Our sponsor, the Chicago READER, has a strict policy on respecting copyrights and copyrighted material. They don’t want their stuff used by others without permission, and so we don’t use stuff created by others without permission. Basically, The policy is : don’t do it.
It is okay to post a small snippet of song lyrics or poems or whatever, and include a link to another site which contains the complete text. But posting any material completely and verbatim is a violation of our rules and a potential violation of copyright laws.
This policy applies throughout the Straight Dope Message Boards, but it’s especially relevant in Café Society.
Quoting from the Registration Agreement:
Quoting someone comes under Fair Usage, whether you’re quoting an artist/entertainer or another poster. The rules are (my paraphrase) that you can change a direct quote:
- To delete material, identified either by elipses … or by <snip> or [material deleted] or similar explanation
– To use bold or italic font for emphasis, identified by a comment like [bold font added by Dex]
To add explanatory material, identified by [square] brackets; sometimes this includes short comment [sic]. IMPORTANT NOTE: Words such as “idiotic” and “shameful” and other adjectives that either modify the tenor of the quotation or interject an editorial comment into the quotation remain forbidden. If you want to comment on a quote, do it outside the quotation marks or quote tags.
That’s it. It doesn’t matter whether the material being quoted is in another poster, an academic journal, a news magazine, or a grocery-store scandal sheet. Those are the commonly accepted rules under which you can quote someone. And, please note, any changes to the quoted text are clearly identified as such.
Hence, those are the rules that should apply on our Boards.
Now, an exception is allowed in common usage when it comes to celebrities for purposes of satire. Thus, Jon Stewart is allowed to make up fake quotes for famous politicians. WHen it comes to quoting other members of these boards, no one, so far as I know, has that kind of celebrity status. When it comes to making up quotes by celebrities, you better be damn sure that it’s absolutely positively clear to the lowest intelligence that you’re doing something satiric. I suggest against it. Certainly the use of quote tags implies that it’s an actual, honest-to-God quote; if you’re being satiric, use quotation marks " and " instead of the quote tags: [quote] and [/quote]
The other exception is when you’re clearly NOT quoting, but paraphrasing. To repeat: Use of quote tags is an indication that you’re quoting, not paraphrasing.