RE: How to ruin a platform's reputation - Plagiarism

[anonimnotoriu]

You're not allowed to just use anything you come across online, especially when you're using it to earn money (including crypto).

Actually, you are allowed to do that.

The European Court of Justice (the ECJ, “the European Supreme Court”) ruled three years ago that anything published openly on the web may be freely reused by anyone in any way on their own website. This ruling didn’t get anywhere near the attention it deserved, as it completely reverses a common misconception – the idea that you can’t republish or reuse something you happen to come across. The ECJ says that an open publication on the web exhausts the exclusivity of a work as far as the web is concerned, and that further authorization or permission from the rightsholder is not required for any reuse on the web after that, commercial or not.

European Supreme Court ruled that you can reuse & repost anything you find on the web

Comments

[playfulfoodie]

That sounds a bit weird and I wonder if they are taking things out of context, because in the main ruling, they keep talking about a 'clickable link'.

If you click on the 'ruling' link, you'll see this at the very top of the page:

This actually tells us a whole different story than the website that wrote this story around it.

If I can show you one more little part of that ruling:

They're clearly talking about hyperlinks to the original article. That's a huge difference from copy/pasting an entire text and acting as if it was your own. Meaning, without citing a source anywhere.

Thanks for showing this to me though!

[anonimnotoriu]

Here is a more lengthy article relating to this case and to another case that followed after this one relating to the same issue.

https://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-5-3-2014/4098

I'll add two relevant passages.

You are ok, as long as you link the content to the original site on which it was first published by it's author.

Here's the actual wording from the Court's decision which can be read in full here: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=147847&mode=req&pageIndex=1&dir=&occ=first&part=1&text=&doclang=EN&cid=128073

29 Such a finding cannot be called in question were the referring court to find, although this is not clear from the documents before the Court, that when Internet users click on the link at issue, the work appears in such a way as to give the impression that it is appearing on the site on which that link is found, whereas in fact that work comes from another site.

The other case relating to this issue for which the same ruling was given.

[playfulfoodie]

Yes, it is okay, as long as you make sure to cite your source (aka, the link you have to add). The site you first quoted said this:

anything published openly on the web may be freely reused by anyone in any way on their own website.

Which is very misleading, because they aren't saying you have to share your source.

Copy/pasting an entire article and simply posting a link to it at the bottom is very poor manner, but apparently not illegal perse. However, pretending it is your own work is quite bad.

Actually, I always think this is easier to understand when talking about photographs, artwork or (music)videos. I think if you would post a music video of Taylor Swift on your site, pretended it was you and actually earned quite a bit of money off of it, you'd surely get sued and that wouldn't be something you'd win. So if it's not okay to do that with such a video, it's also not okay to do that with a digital art piece someone shared online. Just because it's online, doesn't mean you can grab it and use it without giving due credit.

[anonimnotoriu]

Which is very misleading, because they aren't saying you have to share your source.

The author didn't have to repeat that you have to mention the link to the original website because that's already been said twice in the Court's decision which is quoted in the article. See points 25 and 27.

In the circumstances of this case, it must be observed that making available the works concerned by means of a clickable link, such as that in the main proceedings, does not lead to the works in question being communicated to a new public.

In those circumstances, it must be held that, where all the users of another site to whom the works at issue have been communicated by means of a clickable link could access those works directly on the site on which they were initially communicated, without the involvement of the manager of that other site, the users of the site managed by the latter must be deemed to be potential recipients of the initial communication and, therefore, as being part of the public taken into account by the copyright holders when they authorised the initial communication.

I've made a post compiling our short convo on this and also gave an example.

Just because it's online, doesn't mean you can grab it and use it without giving due credit.

That's true. That's illegal and if you do that you're committing fraud if I'm not mistaken. The article didn't imply that though.

As long as you mention the source, you can grab any text, photograph, video, audio, artwork and copy/paste on your website, and even earn money from it. This especially applies to Steemit.

You can post a video of Taylor Swift here on Steemit and earn money from that. By embedding the video in your post you haven't infringed on any copyright.

[playfulfoodie]

The author might not have had to tell us everything that was in the ruling, but the way the article was written, especially the first paragraph (the one most people read and maybe skip the rest), does feel very misleading without this piece of extra information. If you read the first paragraphy now, anyone will think they can just grab anything off the web and use it for whatever online (public) purpose they want and nowhere does it say that credit is needed. That's what bugs me about this article.

Mentioning the source is a big part. It's a huge deal actually and the most important one from any artist/writer's point of view. Them hardly mentioning that part is quite a discredit towards artists/writers, because people steal online content enough as it is.

I know my Taylor Swift example wasn't well explained and it's quite hard to think of anyone not knowing it's Taylor Swift. With my example, I meant that if you post it as if you made that song, sang it, were the girl in the video, etc. (yes, unbelievable, but just imagine it for a sec) and then you earn from it, that could get you into trouble. You need to make clear that it's not your video for things to be okay.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure we're on the same page, I just found the article you linked to be very misleading to anyone skimming over it, whether they had to share something or not.