Lawsuits against posters on message boards

[Charles L. Cotton]

Here is a link to a story about a company that has been suing websites for alleged copyright violations. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/ja ... aign-indi/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; This company has now filed suit against individual posters because prudent websites have taken steps to protect themselves from such suits.

Although TexasCHLforum is protected, to help protect our members, we are going to prohibit posting any links are article excerpts from the two websites at issue. I'm not going to mention their names because I don't want search engines finding them here and potentially causing problems for our members. The company and websites at issue can be found in the article attached, although I have just been informed of the company has numerous other entities it "represents." I suggest doing a Google search on the main company to identify the others. I'm adding these names of the Texas based companies to the automatic word censor.

Hopefully this company will lose some of the cases that have been filed against it and these predatory practices will come to an end.

This post is intended to notify our members of a potential risk of posting anything from one of the websites listed in the linked article. It is not going to be a thread for blasting the tactics used by these companies.

Chas.

[RoyGBiv]

Is there a recommended "clean" way to post reference material to avoid running into trouble like this as an individual poster?

I had always assumed that posting the link to the original article and stating "from xxxxx" was sufficient to give credit to the owner, but now it seems that "permission" is required from some sources..?

So I suppose that's 2 questions..
1. Is there a universal way to properly credit the original material copyright holder(s) and avoid any chance infringement? or can we only post a link and refer to the original material only, without copy/paste/quoting it?
2. If copyright holders cannot universally be satisfied by a generic cross-posting "credit", as some may reserve all rights, how do we tell which is which.?

[Charles L. Cotton]

Is there a recommended "clean" way to post reference material to avoid running into trouble like this as an individual poster?

I had always assumed that posting the link to the original article and stating "from xxxxx" was sufficient to give credit to the owner, but now it seems that "permission" is required from some sources..?

So I suppose that's 2 questions..
1. Is there a universal way to properly credit the original material copyright holder(s) and avoid any chance infringement? or can we only post a link and refer to the original material only, without copy/paste/quoting it?
2. If copyright holders cannot universally be satisfied by a generic cross-posting "credit", as some may reserve all rights, how do we tell which is which.?

Good question. Please post it on a new thread. I'm going to lock this one because I only want the notice on this one.

Chas.