Copyright and sharing
The Legal Genealogist received a question from a reader that can only leave you shaking your head.
“I belong to (a chat group),” she wrote. And, she went on:
We have a (person) who volunteered to moderate one of our chats (who) published (the) chat questions to (the person’s) blog. Instead of emailing the questions to the group, (the person) sent a link to (the) blog post. Because I read my email on my phone, seeing the questions on (the) blog was less than ideal, and I thought I might not be the only one having this issue. So I shared (the) questions with the group via our email list, thinking it would be okay since the questions were intended for our group. (The moderator) accused me of copyright infringement, which was not at all my intention, and I am wondering if I did violate (the) copyright since the material I shared was intended for our group anyway. I just want to be sure I don’t do something like this again if I am truly breaking the law.
Now you can see that I’m trying hard to eliminate anything that might identify either the reader or the moderator, because I truly think both sides here are trying hard to do the right thing.
The moderator really does have a copyright in anything the moderator writes and posts.1
Folks who agree to moderate chat groups — in a wide variety of fields — often get nothing for their work except perhaps a few more readers for their work, and it may well have been that the moderator here was hoping to pick up a few more blog readers by using a link to the blog rather than sending the questions by email.
And the reader now knows that the way to deal with this situation in the future is always to ask for permission to share something someone else has written.
That permission constitutes a license from the copyright owner to the reader allowing the reader to copy or redistribute the item, and those are two of the rights that copyright law gives exclusively to the author of the work.2
But we really shouldn’t have to be here, talking about this sort of thing in the context of copyright law.
We all — every last one of us — content creators and content users — need to be reasonable about our expectations and we need to tell the people we work with just what our expectations are.
If we are content creators — writers or photographers or artists — we certainly have the legal right to expect that our copyright will be respected.
But if we are working with a group, we really need to understand that group members have a reasonable expectation that something meant for the group can be shared within the group without worrying about copyright.
If I’m asked, as a photographer, to take pictures during a genealogy conference, isn’t it reasonable for the person who asked me to expect to be able to use those pictures in the host society’s newsletter without worrying about my copyright?
If I’m moderating a group that discusses, say, new books about crime, and I write up a list of things we should discuss at our next meeting about a particular new crime book, isn’t it reasonable for every group member to expect to be able to share that list with every other group member?
In some situations, just agreeing to do something can easily be understood by the group members as giving permission — and that’s a reasonable conclusion for the group members to reach.
So, as content creators, when we’re working with a group, we need to take just a second and make it clear if there’s something we don’t want the members of that specific group to do with our work:
• A quick note by a chat moderator that said — for example — “I’m putting the questions on the blog and I want everyone to access them there so please don’t resend by email” would make the moderator’s views clear.
• A statement by a photographer that said “Sure I’ll take the photos, but print only the ones I approve and make sure you give me credit” would make those limits clear.
Obviously I myself am a content creator: I write this blog, I give lectures, I do webinars. I really get where content creators come from and the need we all have to protect our copyrights.
But I am also a content user as a genealogist, and I’m a member of a lot of groups. And in a group setting I think it’s perfectly reasonable for the group to expect to be able to share more freely than, say, a bunch of strangers might expect to, without worrying about threats of copyright suits.
So let’s all be reasonable, okay? As content users, if we always remember to ask whenever we’re not sure, then we’re reasonable. And as content creators, let’s take that extra minute to make it clear if there’s something we’re doing with a group and we don’t want it shared outside the group or in a particular way even inside the group.
SOURCES
- See generally 17 U.S.C. §201(a). ↩
- See 17 U.S.C. §106. ↩
Umm, hold on a minute. Unless you left out some important details in your effort to anonymize the story, the “moderator” didn’t create that content, the members of the chat group did. At least one chat group member, your correspondent, didn’t knowingly grant permission for his or her work to be published: It’s the “moderator” who violated copyright here. Hijacking a private discussion group to drive one’s blog under the pretense of “moderating” it seriously fails the smell test; compounding that by claiming exclusive copyright on the discussion group’s own material is cheeky beyond belief.
I must not have explained it well, John. The content involved was a set of questions the moderator wrote to guide the group discussion, so the moderator had the copyright in those. Sorry if I wasn’t clear.
Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks for the clarification.
Well said!
Thanks for the kind words.
Copyright infringement aside, I’m going to reevaluate… well, I better not say it. ©John
🙂
Oh for goodness sakes.
The things people get worked up about.
Um… yeah. Sigh.
In our BCG portfolio, we are required to have our client sign permission to use information for the client report. Isn’t that pretty much the same thing? While it’s only two people involved, the client poses questions and the researcher must record their findings? The researcher holds the copyright for the report.
This particular case above, however, is just a bit over the top.
It’s not exactly the same, since it’s ethics not copyright in the client situation. Since the genealogist is the author of a client report, unless the contract specifically says otherwise the genealogist has the copyright. But we recognize as genealogists that work we do for a client requires the client’s permission before we can use it for any other purpose. So that’s not a copyright issue; it’s an ethical issue instead.
This issue has recently come up with a client. I have a signed contract indicating I own the final written report. I state that the client has the right to make a limited number of copies for personal use. However, the copies must not be distributed and any reference to the report must include our company as the source. Of course, I state that the genealogy data is NOT copyrightable. So I understand this can be shared. The reports are quite extensive with translated village histories, church histories, and village photos. The geographic region in which we work has not had the records microfilmed. Over 25 years, I have digitized the records at a significant personal cost. I have a new problem. The client has now come back and asked how much a copy of the report is as she wants to give it as a gift. I don’t know how to answer. The person who receives the gift has not signed the original contract so is not held to the same agreement, right? The gift getter also may have ancestry from the same region / family and has now received the work at a discounted price (the cost of copying). I cannot resell my clients report ethically nor am I proposing to do so with the second person. Help. How do I protect my copyrighted work and not lose potential future clients?
This is a very fine line to walk since clients, in general, believe they should own the results, and yet genealogists in general need to protect their work product. Your contract is your best defense, from a legal perspective. But it isn’t entirely a legal issue — there’s a public relations aspect here that is just as difficult.
Thanks Judy! I had to chuckle a bit – just when I thought it was ‘clear as a bell’, I clicked on the Facebook icon to share this on my genealogy page. Can we then interpret when the social media icons appear, it is an automatic ‘permission to share’?
Specifically on that media, yes. By which I mean, if there’s a Facebook icon, then in my book the person has given permission to share on Facebook but not, without additional permission, on, say, Pinterest.