My Other Blogs

2006-10-09

Copyright

I don't know if it is legally enforceable (although I suspect it may be), but I do know that it is morally enforceable, and it has been on every page on this blog:
This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Articles posted on this web site may be freely transmitted and distributed for personal study however they are under copyright of their respective authors and any text or information obtained from them may not under any circumstances be used for official purposes of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints including but not limited to disciplinary proceedings against or investigation of any person. This restriction is to protect the rights of free thought and expression of the authors as well as those who may leave comments on this work.

If you as a commentor, or as a friend of someone who has posted or commented on this blog find yourself being presented with material from this blog as evidence against you, please gently remind the person presenting it that they are using the material in an inappropriate way.

Suggestions for people thinking of violating this request: You could summarize or rewrite the material into your own words, and use that summary in lieu of verbatim material from the site. Also, remember that "fair use" law (I think so, at least) allows quotations of short amounts of material for the purpose of critical review or promotion of the material only (such as in a search engine index.)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

Anonymous said...

Since copyright law in generally concerned with protecting people's work, particularly their ability to make a profit from it, I strongly doubt that you would be able to make much of a case in claiming that copyright had been violated because someone quoted a couple of sentences from the blog and reported them to your ecclesiastical leader, who then used the information to strip you of privileges within the church organization. No one is making any sort of profit from the copyrighted information, nor are they preventing the copyright holder from doing so.

Moreover, I expect you'd have a tough time making this stick because the current interpretations of the first amendment are making it so that religious entities can fire employees because of age or sex and get away with it.

Although I wholeheartedly support your efforts to protect the posters' work from plagiarism, I am confused that you say nothing on the blog can be used against anyone in a disciplinary council. That's like the intellectual equivalent of "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." I'm doubly confused that you then encourage would-be informers to summarize, after explicitly stating that no information from the blog can be used.

Frankly, it seems a moot point, when all the informers need do is hand over the URL and ecclesiastical leaders can access your blog the same way as anyone else, without in any way violating your copyright requests.

--AA

Anonymous said...

Btw--I'm not trying to say I think you should be taken before a disciplinary council--just that I don't think your copyright can prevent Church leaders from using the information in one, and that, as you've already said, posting things on the Net is a bad idea if you don't want the wrong people to find them.

I'm sorry that the missionaries didn't tell you about the Christ=Jehovah belief. That would be a difficult thing to encounter after baptism.

--AA

Jeff said...

"Anonymous" AA,

Although your point of view here is fairly well correct, the Church itself uses Copyright law on what I see as an identical grounds to prevent people from publishing the Church Handbook of Instructions online, a book that is also not used for the purpose of making money.

The purpose for their enforcing this (and I have seen photocopies of cease and desist letters relating to it) seems to be to keep the methods of operation out of scrutiny of the public eye.

Regardless of whether it could stand up in court, if they are using it themselves, and expect respect, they should also respect others who choose to use it as well.

Am I missing something here?

Anonymous said...

You make a good point. Hadn't thought of that before.

--AA

Jeff said...

On the website "NSW Society for Computers and the Law" the Church is used as a case-in-point while explaining these aspects of Copyright law relating to the Internet, see near the bottom of Section 1.4.