Plagiarism, Image theft, Copyright, royalties... |
You do not have the rights except if this music is free of rights. The majority of famous music: Film OST, singers... are not free, that means that to use them in its entire legality you must pay the author or at least to ask him for permission. CAUTION: If you put a copyrighted music you will be the only responsible in front of the law. The author can sue you. - Do I have right to put an image or a text on my forum? When you wish to put on your forum an image or a text you haven't created yourself, you : - ask the author for permission. - if it gives it to you, quote your sources, for example by putting a link to the site or forum where it comes from. - I saw that another forum took images or texts from me, what can I do? 2 solutions: > if you are the author of its images or texts, i.e. that you completely manufactured them, and that you can prove it in front of justice (copyright registration, royalties...) contact the admin site in question and say him that these images belong to you and that if he does not withdraw them you will lodge a complaint. > if you already had "stolen" its images elsewhere, from a phpbb theme or other, you can't do anything since you are not the author. The same if you cannot prove by a legal means that these works belong you. - How then I to protect my forum from plagiarists? To protect you you have several solutions: > to install an anti-right-click, it will work only on the indez page of the forum, but it is already a small protection. > When you create your own images you can insert in a discrete way your name, forum address, forum title... If somebody steals your image he will have to touch it up before putting it and he may be discouraged. > the safest way however remains to formally do a copyright registration with qualified people. It is not free. You will easily find addresses of companies in google (which is your friend, I point out it to you). - What is bandwidth theft? Everything you put on the Net has an address of type http://... this address proves that the image, the text, the music is hosted on the Net. Hosted means that somebody took this element on his computer and putted it on the Net. Each time you see the image or hear the music: your Internet browser goes at this address and charges what it is necessary for the place or it is necessary. Certain hosters make pay their loading according to the number of visits. I.e. If 1 person sees the image, the webmaster which made the site will have to pay 1 cent and if 50 000 people sees the image it will have to pay 50 000 cents, so be it 500 dollars. If you do not host yourself this image before putting it on your forum, the webmaster will have to pay when the image loads on its own site (what is normal) but also when this image loads on your forum. That is not only unfair but more, it's illegal. If you have the authorization to take an image: make a right-click on it, choose "Save As", give it a name. Then host it by your own means. - Can EditBoard help me if I discover a plagiarism of my forum? EditBoard will not be able to help you because it does not have the proofs that it is the other one who plagiarizes and not you. You must thus settle this kind of business by discussing with the admin of the forum in question and lodge a complaint if you have the means to do it. - is EditBoard responsible if a admin puts images which are not free of right? When a admin is registered with forumactif it accepts a chart that says:
That means that only the admin of the forum is responsible if he contravenes its measures. If a admin does not respect this chart, he may be sued but EditBoard can't be sued instead of him and EditBoard will not be able to sue the admin in your place. - What can I do if I see an illegal forum? If you see a forum which seems to contain illegal elements (illegal downloads, racism, pornography...), send a private message to a moderator while giving him: - the address of the forum in question. - the link to the illegal topics. The moderator will transmit to the EditBoard admins. You must know that the illegal forum will not necessary be removed immediately.
EDIT by Katt : I add this reminder to make it clear about the delay after sending a report : Most of all, it's useless to send the PM twice, three times, four times ! The moderators and admins have a private life and they all don't live in the same time zone, so they can't always respond in the following minutes, so it's useless to re-send a PM to the same person 1 hour after the first one ! |
This tutorial was written by Maélya. |