Can I? I don’t see why not, but I haven’t seen anyone else do it so I thought I’d check first.
It depends. For example, if the thread has the answer to a GQ, then by all means post the link. In MPSIMS, “look at this neat thread I found” is perfectly fine. But if you’re planning on starting a thread in GD about how stupid the people at the other message board are, and “hey, let’s all go over there and tell them what idiots they are”–well, no, that’s not a great idea. It’s a Very Bad Idea, in fact.
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Sorry, Bib, a copyright lawyer will be along to disagree with me in a minute, but AFAIK, there is NO circumstance (under the Berne Convention) where publishing an approved link violates copyright per se.
While the Berne Convention imposes limits on what you can actually publish without violating its terms, AFAIK, it doesn’t in anyway prohibit people from referring to the original source (which is precisely what giving a stand alone link would constitute).
In Australia, our ISPs are technically obliged to screen net traffic to ensure that no infringement of copyright ever occurs. But even here, if the excerpt is only short and full attribution is given, you simply can’t sue for violation of copyright law.
Bottom line - you own the copyright to anything you’ve ever written or composed without having to register it. If it’s already publicly available then you’ll have a lot of lawyers knocking at your door if you ever get sued for linking to it.
I could sue a hate site if they took one of my posts out of context and republished it on their website (the CR and myself hold joint copyright), but there’s sweet FA I could do about it if they only linked to my post. There have already been a few libel suits issued over posts on messageboards (going back a few months I raised this issue in ABTM, I think - something along the subject line of “web” censorship free zone).
On the whole, only countries which are signatories to the Berne Convention respect copyright law anyway, and there’s lot a whole lot you can do about the nations who aren’t and who don’t.
Erm… reprise, I don’t think this is about copyright.
Ermm, hawthorne, if it’s not about copyright but only about the wisdom of linking to personal details about other people posted on other messageboards, then we all know the answer to that one.
I was just trying to be nice and take the OP at face value.
Can someone please throw me a big dose of cynicism? Seems I’m in need of it ATM. Thanks.
or it’s about linking to porn…
Perhaps, reprise, the OP would have been better worded with “may I” rather than “can I,” but I really don’t think he was talking about copyrights. And neither was bibliophage.
The problem with posting links from other message boards is: Troll City, population: 18825.
Yeah, what Fiver said. Links to us have the potential to dump a bunch of trouble-makers on us, and our home-grown ones need nurturing. And we may not be too good for other sites either:
So I took bibliophage to mean judicious links to other MB are fine, but don’t be starting nothing like the board war with the Left Behind Message Board.
Not the Berne Convention, but the DMCA has definitely been interpreted to make linking alone a violation. In the DeCSS case, the webzine 2400 was prosecuted for simply providing a link to the offending application on another server. DMCA makes it a violation to even discuss or link to information pertaining to reverse engineering or security exploits, which means it would be possible for a poster in a SDMB thread to violate DMCA by simply posting a link to offending information.
Not to hijack any further, but I can’t resist quoting this line about the DMCA. Alan Cox has recently refused to release information about changes in the Linux kernel source code to American programmers because the DMCA would make such disclosures a violation. He’s planning to release full changelogs only after making a site which will unequivocably exclude US residents. This led to someone in the discussion making the following comment:
**
“May I” versus “Can I.” God, I hope pennylane doesn’t come in here.
Now that you mention it, that is a worry. The board I want to link to is somewhat small and I don’t want it to get swamped. What I wanted to link to was a humorous list that was an OP of a thread. Can I copy the list and post it here? IIRC the OP stated that he got it in an e-mail.
“Can I post links to threads on other bulletin boards?”
Which does this mean?
Does it mean:
- you want to post a SD link on another board
- you want to post a link from another board on the SD?
What was the board war with the Left Behind Message Board?
Asylum, several SDMB members decided to visit en masse at another message board (the Left Behind Message Board) to discuss evolution, religion, and other issues. The other message board was a fundamentalist christian board, so as you can imagine many of the dopers had differing views on some of the subjects discussed at the LBMB. Then some of the LBMB members returned the favour and decided to post their point of view here. There was some animosity and finally both parties agreed that encouraging large groups of their membership to go dispute with their “opponents” was a bad idea. So we all kissed and made up, and now everything is sweetness and light, and the two boards are hoping to eventually produce lots of little boards and coexist happily on the net.
All too often stuff that gets passed around in emails and posted all over the Internet turns out to be copyrighted material belonging to someone else.
For example, for a long time here we had a rash of excerpted Dave Barry columns – and I’m sure people had the best of intentions, they just found something they thought was funny and wanted to share it with their friends – but that kind of thing is copyrighted and we do not hold the right of reproduction and so prefer to not republish 'em.
The Chicago Reader (our corporate parent) spends more time and attorney fees than they like in cyberspace and elsewhere tracking down jerks that do this to Cecil, so we especially can’t do it to anyone else.
All too often something humorous or thoughtful or just plain interesting turns out to be the property of another entity. Again, no harm, no foul to the original poster on the board or the originators of the email, most often it comes to them from the ozone and they don’t know. Frequently a simple search (like through Google) will turn up the original cite/site. If you want to post a link to THAT, with credit given where due, that would be okay. You’d also be righting a wrong and ain’t that a good thing?
Hope this answers your question. All the other responses were thoughtful and made damn good points, thanks to all of you.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
But what which faith will they bring the children up in? Mixed marriages can be SO difficult.