copyright rule

[chess2009]

Hi
When you ask for a person to write what code he/she has written and then ask questions based on his/her code other people can simply copy and paste his code. That is called COPYRIGHT. so you should person to delete his/her code , I asked for you to delete my Getchar putchar code , But I have recieved any answe yet .
Can you please help me about this porblem.
Thank you.

[jonsca]

But I have recieved any answe yet .

Be patient, this is something that is going to have to be looked into by a moderator. One may not be available presently.

[crunchie]

Unless a post breaks the rules, it will NOT be deleted.
From the AUP:

Posts contributed to the community immediately become the property of DaniWeb upon submission. Members may edit their posts for a limited time period immediately after, for the purpose of correcting spelling and grammar mistakes and accidental ommissions. After this initial period expires, posts may only be edited or deleted by DaniWeb team members, and only in cases where they do not comply with our forum rules for the purpose of making said content comply with all rules. As a discussion community, posts contributed by many members work together to form coherent discussions. Altering or deleting individual posts may have consequences that unfairly extend to other members of the community. All members are held responsible for their actions. As always, think before you permanently post something on the public Internet.

[WaltP]

Hi
When you ask for a person to write what code he/she has written and then ask questions based on his/her code other people can simply copy and paste his code.

That is true...

That is called COPYRIGHT.

No, that is not copyright. Copyright is a legal status of intellectual material. If you read the Acceptable Use Policy below you will see under Posting that "Posts contributed to the community immediately become the property of DaniWeb upon submission." Therefore the post is DaniWeb's, not yours. If you post copyrighted material on DaniWeb, you do so at your own risk. Read the rest of the Posting section mentioned.

so you should person to delete his/her code

So how does someone person? How does the verb person relate to delete? Sounds illegal.

[Dani]

You cannot post your code on a public forum such as DaniWeb, receive help with it, and then request that your code be deleted. The purpose of forums is that your question helps not just you but many more people well into the future, as well.

If you don't want your code to be out on the Internet, you should not use forums as a means of getting help. All forums work this way.

[chess2009]

well , I dont want to waste your time any more but I searched about this in google and here what I got?
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread174054.html

[Dani]

Yes, you can edit your post for about 15 minutes after you initially post it to correct spelling and grammar mistakes.

[Momerath]

I find these two statements in the AUP to be contradictory:

...holds no responsibility for anything that is posted by individual members of the community.

Posts contributed to the community immediately become the property of DaniWeb upon submission.

How can you own them and not be responsible for them?

I think you'd be better off with the Geeknet license:

5. CONTENT

All information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or any other materials whatsoever (collectively, "Content"), whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, is the sole responsibility of the person from whom such Content originated. This means that the user, and not Geeknet, is entirely responsible for all Content that he or she uploads, posts, emails or otherwise transmits via the Geeknet Sites. No user shall transmit Content or otherwise conduct or participate in any activities on Geeknet Sites that, in the judgment of Geeknet, is likely to be prohibited by law in any applicable jurisdiction, including laws governing the encryption of software, the export of technology, the transmission of obscenity, or the permissible uses of intellectual property. Geeknet reserves the right to refuse or delete any Content of which it becomes aware and reasonably deems not to fulfill the Purpose. In addition, Geeknet shall have the right (but not the obligation) in its sole discretion to refuse or delete any Content that it reasonably considers to violate the Terms or be otherwise illegal. Geeknet, in its sole and absolute discretion, may preserve Content and may also disclose Content if required to do so by law or judicial or governmental mandate or as reasonably determined useful by Geeknet to protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Geeknet Sites' users and the public. Geeknet does not control the Content posted to the Geeknet Sites and, as such, does not guarantee the accuracy, integrity or quality of such Content. Under no circumstances will Geeknet be liable in any way for any Content, including, but not limited to, liability for any errors or omissions in any Content or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any Content posted, emailed or otherwise transmitted via Geeknet Sites. Each user, by using Geeknet Sites, may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent or objectionable. Each user must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with the use of any Content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such Content.

That way the users are responsible for the content, but you have the right to display or not display it.

[VernonDozier]

I'd say that once someone posts something here, no one owns it anymore, or everyone owns it. You can't really say Daniweb owns them, because then I'd need to get Daniweb's permission to use my own code that I posted, which I clearly don't need. And anyone who decided to copy any code from here wouldn't need anyone's permission. I've had a few people PM me and ask if it was OK with me and if I wanted to be given credit for the code, but that was just them being honest and wanting to give me credit. They certainly had no legal obligation to do so. And a first semester C++ student trying to copyright an Airline Reservations program or whatever, which obviously needed help from more experienced members seems completely absurd. Who but another first semester C++ student would steal from it, and how does that damage the person who posted it? It just seems like common sense that anything you post here is no longer your exclusive property.

[jon.kiparsky]

How can you own them and not be responsible for them?

Nothing very odd about this. When I look at, say, my old DAW science fiction anthologies, I see that the copyright page lists the magazine of first publication as the copyright holder, but nobody would ever suggest that John Campbell was responsible for writing the stories he published in Analog.
It's perfectly standard for sites based on user-generated content to assert a blanket copyright on any material posted, to simplify legal matters. If you don't like that, you're probably going to have to read the terms of use on any page you post to pretty carefully.

Vernon:

I'd say that once someone posts something here, no one owns it anymore, or everyone owns it. You can't really say Daniweb owns them, because then I'd need to get Daniweb's permission to use my own code that I posted, which I clearly don't need.

No, actually that's not true according to the agreement you're entering into each time you post something here. Now, you might contest Dani's ownership of some code that you posted, and you might win that argument, but the fact is that by hitting the "Post" button, you're agreeing to assign your copyright on the material you post to Daniweb.
It might be that the legal mumbo-jumbo needs to be revised, to deal with weird cases, but that's really not worth anybody's time. Really, nobody cares. You're not going to accidentally post the source code to anything you care about, and if you post something to the internet and expect it to remain private you're almost certainly too stupid to write anything worth protecting, and probably too stupid for anyone to bother with. Anyone who posts something to a forum without understanding that it's going to be available to anyone, forever, and then tries to insist that someone remedy their idiocy really ought to go home, sit in a quiet room, and contemplate in minute detail the depth of their foolishness. Since that depth is infinite, this contemplation will be NP-complete, and this will keep them from bothering busy people in the future.

(I recall a recent case where someone had posted company code to one of the fora and wanted it deleted - again, that would fall under the heading of "too stupid for words", sub-categorized under "it's a wonder you can even feed yourself")

[Momerath]

Nothing very odd about this. When I look at, say, my old DAW science fiction anthologies, I see that the copyright page lists the magazine of first publication as the copyright holder, but nobody would ever suggest that John Campbell was responsible for writing the stories he published in Analog.

To extend your analogy some, writer submits article to John Campbell/Analog and their contract says Analog owns the copyright as part of the publishing agreement. It turns out that the writer copied someone elses work. Analog would be responsible for the infringment. Analog would end up paying in the copyright suit (as might the submitting author)

Same with Daniweb, they can't claim ownership and then not claim responsibility for what they own. The site would be better off with a 'common carrier' type of licensing, from a legal perspective.

As for it being common to claim copyright over postings, most sites I visit don't do this. They claim right to publish, but not copyright.

[Dani]

We have encountered the problem before of other sites scraping our posts and duplicating our content, in full, on their sites. A handful of members were very disturbed by this because they felt they contributed to DaniWeb, not this other random site.

This is a fairly common occurrence, and is *VERY* most likely the primary reason why we lost our rankings in Google. Owning the copyright to our content ensures that we can pursue other websites that copy our content, which are ruining our rank in the search engines because of "duplicate content" (a tell-tale sign of a content farm) and pissing off our members. With just the "right to publish", we would have no course of action.

As Jon mentioned, if you don't want to give up the copyright to your company's proprietary code, so that your company and your company alone can decide what to do or not do with that code in the future, don't post it in a public forum.

However, if you post on DaniWeb, understand that you are giving up your rights to whatever you post. DaniWeb holds the copyright to everything posted, and we can choose to do with it what we wish. As far as what that entails, is it currently means that our policy is that we have no problem with people using code published on this site for their personal/professional coding projects. We do have a problem with other websites and publications copying our content and reproducing/publishing/duplicating it. We retain the copyrights to all content so that we can decide when and when not to pursue. Owning the copyright to all content on the site also gives us the peace of mind, as a company, that we 100% own everything that is in our database.

If that weren't the case, I'm sure DaniWeb would have significant been devalued, as a company, having lost half our Google traffic, since our "traffic" is all we would really "own". A company that can say that it owns its own multi-gigabyte database of unique, quality content is very valuable in and of itself.

[VernonDozier]

Let's posit a hypothetical. Let's say I come up with the most brilliant new algorithm for, say, encryption, something more secure and more efficient than anyone has ever come up with. So something someone could actually make some real money on, so a copyright would be really worth something. I'm feeling generous and think that this is something that needs to be shared with the world, so I post it as a snippet. Dani immediately sees how valuable it might be, takes it down, and starts trying to sell it. I'm posting it all over the web, and I get a cease-and-desist letter from her saying it's now her code, not mine, so I'd better stop because she'll sue me if I don't, plus by the way, I need her permission to even use it in my own website.

Or I find a really dumb guy to buy the random-number generator code I posted here and I myself am dumb enough to tell Dani about it. Do I get to keep the money, do we split it 50-50, or do I have to fork over the whole thing?

Has this ever happened in real life?

[jon.kiparsky]

It turns out that the writer copied someone elses work. Analog would be responsible for the infringment.

Okay, I was thinking of a different sense of "responsible" - moral responsibility for a text, which is another matter. Yes, in that case Analog would have published material without permission of the actual copyright holder. I don't know how that would work out in practice, because it's a pretty rare case. The more typical plagiarism case is the "JK Rowling's book is sort of like mine, I want some of her money" case. I actually don't know how responsibility is typically apportioned in those cases.

Same with Daniweb, they can't claim ownership and then not claim responsibility for what they own. The site would be better off with a 'common carrier' type of licensing, from a legal perspective.

From a legal perspective, it's never going to make any difference to anyone. This is a tiny little site that's simply not ever boing to be worth anybody's bother to harrass. There's no blood in this stone, why would you bother?
The only case I can see where it would be an issue would be if you posted code belonging to your employer and they wanted it taken down, so they sued. And then Dani would take it down and say "sorry about that" and it would be done. But that would happen no matter what boilerplate you used, so it doesn't matter much.

As for it being common to claim copyright over postings, most sites I visit don't do this. They claim right to publish, but not copyright.

Maybe so. It's still common practice.

[jon.kiparsky]

Let's posit a hypothetical. Let's say I come up with the most brilliant new algorithm for, say, encryption, something more secure and more efficient than anyone has ever come up with. So something someone could actually make some real money on, so a copyright would be really worth something. I'm feeling generous and think that this is something that needs to be shared with the world, so I post it as a snippet. Dani immediately sees how valuable it might be, takes it down, and starts trying to sell it. I'm posting it all over the web, and I get a cease-and-desist letter from her saying it's now her code, not mine, so I'd better stop because she'll sue me if I don't, plus by the way, I need her permission to even use it in my own website.

Um, yeah, that's what you're agreeing to. Like I say, though, it's hard for me to imagine that you're clever enough to come up with a new encryption algorithm and oblivious enough to have not heard of the GPL.

I'm a writer - that's how I make my living. If I thought my posts here were saleable material, I wouldn't be posting them here. However, if I decided forty years from now that I wanted to issue my "Complete Writings", including all of my postings here, I would in fact have to negotiate with Daniweb to publish them. I'd like to think that they'd be reasonable about this, but that's the deal - they own it.

Or I find a really dumb guy to buy the random-number generator code I posted here and I myself am dumb enough to tell Dani about it. Do I get to keep the money, do we split it 50-50, or do I have to fork over the whole thing?

If you've posted the code here, why is he buying it? Why doesn't he just take it and use it?

[VernonDozier]

>> If you've posted the code here, why is he buying it? Why doesn't he just take it and use it?

Like I said, he's dumb. Sounds like he'd have to buy it from Dani, not me, though.

>> Like I say, though, it's hard for me to imagine that you're clever enough to come up with a new encryption algorithm and oblivious enough to have not heard of the GPL.

Definitely not clever enough to come up with the algorithm. :) I can be pretty oblivious. I believe the phrase is "just smart enough to be dangerous". I might post an encryption algorithm that is immediately broken, so the issue is who gets sued over it. Dani has the boilerplate "not responsible" phrase, so she's safe and luckily I no longer own it, so it would fall to the guy who copied it and used it.

[jon.kiparsky]

You'd get sued for an implementation, not an algorithm. If you sell me an "unbreakable" encryption system and I base my new e-bank on it, and it turns out to have a fatal hole in it, maybe I have legal recourse. If you publish an encryption algorithm and claim that it's unbreakable, it's no more actionable than publishing a "proof" that pi == 3. I might try to redesign the wheel based on the latter claim, and end up with a lumpy wheel, but that's my fault for believing you, not your fault for being wrong.

[Dani]

Let's say you come up with a really crazy algorithm, and you want to put it out there on the web. There are LOTS of places on the Internet to put it. And they are all different. You choose the medium that is most suited to what you want to do with it.

If you want to release it under the GPL, maybe something like Sourceforge.
If you want to sell it, set up an eCommerce website and do so.
If you want to donate it to the DaniWeb community, post it here.

If you choose the latter, it was your prerogative to have chosen to donate it to the DaniWeb community. We're not a monopoly. You're free to do what YOU want with YOUR content that YOU own. Every potential site you can publish to has its own pluses and minuses, and you choose to do what you want with your own content. If you choose to contribute to DaniWeb, you are donating your content to us for use by our community, and giving up your rights to it.

Now let's say that I then saw your really crazy algorithm, and thought, "Oh, I can sell this" and so I took it down from DaniWeb and set up my own eCommerce shop in which to sell it.

I do not claim to know the law, but it my personal opinion that doing so would be akin to the American Red Cross accepting your donation, and then deciding to spend your money paying for the CEO's vacation. That wasn't what you meant for your money to be used for when you donated it.

When anyone contributes content to DaniWeb, they are donating something that they own (their intellectual property) to the DaniWeb community. As such, in accepting the "donation", we have a *responsibility* to ensuring that the content is used in the way that the donor meant for it to be.
In order to keep that promise, we will fight the content scrapers and other publications who publish DaniWeb's content without our permission, to protect our members who knowlingly contributed to DaniWeb for the benefit of our community.

We have VERY strict regulations about "duplicate content", ensuring that everything on the DaniWeb website cannot be found anywhere else on the web. This is one of the fundamental aspects of Google's search algorithm.

[Momerath]

We have VERY strict regulations about "duplicate content", ensuring that everything on the DaniWeb website cannot be found anywhere else on the web. This is one of the fundamental aspects of Google's search algorithm.

Well, some of the content I've posted has appeared on other websites. As you may know this isn't the only IT website, and the same questions are asked in other places which involve the same answers.

I'd also like to point out that your registration process has no link or mention of your AUP.

[Dani]

Our AUP is located at the footer of every page on the site. Upon registration, new members receive an email / PM directing them to read it.

It is fine if nearly exact questions and answers are posted on other sites. I am talking about sites that scrape our content and replicate it, without the permission of us or the posters.

[chess2009]

Hey jon.kiparsky, you could also write the same as others that it is not possible to delete the post instead of saying those nonsenses, I think using proper words is one of the conditions that you should agree in order to be member of any forum. No problem , never mind if you do not have a proper culture , I do not care.

[Ezzaral]

Perhaps you misunderstood what Jon posted? I can't even understand what you're attempting to say here.