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Old stories
Posted: 29 Apr 2023, 04:06
by Meeko
I have binders upon binders of stories I have printed from old sites like Wetset and Thomas Water. I am planning to use some app that scans the paper and converts the text to PDF (if anyone has any recommendations for a good app to do that, I would appreciate it)
Would I be allowed to share these again here? Giving credit to the original author, of course. I think it’s probably against the rules to repost someone else’s story. But I thought I would ask, as maybe old and new members would enjoy them. I don’t want to break any rules as I enjoy this site
Re: Old stories
Posted: 29 Apr 2023, 07:21
by Lee
I’ve got quite a few ‘paper’ stories too. If there is an app which can convert to pdf, I’d love to know too.
Re: Old stories
Posted: 29 Apr 2023, 08:39
by Fred
Posting those old stories would be great if you can scan your paper copies. I'm sure they can easily print them as PDFs, and I know there are character recognition programs that will make PDFs into editable print. There are probably old stories of mine (under a different name) that I'd be pleased to have reposted!
Re: Old stories
Posted: 29 Apr 2023, 23:37
by Meeko
Thank you.
Lee, there are tons of apps that are meant to do it. I’ve yet to try but I’ll let you know if I find a good one. I know it’s definitely possible to do.
Re: Old stories
Posted: 01 May 2023, 12:52
by Tytn
With UK copyright laws, they usually only allow you to reproduce about 10% of the actual product. If this has been stuff that has previously been publicly available online without any restrictions, then I expect that you will be able to upload those.
What I would recommend, though is having a thorough search online for specific key phrases to see if that information is still online somewhere.
I expect you will want to save the scanned PDFs online on a cloud file storage site, and share the link of the document here.
You will most certainly need to make references to the original source and copyright holder of the material.
If you had it, the full URL, the username and the date it was posted.
Good luck.
Re: Old stories
Posted: 02 May 2023, 10:45
by Brian
So the upshot of what Tytn is saying is that, sadly, we can't put other people's writing on our site unless we can reference the source and copyright holder. And it really needs to be already freely available on the internet so that we are sure we're not illegally copying someone's creativity.
It's a nice idea, Meeko, to share what you have in printed material, but please don't put us in possible legal difficulties.
Re: Old stories
Posted: 02 May 2023, 11:28
by Fred
Brian wrote: ↑02 May 2023, 10:45
So the upshot of what Tytn is saying is that, sadly, we can't put other people's writing on our site unless we can reference the source and copyright holder. And it really needs to be already freely available on the internet so that we are sure we're not illegally copying someone's creativity.
It's a nice idea, Meeko, to share what you have in printed material, but please don't put us in possible legal difficulties.
Chances are, the source site and the screen name of the author are part of the material, and that it was freely available at the time that it was copied. We've never pirated from pay sites that would have some publication rights. I may be wrong, but I don't see a problem in posting material here as long as we include the available authorship information.
Re: Old stories
Posted: 04 May 2023, 09:17
by Brian
Apologies to Meeko and everyone else for the sometimes contradictory responses above to this perfectly legitimate question.
It's generated some discussion behind the scenes and we will post some clear policy guidelines about the issue soon.
Re: Old stories
Posted: 07 May 2023, 09:20
by Brian
Sorry for the delay. We have now finally agreed on how to handle this issue. Hopefully it strikes the right balance between allowing such stories to be scanned in and posted in some circumstances while staying on the right side of copyright issues.
In short: you can scan in printed material written by other people and post it in the "Reposted" section (we have one section here in General & Open and another in Stronger Interests) provided that you can vouch that the material was taken from a website which was freely readable by anyone (not behind a paywall or anthing), and that you identify that website and the author's name when you post it.
The following additional paragraphs have been added to the sticky readme at the top of each reposted section:
Items which have never been freely available online, for example because they are behind a paywall, must not be posted.
Items which cannot be linked because the website from which they were taken no longer exists, or because the item has been removed from the website, can be posted in good faith if the (old) website where they originated is clearly mentioned as well as the author's name. This measure is being taken to allow old pieces of writing which were freely available online, but no longer are, to be posted despite no current link being available.
AUTHORS: If you see your writing posted here and if you feel that it should not be on the site, please make an account here (if you don't already have one) and report the posting by clicking on the exclamation mark above that posting, or send a personal message to any active member of the staff team, and we will remove your work from the site immediately. We take copyright issues on this site very seriously.
