unlisted. He was only here to sell papers, not answer questions.

GeoPhilip06 wrote:

I hate to turn the tables, but the administrator should have been aware that the HDN couldn't have stopped you from quoting their articles in a forum, as long as posters accurately sourced the quotes with date and author. There would be no infringement of copyright law.

In that sense, if the administrator had been aware of those commonly-practiced laws and what your rights are, then there would have been no fear of legal retribution, and the "cease and desist" letter would have been recognized as bogus.

I'm not a journalist or a lawyer, but I did some online research. Geo, I believe the publisher's complaint was legitimate. Information may be copied for personal use and not distributed further. One of the functions of a web forum such as 67601.com is to publicly distribute information. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Quote :

Can I copy information on a website?

Yes, but within limits. So long as the copy that you are making is for personal use, and you do not further distribute the material, and you make no "for-profit" use of the material, then you are in a safe haven under federal copyright law. HOWEVER, Congress has just passed a law which makes duplicating sound and visual recordings this way illegal. The record industry and the Video industry are anxious to protect their products. There is a good chance this will be challenged in the courts.

Some of the decisions have gone pretty far in finding copyright infringements in cases of what might more traditionally have been deemed free speech. For example, in one case critics of a Church made available on their web site certain publications of the Church. The Church sued for copyright infringement and won some limited victories because it was held that the website publisher might have profited from his site in some way and therefore derivatively from posting the Church materials.

link to source

Quote :

What are works "in the Public Domain"?

The "Public Domain" refers to created material which either by law does not get copyright protection or their protection under the law has lapsed. By definition, materials in the public domain do not have copyright protections and thus you do not need the owner's permission to use these materials.

Contrary to the wording, however, whether materials are public has no relationship to whether they fall into the Public Domain. This mistaken notion has somehow led many to believe that everything on the Internet is public and therefore in the Public Domain and thus freely usable without permission. This is completely false.

link to source

Quote :

Does a link to a site violate copyright law?

No. You can put a link from your web site to someone else's web site at any time - and - anyone can put a link to your web site whenever they want. (But, since a link FROM a site would mean you had to change that site, if you don't have the owner's permission, you could be violating his copyright.) The Internet and the World Wide Web is out there for fair use by all - you cannot control links on the Internet - a link does not violate copyright law. There are cases pending about linking to parts of a site to bypass others, which may create new rulings.

link to source

Thanks for researching this. It makes the law itself clear, mostly. If the information in the HDN (which is also available in print, of course) is quoted or "sourced" when citing it, it still seems as if that implies correct credit was given where the credit is due. There are thousands of papers just lying around hays with the same information as the articles on the website. So, if someone uses the paper as a "source" and isnt trying to profit from it, then it's perfectly reasonable..

I have trouble understanding how this kind of quoting of the paper is illegal but quoting a book/journal article in a research paper (or any exposition where information is researched) is legal.

Perhaps i lack an understanding of general copyright law, i just don't see a conflict here. I mean, in cases where corruption in a paper is verifiable, it'd put those who want to expose it in a Catch 22, where they can't expose it by quoting any of the paper.

I guess my main point is this: Noone on 67601 was copying and pasting entire articles or issues of the paper onto the forum so that people could read without paying for a paper or subscribing to the HDN website. That would definitely constitute infringement. It was just sections that were used in a debate there as evidence/support for the arguments.

Geo, if I remember correctly there were, indeed, HDN articles that were copied and pasted on the 67601.com website in their totality, without permission of the HDN.

Again, I'm writing here based on online research, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Quoting the HDN here without permission is copyright infringement because it is 1) for public use, and 2) distributed further. We don't have the legal right as posters on a web forum to take their intellectual property and further distribute it to the public without their permission. We can point the public to the information in their publication or on their website. We have the freedom of speech to talk about what it says. We just don't have the legal right to post their property in a public forum for further distribution without their permission.

The way I understand it, copyright law also applies to all posts on this forum. Copyright is automatic in the United States; something doesn't have to have the little circled c to be copyrighted. Unless one received permission from the Route67601 site owner, it would be copyright infringement for our posts here to be copied 1) for public use; 2) to be distributed further, or; 3) for profit.

If someone knows more about this than I do, please speak up. I am not an expert in this area, just a life-long learner who can be wrong.