Femtosecond, if I may be so bold, the object of the game here, as in the basic rule “Don’t be a jerk” not spelling out what constitutes felonious jerkitude is, “Use your common sense.”
First, you can by the workings of the software they chose to use quote all or any part of another member’s post in your own, without any permission from the C.R. – because you’re quoting intellectual property on which they have a non-restrictive copyright in a document (your post) in which they have a non-restrictive copyright. And second, because they have that non-restrictive copyright, if you were to declare your posts “public domain,” what that would mean is that if I decided to publish “The Complete Works of Femtosecond” I would not need your permission – but I would still need theirs.
Third, catch the difference between casual and single quotations used incidentally off this board, and the intentional and thorough harvesting of material on the board used for the profit of the harvester. There’s a reason for the “fair use” provisions of copyright law, and that targets it.
I’m an Administrator and regular poster on the Pizza Parlor, and a member over on the Unaboard. If something tomndebb said here on Catholicism was useful in clarifying questions raised over in the Pizza Parlor, I’d have no qualms about quoting him, perhaps several paragraphs of his post, for that purpose – that constitutes “fair use” of his post, and the Reader is not going to object to my doing so. Likewise if a Cafe Society discussion on LOTR contains material that might illuminate a discussion going on in the Tolkien thread on the Unaboard, I’d feel it entirely appropriate to make the quote. (In each case, by the way, I’d link back to the SDMB thread from which I’d extracted the quote.)
On the other hand, if I decided to write a book on the varied understandings of Christianity about the phenomenon of homosexuality and gay people’s consequent reaction to Christianity as an institution (which is in fact something I’ve contemplated), I’d find a wealth of material in the interminable series of Great Debates threads dealing with this – and prior to setting finger to keyboard to begin that book, I’d get into a long discussion with Ed Zotti and, through him, with the Reader legal staff, to determine exactly what they would feel acceptable to quote and under what terms. That extensive “mining” of a data resource does not constitute “fair use,” and I’d expect that my publisher (if and when I got one) would pay the Reader royalties for using material from the board. (And, of course, I’d seek releases from all posters I could make contact with that I wanted to quote from, for use of their words.)
IMHO, whatever is asked on the board following the guidelines of the membership agreement and the material posted by the administration here is acceptable until and unless a moderator or administrator objects to it – The Bad Astronomer is a resource for this board, they know it, and if he did something that might not have been acceptable by a 16-year-old working on an article for his school newspaper, that’s a bit of less-than-even-justice that you’re going to have to put up with. I know I’d be absolutely thrilled, rather than offended, if a (hypothetical) comment I made about a vintage-1935 movie was quoted by Eve in a biography of the female lead in that movie. Bottom line: if something looks like a violation of the working rules, it’s up to an Admin. or Mod. to challenge it; if it offends a poster bad enough or seems questionable under the rules, he or she should “report the post to a Mod.” and leave it to them to make the necessary judgment call.
The common law followed in our courts has the legal abstraction called “the reasonable man” – and a maxim De minimis non curat lex – I think the rule here is, * De minimis quotatiendo non curat Lector Chicagoensis*, and the “reasonable man” can tell the difference between minor and casual fair use and extensive, abusive non-fair use. While the law does not require any person to be a “reasonable man,” it does expect him to act as “a reasonable man” might act. That I might drive my car across your lawn next door to my house to get my wife, who has cut herself and is bleeding from a major artery, to the hospital while the new neighbors have my driveway blocked with their moving van, does not give me permission to do figure-8s on your lawn because I feel like it next week – if you tried to prosecute me for trespass on the emergency, you’d be laughed out of court; if I tried to use that as justification for digging up your lawn later, I’d stand justly condemned. The same principle applies here – minimal and reasonable use doesn’t require any special permission; extensive and/or for-profit use probably does.
