Jesus, that’s pretty fucking depressing.
I wonder, exactly how much of a song can you use in a book or an article under the Fair Use provisions, without having to fork over 4 bucks a word?
I beg to differ. With all due respect, you could have e-mailed them. As an administrator of the board, you are privvy to their e-mail addresses even if they are not public. A thread allowing the rest of the community to sit in the principals office with you as you call the offenders onto the carpet is just not how I would have handled it, or wanted it handled had I been in their shoes. The easiest option is not always the best option.
Wanna give me an example?
Wow, another Raybeats fan! Do you like Los Straitjackets too?
As someone who posted to that thread and was not warned, I would have been unhappy to have it disappear without public explanation; and God knows I don’t want a little note from Lynn, telling me I wasn’t a scofflaw like all those other posters. That’d be so creepy!
The transgression was public, so should be the warning.
Kind of like rain on your wedding <cut for potential copyright infringement and for being a lame, overdone joke>.
I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t see anything wrong with a “form letter” e-mail to the offenders, (“The thread pertaining to {whatever the topic was} has been removed due to potential copyright violations. As one of the potential violators, please be mindful of the Chicago Readers policy…<yada yada yada>…A new thread will be posted by me in The Pit explaining the removal of the original thread…”
Failing that, a “You Know Who You Are” sort of general warning/reminder should have been posted. If you posted to the thread, maybe she means you, maybe she doesn’t, but I bet you’d take heed regardless.
I don’t disagree with the removal of the thread. Hell, I hadn’t even seen it. But this isn’t such an earth shattering transgression that the specific posters needed to be singled out in the manner in which they were.
Besides, based on the wording of the OP, I get to continue to post complete lyrics skelter-helter. 
Nope, nor the lyrics to the Ventures’ biggest hit.
Excerpts would be acceptable, such as:
“Wi”
<snip>
“out”
Public warnings are the default option on this message board…that is, generally a person is warned publicly for a public infraction. There are approximately three gazillion warnings in various public threads. We almost never email warnings. The infraction was public, so the warnings are public. That’s the way we run this message board.
There is no one method of doing anything that will please everyone.
Lynn
For the Straight Dope
Seriously Casey, it’s allright. THose of us who were warned were warned publicly, as are all people who receive warnings. I have a hunch that most people who posted the lyrics, such as myself, had at least an inkling of a thought that what we were doing was at least some sort of infringement of board rules as well.
I blew it, I received my warning as have hundreds of posters before me.
Sam
Dude! Not everything a mod does has to turn into drama over what they should and shouldn’t do. Not only are Lynn’s actions quite firmly along the lines of what’s always done here, but the warning was not particularly harsh, nor did it have anything to do with anything embarrassing.
Sheesh.
By the way, I’m smacking the first person to publicly proclaim to have “lost all respect” for Lynn.
Or rain on my parade? :smack: Oops!
What does “self esteem” have to do with this? Is that the user name of the person who started the thread? A song title?
The OP found himself living the (Offspring) song, didn’t like it, and broke up with his gal.
Or a free ride that you just can take? :rolleyes:
WHAT!
No no no no no.
You’re supposed to whine, dammit. You’re supposed to piss and moan and bitch and whine and fall down on the floor and drum your tiny heels and hold your breath until you turn blue, and then go start a Pit thread pissin’ and moanin’ about jackbooted Nazi moderators which will mushroom to 9 pages and consist of everyone bringing up every evil thing the jackbooted Nazi SDMB moderators ever did, going all the way back to the “AOL Days”, and which will spawn several related Pit threads in which an assortment of Drama Queens announce that they have lost all respect for [fill in the blank with name of moderator], and that while the rest of us may choose to remain here as enablers and Vichy collaborators, they will be preserving their Internet souls untainted, and will not be renewing their subscription, so farewell forever.
Not just suck it up.
I mean, *duuuuuude. *
It’s not a big deal. I did consider the rule when I was posting, but decided I was probably in the clear. So I wasn’t. So I got warned publicly. Oops. I’ll be more careful next time.
Bad rabbit!
But I have to thank you, Lynn – as whiterabbit’s mom, now that she’s all grown up I can’t chew her out effectively any more and make it stick. Whereas you now have that power. Bwahahaha…you carry the torch well!
Seriously, though, could we have a clarification of how much is too much? Is one line of a song okay? Two? One verse or chorus? Or just a title with a link to some other less-copyright-concerned page with the full lyrics? SDMB is about as strict a site as I’ve seen online where copyrights are concerned, so it’s easy to accidentally cross the line (I’ve done it myself in the past re a copy of a videotape for someone who’d missed a show). Maybe a sticky with specific limits on common types of copyrighted works would be helpful.
Answer: if YOU wrote the parody, then you have full rights to it and can post it. If someone else (say, Weird Al Y) wrote the parody, then NO.
And even if you use just a snippet, you should provide full attribution.
The Straight Dope Message Boards are sponsored by the CHICAGO READER. The READER is extremely fussy about copyrights – more so than might be strictly necessary, from a technical legal point of view. It’s basically the golden rule: the READER doesn’t want anyone copying their material, and therefore we don’t allow people on the READER’s Message Boards to copy the material of others.
No, you could not. At least, not from us. You could go to a law library and look up the hundreds of pages of legal cases, if you wanted. The general “fair use” rule is something like five percent. That’s obviously targetted at longer works, like stories, rather than a three-stanza song, but the idea is: How much? Not much.
A couple of lines is fine, and then provide a link to the website that DOES have the legitimate copyright to reproduce the entire song.
Sorry DDG, let me start over…
Lynn, I feel as though I have been unfairly singled out by your criticism and moderation. It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t know the rules, and aside from that, my Dog Bella made me do it. If you continue to unfairly harass me, I will leave this place and you will cease to have any of my membership money!
You and the rest of the brownshirts that moderate the SDMB can go to HELL for what you have done to me!
I’m leaving[sub]No, I’m not[/sub]. I don’t know when I’ll return, if ever![sub]Maybe later this evening after a child’s birthday party in the pit of hell we in California call “Modesto”[/sub] I have completely lost all faith in the staff here and those of you who stay are nothing more than SHEEP!
Sam