Repowering a Cape Dory 27 article in Cruising World

[Neil Gordon]

Be careful when sailing on Biscayne Bay when skim ice forms. In a short time, it will saw right through the fiberglass hull at the waterline.

Maybe a band of stainless steel for a boot-top would help.

Actually, no. Due to heeling, the slice in the hull from the skim ice will be well above the boot top, with the actual location depending on wind conditions and point of sail.

Best would be to immediately tack if you notice a "slice" of water streaming in on the leeward side.

[S/V Necessity]

I suspect that your claim of fair use would fail, but I am not a lawyer. You are essentially supplying the article in interest so that others don't have to go out and buy the magazine. The concept of fair use is in place to ensure our abilities to do many of the things critical to living in a democracy. For example it is essential for allowing criticism satire and parody and generally freedom of information. But not necessarily free as in "free beer." It's not in place to help people skirt around purchasing things. In fact that's probably a simple litmus test to see if you are violating "fair use" if people can use your product to circumvent purchasing someone elses, that's probably bad.

Fair use generally ensures your ability to cite, reference or use a PORTION of the work. How large of a portion is a concern, larger tending to be worse.... Providing the entire article is probably no good.

I seriously doubt that you can start scanning and giving away college textbooks and get away with it by arguing "it's for educational" purposes. In fact if anyone cares to wager....

So, I don't doubt one bit that John was serious. Serious as a heart attack in fact. While what you are proposing to do is extremely common. It's normally done in fairly private settings. To openly discuss this on the WWW is quite brazen indeed. ARRRRRR MATEY!!! You be a pirate!

[Annie Ward]

... but it's been my experience that, in general, unless you are making a profit on the distribution of the articles -- or are distributing enough of them to make a significant dent in the readership of the magazine -- and not citing the source -- in other words, if the magazine can prove financial and/or reputation damage they might come after you. For something this small, and one-time only, I doubt they will bother -- but you never know. They might just send a cease-and-desist letter if they think they can nip something in the bud. Food for thought ...

IMHO, FWIW

[Alan Holman]

To follow up on John Vigor's and Necessity's comment on distributing material from Cruising World. In support of their arguments, I wonder if members of the board who see no problem with the Sea Hunt distributing the material would they feel the same if Sea Hunt, instead of going to the trouble of photocopying the material from the magazine he had purchased, proposed to go to his magazine store and shoplift enough copies to supply the board members who want to read the article?

Unfortunately, there are ample precedents in support of what Sea Hunt is doing, distributing material from a source which went to the trouble and expense of publishing it in the hope of some commercial return. We see this every day on the internet, in fact there are websites dedicate to just this proposition, lifting news stories from newspapers and magazines, collating them and sending them out free of charge. It is undermining the financial viability of some of the great news organization. We regularly read of yet another publication ceasing to publish and fail to realize we may have been a part of the problem.

So, if you want Cruising World and similar publications to be there for your reading enjoyment and nautical knowledge, your best bet is to buy your own copy and thank Sea Hunt for alerting you to the article.

To captain and author Vigor, I say many thanks for hoisting 'the John V sail' and drawing our attention to this issue.

The Meddler

[Bill Goldsmith]

I discussed this with a copyright lawyer I know. This is not fair use. Period. You need to ask and receive permission from the copyright owner before disseminating copies of such an article. The decision of whether to distribute photocopies of copyrighted material should not depend on the likelihood of the copyright owner pursuing a claim--it should be based on the right thing to do. Why not just suggest people buy a copy of the magazine? It supports the authors and ensures quality articles will be published in such magazines in the future. This is no different from pirating songs from illegal download sites.

PPS: I have a very low regard for lawyers too, except them that helped with divorce (I got to keep the boat, but not much else... such is life! )

Why are we flaming lawyers on this Board, of all places? This Board has always been a shining example of web etiquette, why change that now? I have low regard for dishonest and bad lawyers, and very high regard for honest, good lawyers. Would you have low regard for all sailors just because you encountered a bad one?

[John Vigor]

Mr Sea Hunt, alias Robert:

The legal defense called "fair use" or "fair dealing," does not apply to piracy. Fair use applies to the creation of literary works that incorporate copyrighted material without permission.

You are not creating a literary work. You are stealing intellectual property.

But, Robert, you are a good man at heart. We all know that. You are the kind of man who notices that the local Society of Crochet Experts is putting on its annual show across town. You decide it would be wonderful if all the ladies at the Senior Center could attend. So you steal a Suburban to take them there.

You don't profit from this because you don't intend to keep the Suburban. The ladies are pleased. The Crochet society is pleased. Everybody is happy except the owner of the Suburban.

Robert, Cruising World is the owner of the Suburban. It's theirs. They paid for it.

Copyright vests not in Cruising World but in the author -- in this case, Ken Textor -- unless the work was commissioned on a "work for hire" basis. Cruising World does not need to print a notice saying "Sea Hunt, or any of his Cape Dory mates, shall not steal our property," any more than the Suburban factory needs to print a notice saying "Stealing this vehicle is forbidden."

Copyright is created at the same time as the material is created, and it's automatic. An article doesn't need to be registered. It doesn't even have to be printed. If you created it, it's yours.

Cruising World merely buys the rights from the copyright holder to print and publish the article -- precisely what you are doing, Robert, without permission and without paying for it.

In the case of "fair use," the greater the amount of copyrighted work used, the less likely it is that a court would characterize the use as fair. The use of an entire copyrighted work, such as you are planning, is almost never fair.

In addition, uses that tend to diminish any potential market for the copyrighted material would not be regarded as fair. You have diminished Cruising World's potential market by giving away free copies of the article.

You may plead ignorance of the copyright laws, and you would not be alone I regret to say, but I am afraid ignorance of the law is no excuse.

In your case, Robert, the harm to Cruising World is minimal,
but the same principle of stealing other people's intellectual property with no qualms of conscience and no regard for the law has become alarmingly widespread on the Internet. People now expect everything to be available for nothing, despite the fact that people like me sweat it out behind a keyboard all day, straining to squeeze adequate ideas out of inadequate brains. This blatant theft has got to stop, and the sooner the better, otherwise there will be nothing left to steal.

Incidentally, Robert, you note that I am British and therefore you are unable to tell whether I am serious or not. For your information, I am a dual national. I am British by accident of birth. I am American by choice. So I'm serious.

Be a good boy and don't do it again.

Cheers,

John V.

[Sea Hunt]

"John V." and all:

It is bitter cold in Miami and forecast to get even colder this weekend. I am freezing and have little else to occupy my time - unless I start drinking WARM Guinness.

A fellow CDer sent me a PM in which he or she pointed out that there is a "copyright" announcement near the end of the Cruising World magazine. It is under a section labeled "POSTAL INFORMATION" and "POSTMASTER". I confess I saw the page but when I saw that it appeared to be "post office information" material I did not read it. For this I do apologize.

I also want to sincerely apologize to Mr. Vigor, Mr. Textor (the author of the article) and to all authors who are involved with the CDSOA board. It was not my intent to offend anyone or infringe on anyone's income or status. Without carefully thinking it through (a fault I have yet to correct despite numerous chances afforded me ) I alerted CDers to a very, very fine article and volunteered to make it available at no cost to those who wanted it. My intentions were good. However, you have my solemn promise I WILL NOT DO THAT AGAIN.

I hope those offended by my actions will accept my apology.

In the interest of complete honesty, I have mailed out 8 copies of the article to those who provided me with their mailing address. I will NOT mail out any more. If Mr. Textor reads this post and believes that he has been financially harmed I will be happy to reimburse him for whatever loss he believes is reasonable as a result of my actions.

I again offer my sincere apology. Lesson learned (the hard way).

[Warren Kaplan]

Not to turn this into a legal forum (any more than this particular thread has already become) but I am curious as to whether the prohibition applies to any parts or quotes from an article or just the entire article copied in tact. To explain;

Suppose there were one or two paragraphs in the article that were worthy of discussion on this board (or any other forum). Perhaps there was some question about the advice given. Would it be okay to quote those paragraphs (either by just typing them out or by actually using a copy machine to copy just those paragraphs and then posting them) for the soul purpose of discussion? Or, would some waiver from the holder of the copyright be necessary in order to post just a few paragraphs?

I'm not trying to get into a hair splitting contest here but I just want to know if the copyright laws apply in the absolute to even a fragment of an magazine article or a few sentences quoted from a book. We all see portions of written material taken from other sources used all the time online or in print media. Is permission required in all those instances? Even in news articles??

[barfwinkle]

I would think that quoting an article and citing it properly would be okay (not the whole article IMHO), but I am no attorney, but academics do this all the time. The key be "cited".

JMTCW

Fair (althougn they be C O L D) winds.

[Neil Gordon]

I'm not trying to get into a hair splitting contest here but ...

The problem is when you get close to either side of the line, it's almost always about splitting hairs.

There's considerable case law regarding what constitutes "fair use."

[John Vigor]

Suppose there were one or two paragraphs in the article that were worthy of discussion on this board (or any other forum). Perhaps there was some question about the advice given. Would it be okay to quote those paragraphs (either by just typing them out or by actually using a copy machine to copy just those paragraphs and then posting them) for the soul purpose of discussion? Or, would some waiver from the holder of the copyright be necessary in order to post just a few paragraphs?

I'm not trying to get into a hair splitting contest here but I just want to know if the copyright laws apply in the absolute to even a fragment of an magazine article or a few sentences quoted from a book. We all see portions of written material taken from other sources used all the time online or in print media. Is permission required in all those instances? Even in news articles??

Warren,

This is troubled water, with few hard-and-fast rules. But as a general rule there should be no trouble about lifting a couple of paragraphs and quoting them verbatim.

Note, however, that the amount of material you copy is not the main thing. It's the amount of damage you do to the financial prospects of the copyright holder. By that, I mean that if you quote all 10 lines of a 10-line poem, you have lessened the poet's chances of selling it for financial gain.

As a vague rule of thumb, authors and journalists often think of 250 words as the absolute maximum for a claim of "fair use." But that would be 250 words taken from a much larger manuscript, of course.

The essence of fair use is that you should not use more than is necessary for "a proper purpose" and that your use of it should not impair its value. (In this regard, you might even increase its value by giving it extra publicity, of course.)

A "proper purpose" is one of those quoted by Sea Hunt in his researches above. But you might like to know that ideas and facts cannot ever be copyrighted. Only the exact form of the work, the exact words you use, can be copyrighted.

So you are free to paraphrase an author's work as much as you like. In other words, say the same thing in different words. You would want to attribute the original author, of course, and the name of the work, to avoid any hint of plagiarism.

But in general you are free to quote without prior permission bits and pieces of an author's work for the purposes of education or discussion as long as it doesn't hurt his or her pocket in any way.

Cheers,

John V.

[Annie Ward]

The decision of whether to distribute photocopies of copyrighted material should not depend on the likelihood of the copyright owner pursuing a claim--it should be based on the right thing to do.

My post wasn't to suggest that it's okay -- it was to gently suggest that he might not want to do this again but that in this one instance, I doubt any serious harm was done, as long as the lesson was learned. I was just trying to avoid "piling on" the poor guy. Sheesh.

[Bill Goldsmith]

The decision of whether to distribute photocopies of copyrighted material should not depend on the likelihood of the copyright owner pursuing a claim--it should be based on the right thing to do.

My post wasn't to suggest that it's okay -- it was to gently suggest that he might not want to do this again but that in this one instance, I doubt any serious harm was done, as long as the lesson was learned. I was just trying to avoid "piling on" the poor guy. Sheesh.

Understood--I was not singling you out. This is a hot button issue these days with the internet and widely distributed content.

[Dean Abramson]

I initially did not want to jump into this, but I was put off a bit when I saw the original post.

First, I knew that Mr. Hunt meant well. But I also figured we would hear from either John V or Ken Textor on this eventually.

As one who makes his living producing copyrighted material (mostly photography, a little writing), I want to agree that that is not "Fair Use."

The others have explained this well, but I wish to make one more point. The internet and the advent of digital photography (and other media) has resulted in a veritable assault on copyright worldwide. I know of someone here in Maine who was downloading photos off of social networking sites, exaggerating the color a bit and making some tweaks in Photoshop, then printing them and selling them in an art gallery! And this was someone in my general industry who knew better. There is a "web culture," particularly among younger folks, that seems to promote the concept that if it's "out there," you can take it.

But you cannot. Sorry.

This why I put my © notice on my photos. Say someone sees my shot of the snowboarder with the sail/kite. They say, cool, I will put that on my own personal snowboarding info site. Maybe this site is a place that a lot of boarders and people in the ski industry go to regularly. What this means is that I can probably forget about ever selling the usage of that photo anywhere else within the ski or ski-publication world. Once something is used anywhere, its value is vastly diminished.

If, I, the creator, wish to share that shot with my sailing buddies here, that is my choice. I have decided I will let that shot be seen on this one sailing website. Period. Once I have made that choice, you can certainly refer others to this website to see it, but you cannot download the shot and do anything with it. Frankly, that is not the best shot; I have to better guard the prime shots. Because maybe I can get a magazine to use one. And that's how I pay the bills.

And since I own a sailboat, I've got bills...

I am not trying to be a badass here. Nor am I trying to inflate the importance of one of my photos. I do like sharing many of them with you folks, and having fun is why I got into this in the first place. I am just trying to explain what it's like from the side of the creator.

The bottom line is that (with very few exceptions) if you did not create it, you cannot reproduce it in any way.

This is a living for some of us. And trying to support a CD31 from photography is hard enough! Magazines are dying everyday because of competition from the web. Let's do what we can to support the Cruising Worlds, the Ken Textors, the John Vigors.

Thanks for listening.

Dean

[Joe Myerson]

I'm sure that Robert meant no harm, but as a boating writer who is struggling to publish in a shrinking market (Back when I had a regular job, I often had the pleasure of editing Ken's almost-clean copy.), I have to agree with John V. that we should respect the copyright on articles.

That doesn't mean you can't mention an article, or even cite it in communications with others (and, certainly, you could mail a copy occasionally).

I'm not sure how CW's contracts read, but the magazine I used to work for bought first-time rights, plus Internet rights to stories.

Often, magazines will post links to stories on their websites, after the issue has been received and read by subscribers.

It's even possible that CDSOA could request a PDF or a link to the story to put up on our site. But the point here is: You should ask, and if denied, you should respect the copyright holder's wishes.

That said, I'm pleased to see that Ken, who does follow this board, has not joined in. He's probably not terribly offended.

And yes, it was a really good piece, Ken.

Best,

--Joe