hello,

is it legal to have somebody else's intellectual property on my company homepage, if it is only visible to company members?
I know everybody who has access and I'm not 'publishing' it in the literal meaning of the word. I just want to quote some educational stuff from another website. (and, to be honest, I'm already doing it, but I am curious if it's legal.)

Any hint would be nice.

baik

Even in private journals, house magazines, members only newsletters etc it is required to get permission from the author and the words "reprinted by permission" must appear at the end of the article. I would think that this is a good, clean and ethical approach.

In the case of web page, who are the "members only".

members are my collegues, who all have a unique, password protected login.

It isn't just a question of password protected login s. It isn't even a question of any future bio-metric security - say - instead of password to ensure that only members see the contents. The question is what the members can do with the material - potentially - once it is published. Each and every author or their assignees, specify how to use the material. Why dont you just check out each case? I myself belong to a "Computer Society of <my region>". The members only magazine publishes - paper and URLs - lots of stuff with monthly themes. Some of it is very current stuff and even when the original authors contribute excerpts they get permission from the publisher.

Try it.

End

Interesting point, thank you for telling me what you feel about this!

Yet it still sounds awkward to me.
If I printed out a web page and put it on the blackboard in our company kitchen - and applied the same way of handling the information, because there would not be any difference in the way my colleagues can access and reuse the stuff - I would have to get the author's permission? I feel this is bizar!
What good is information if we make life so hard on ourselves using it?

Regards,
Baik

If you don't use all of the material and it's for nonprofit educational use only, then what you're doing is perfectly legal.

"Fair use" information straight from horse's mouth: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Why not just ask the author? Most people will give their permission as long as you're not making money off of it.

I think it depends on how much "quoting" you are doing. If you include only a few sentences, and have a link crediting the original source, I'd think you'd be OK. OTOH, if you are just copying extensive parts of someone else's work, and putting it on your website (giving the impression that you created it) then No. It's unethical and seriously not cool. Along these lines, if you put content on your website, you are publishing it, regardless of whether access is granted to logged-in users or the general public.

Best answer is aysui's -- why not just contact the author and ask his/her permission to use their work? I'd be willing to bet that most authors would be happy to cooperate

2 laws apply to this... The fair use cluase of the copyright law and one that has to do with access of recorded material or records!

I forget the name of that 2nd one but it was in the news recently when someone was running an internet forum for people being sued by Direct TV. (DirecTV?) The dish thing... He required members to register before accessing the site and made them agree that they were not lawyers or employees of direct tv, etcetra. Well, the direct tv people ignored that and joined his site any way so he sued them!

A judge ruled that he lost because the material was to easily accessible! (just by clicking "I agree") They said if he had moderated membership, making people wait until their membership was approved, then he would have won!

Under fair use, you are not allowed to reprint, publish, or distribute (sell, rent, lease) copyright material put you are allowed to copy portions, snippets, or quotes to for reference, supporting material, or examples!

I believe making full copies for archival purposes have been outlawed by the 1996 digital millennium copyright law! That's not a very popular law and people ignore it all the time... I copy articles and pictures to my computer all of the time, they are copied to the browser cache anyway! (that's why web browser have the right-click save as function)

Things you might do at home, don't always do them at work! You must be very carefull at work because of the DMCA law... It is a very complex law crafted by hollywood and congress passed it without even reading it's full content! It does however contain a "Safe Harbor" provision which states that you as an operated or administrator must be allowed time to take down the offending material posted by other people before you are held liable.

The reality is you are not likely to ever get caught or even get into trouble if you do get caught unless...

The morality side of it is that it's wrong to profit or make money from other peoples work and this is where the "be carefull what you do at work" comes in at... If a lawyer for some company sees it by accident, or a disgruntled employee makes sure a lawyer sees it then you can be sued and would likely recieve DMCA take down notice at the least!

I've read about these laws and that's how I understand them but I'm not a lawyer or anything like that...

Thanks to you all for sharing your thoughts on this non-linux-question.
Now, what I understand is that what I'm doing is probably legal but that I should
ask the author, mostly because of ethical reasons.
I have no problem asking and I really don't mean to steal someone's work and pretend it's
my own. So I'll probably ask.
However, I still have a feeling that this means imposing a bit of bureaucracy on a thing that (to me) should be free: spreading information. And I don't know if I like that. I really don't, I'm actually trying to make up my mind.
Again: I would never claim it to be my creation and I put the author's name/homepage beneath the text, so my co-workers know I'm quoting.

Well, it's best to go straight to the source. Here are some pertinent sections of the United States Code (assuming you're in the U.S.):

17 USCA § 106 (Westlaw, current through P.L. 109-229)

I know the wording is "legalese" but enough is clear to show that copyright isn't about attribution to the original author--it's about giving the original creator control of how the work is distributed. By granting an "exclusive" right, the government has stated the creator is the only person to make the judgment call on where his work is used/displayed.

It might be the author wants the information viewable only on his page because he wants:
(1) Advertising revenues from pop-ups
(2) To show an accompanying offer for other, similar materials
(3) To keep track of how many people are viewing the information (by server activity logs for instance)
(4) Demographic data of the readers by asking for location, occupation, age, etc.
(5) Keep close tabs on the information because it changes frequently (and doesn't want to leave himself liable for old, bad information "floating" around)

There could be any number of reasons why the author wants to control where his work is seen.

Not giving attribution for the work is plagiarism and a separate matter from copyright altogether; though plagiarism might serve to bolster an alleged infringement claim because it shows the work was used in a way to hide the source.

As for fair use:
17 USCA § 107 (Westlaw, current through P.L. 109-229 approved 05-31-06)

Now, about educational use... Take note that the statute uses this language: "teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use)." The implication is, the use is allowed for environments where learning is the primary focus (such as schools and universities). If the statute applied to any situation where learning is involved (at any degree), copyright would be meaningless because anyone reading the work is learning something by exposing themselves to it. Also, in subsection (1), the language makes a point to refer to "nonprofit educational purposes." Because you mentioned you're posting it on your company's webpage, I'm defaulting to the belief that you're a for-profit organization.

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not trying to tell you whether it's legal or not (only the judge presiding in the trial can tell you). However, I will say that you should contact the author for his permission to reproduce it. If you get permission, then none of the statutes above matter.

In case you'd like to double-check the information yourself (or read more), you can use the citations I gave above to look up the statutes yourself. Go to any law library and ask the librarian to help you locate the United States Code (or just show them either citation I used--17 USCA § 106 or 17 USCA § 107--and they'll be able to find the book for you). The relevant statutes start at section 101 (definitions of terms). Ask for a quick intro into reading the books (pocket parts specifically) and ask if they have the Annotated version. The annotated version will contain short snippets of and citations to cases dealing with a particular section and how the court interpreted the statute. The librarian can show you the full text of the case if you show her the citation of a case you're interested in reading. There are some Web-related cases already listed. So it's possible a court may have dealt with a similar situation and ruled on it already.

No, I'm not in the US, but in Germany. The author's domain, however, is registered in the US.
I have been checking on the legal situation, but the information has been very contradictory. As to the original source: I tried, but German 'legalese' is quite a bit worse than the english laws you quoted (did you ask permission? :-) ), and it didn't really make things clear to me.

I actually work for a non-profit organization, the Caritas.

OK, thanks again to you all for discussing my question.
I'm going to ask the author.

Funny: If I had put the stuff on the public part of our website, I wouldn't have wondered, but simply asked the author. Just by not having to I started thinking. And I'm still not sure, if I should feel bad when quoting without permission. Like I said before, I'd never try to make it look like my own stuff.