5 ms·

what about copyright?

grellas 16y ago
For something to be copyrightable, it must be an "original" work of authorship that is fixed in a tangible medium of expression. 17 U.S.C. § 102(a). A leading copyright treatise states that a work is "original" if it is "independently created by the author" and possesses "at least some minimal degree of creativity." Nimmer on Copyright, §§ 2.01[A], [B]. Therefore, a submission or comment posted online would be protected by copyright provided that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. The copyright would belong to the author and not to the site on which the comment or submission is posted. This is why many terms of use for sites that invite third-party submissions, comments, etc. provide that, in making a submission, a third party assigns all copyright to the owner of the site, who is then free to use the material as he likes without further say from the submitter. Without such terms of use, the submitter (i.e., the author) would retain the right to object to any other use being made of the submission besides the post itself as submitted by that person. Two major doctrines modify the above. First, by making the submission, the author of the comment gives at least an implied license for display on the site and for incidental copying that goes along with it. Second, fair use might allow otherwise copyrighted material to be quoted in limited ways. Given the above, I believe permissions would be needed to re-publish in magazine format any comments or other materials that reflect any degree of creativity. The magazine sounds like a great idea, though, and the problem is likely more logistic than anything, as I assume few if any contributors would not give permission if asked.
bearwithclaws 16y ago
I will email the original author of each articles to obtain the permission to print.
- mahmud 16y ago
  Please don't contact me. You have my permission to reprint and sell whatever words I posted here on HN .. without attribution :-)
- mhartl 16y ago
  I hope this works, but my guess is that a minority will say "no", and the majority will ignore your request.
- sev 16y ago
  The comments on HN are what make HN what it is. Are you going to ask each commenter for their permission as well? Or are you not publishing comments?
  - bearwithclaws 16y ago
    Who owns the comments on HN? the commenter or HN?
    - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
      Adding the best HN commentary would certainly make the magazine more valuable. In many cases, the comments are better than the articles.
      - resdirector 16y ago
        What measure would one use for best-ness? Points? Total karma of the commenter? Length of threads? Editor's choice?
        RyanMcGreal 16y ago
        Ideally it should be decided by an editor, but that costs time and money. For something more automated, Hacker News already ranks comment threads by some measure of quality so the good stuff ends up on top and the obnoxious/otiose one-liners drop to the bottom. HN lacks an API, but a decent web scraper (like BeautifulSoup) should be able to walk the DOM and grab the top threads. Depending on space restrictions in the print edition, this could comprise: * All comment threads with a score above some threshold; * Only the top thread; * The best one-third of comments; etc.
    - mildweed 16y ago
      The website. They're the ones paying to host your comment (which you gave up freely).
      - 16y ago
- duck 16y ago
  What about comments? Without them a lot is lost. Also, I know some authors won't give you permission, and thus that means you won't be reproducing the 'best of' hacker news. No thanks.
  - swombat 16y ago
    I think it's fair to say that pretty much any decent ideas has about a dozen impossible brick walls preventing it from succeeding, which in hindsight become less important.
  - bearwithclaws 16y ago
    That's probably the biggest problem. But I'd give it a shot and see how it turns out.
    - chegra84 16y ago
      Maybe just express the sentiments(text analysis) of the replies if they arent giving you permission. I think that is better, since alot of content is generated here.
    - pbiggar 16y ago
      On newstilt, we've written the terms of service so that we can publish comments. We said that by posting you give the service permanent, non-exclusive, transferable rights to edit, modify, distribute, etc, the content. I would ask PG to change the TOS of hacker news, to allow you do this. I think he'd like it, so he may be willing.
      - jamesbritt 16y ago
        And what effect might this have on the people willing to comment? Comments add value to a site, making it attractive to advertisers. That's the exchange. Asking contributors to also allow the site owner to re-use their contributions for other purposes crosses a line for me.
        16y ago

For something to be copyrightable, it must be an "original" work of authorship that is fixed in a tangible medium of expression. 17 U.S.C. § 102(a). A leading copyright treatise states that a work is "original" if it is "independently created by the author" and possesses "at least some minimal degree of creativity." Nimmer on Copyright, §§ 2.01[A], [B]. Therefore, a submission or comment posted online would be protected by copyright provided that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. The copyright would belong to the author and not to the site on which the comment or submission is posted. This is why many terms of use for sites that invite third-party submissions, comments, etc. provide that, in making a submission, a third party assigns all copyright to the owner of the site, who is then free to use the material as he likes without further say from the submitter. Without such terms of use, the submitter (i.e., the author) would retain the right to object to any other use being made of the submission besides the post itself as submitted by that person. Two major doctrines modify the above. First, by making the submission, the author of the comment gives at least an implied license for display on the site and for incidental copying that goes along with it. Second, fair use might allow otherwise copyrighted material to be quoted in limited ways. Given the above, I believe permissions would be needed to re-publish in magazine format any comments or other materials that reflect any degree of creativity. The magazine sounds like a great idea, though, and the problem is likely more logistic than anything, as I assume few if any contributors would not give permission if asked.

bearwithclaws 16y ago

I will email the original author of each articles to obtain the permission to print.

mahmud 16y ago
Please don't contact me. You have my permission to reprint and sell whatever words I posted here on HN .. without attribution :-)
mhartl 16y ago
I hope this works, but my guess is that a minority will say "no", and the majority will ignore your request.
sev 16y ago
The comments on HN are what make HN what it is. Are you going to ask each commenter for their permission as well? Or are you not publishing comments?
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Who owns the comments on HN? the commenter or HN?
  - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
    Adding the best HN commentary would certainly make the magazine more valuable. In many cases, the comments are better than the articles.
    - resdirector 16y ago
      What measure would one use for best-ness? Points? Total karma of the commenter? Length of threads? Editor's choice?
      - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
        Ideally it should be decided by an editor, but that costs time and money. For something more automated, Hacker News already ranks comment threads by some measure of quality so the good stuff ends up on top and the obnoxious/otiose one-liners drop to the bottom. HN lacks an API, but a decent web scraper (like BeautifulSoup) should be able to walk the DOM and grab the top threads. Depending on space restrictions in the print edition, this could comprise: * All comment threads with a score above some threshold; * Only the top thread; * The best one-third of comments; etc.
  - mildweed 16y ago
    The website. They're the ones paying to host your comment (which you gave up freely).
    - 16y ago
duck 16y ago
What about comments? Without them a lot is lost. Also, I know some authors won't give you permission, and thus that means you won't be reproducing the 'best of' hacker news. No thanks.
- swombat 16y ago
  I think it's fair to say that pretty much any decent ideas has about a dozen impossible brick walls preventing it from succeeding, which in hindsight become less important.
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  That's probably the biggest problem. But I'd give it a shot and see how it turns out.
  - chegra84 16y ago
    Maybe just express the sentiments(text analysis) of the replies if they arent giving you permission. I think that is better, since alot of content is generated here.
  - pbiggar 16y ago
    On newstilt, we've written the terms of service so that we can publish comments. We said that by posting you give the service permanent, non-exclusive, transferable rights to edit, modify, distribute, etc, the content. I would ask PG to change the TOS of hacker news, to allow you do this. I think he'd like it, so he may be willing.
    - jamesbritt 16y ago
      And what effect might this have on the people willing to comment? Comments add value to a site, making it attractive to advertisers. That's the exchange. Asking contributors to also allow the site owner to re-use their contributions for other purposes crosses a line for me.
      - 16y ago