I a meanwhile closed thread (What happened to the Audiophilia Madnes thread?) question came up how it can be identified that a shared web-content is protected by copyright and thus not allowed to be shared within, e.g., Naim forum.
I don’t want to raise the topic whether it is nice or reasonable to do so but to share how everybody of us can avoid to cause legal “inconvenience” to Naim.
From my point of view it can be easily checked if a web-content is licenced under widely used creative commons licence of approbriate licence type. This kind of licencing is widely used, and, if not provided or other licence visible (like WTFPL), then it simply can not be shared. And, of course, shared content has to comply with forum rules.
For definition of create commons license, please refer to, e.g. Wikipedia, for which I have added a link:
WikipediaLink, and, which itself if licenced as Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (Link). Note that providing a link to license type is mandatory according to rules of creative commons.
I remember that @Richard.Dane was writting something about “fair use”. Hard to define what it exactly is, but copyright protected content may not even shared using this philosophy (even I would like do as it would make much things easier). And I have no idea if I can share CD covers, frontpages of book, or labels of wine bottles in the future. Is there a lawyer in this forum? Or others who have deeper understanding of the topic?
The challenge is that while a few may check, the majority won’t and Richard doesn’t have the time to trawl through endless posts. Sometimes it’s best not to ask too much. Many people happily share pictures of their album covers, books, wine bottles, beer and all sorts. That is reasonable use. The problem comes when people start posting images or links gathered from other people’s sites and posting them here. So as long as we stick to the former and avoid the latter we will be fine. It doesn’t need a lawyer, it just needs common sense.
In general posting a link to another site is generally fine (unless explicitly disallowed by the site licence*), as the right to access the material is (usually) in the public domain, the problem comes when material is downloaded. This involves making a permanent copy and that may be a violation of the copyright licence.
(*) This still isn’t copyright violation, but, in some circumstances, could be a violation of data protection or freedom of information type of legislation.
Quite!
Yes, please try to use common sense and perhaps take a moment just to check any website from which content might be obtained to see if fair use might apply or if specific assent is required before embedding elsewhere. That way, no lawyers should be needed…
My take on using / quoting other people’s material (text, photo, cartoon, etc.) is that I try to attribute it by mentioning the source of the material.
Links to websites should be self explanatory.
I’ll add my vote for the return to common sense approaches. No need for lawyers here.
Enjoy the music. com site: On the pictures it is specified : May not be authorized.
« May not » doesn’t mean « it’s strictly forbidden « .
Some sites doesn’t allow copy and paste. You can’t do it , even if you wanted. It’s technically impossible.
FFS! 
For sure, commons sense is something that should work in most cases. And, involving lawyers may lead to an undesired direction.
Despite, at work, we are asked to run an “ethics & compliance” training once a year. Most of them are little boring because you can pass them just using common sense, so that I often ask myself why I shall do this. This year I took the training about latest General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) active since 2018, and learned quite a lot. E.g. that - based on my own statistics - more than 95% of all visited web sites do not comply with GDPR, including the web site of the non-profit association I’m member of, and this forum. So common sense can be trappy.
Personally, I’m totally fine to keep lawyers out (even though they can contribute with their expertise), to use external links or content only from which I think it can contribute (and make source visible in case I’m allowed to use the content), and not to copy and paste the internet into this forum. And limit myself to things that are my own because this is most relevant for any thread here, i.e. I share HH’s view outlined above. If this is considered as sufficient, I’m fine. I think it is.
I think this is a language issue. What is stated at the bottom of the page is “May not be copied or reproduced without permission.”. That means ”you may not“, which is an explicit prohibition, to paraphrase ”you are not allowed to”.
So that copyright claim tells you that you must ask their permission before copying their content to another site.
Thanks for clarifying.
@Richard.Dane: I received personal message from you I like to respond. Unfortunately, the “reply”-button does not work (whatever browser, deleting cache, restart of computer). Do I have any other chance? Answer is written and stored as draft on the forum. If you can access it, feel free to do so. I have also a copy on my computer.
Best wishes, Kilian
Message send - all fine.
Thanks Kilian. Received and replied.
@ hungryhalibutDo you have permission from the creator of your avator image to use that image? 
Have any lawyers actually ever contacted Naim concerning copyright infringement. The best jokes threads been going for years with images or links gathered from other people’s sites and posted on the Naim forum on a daily basis……??? 
I did discuss the use of my avatar image with the lady portrayed, but her response was one of indifference, “Whatever!”. After her sad demise, I consulted her nephew concerning the continued use of the picture of his Auntie Suzy; his only comment was, “Is there any more tuna?”
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