Is a guide an intellectual property?

[ursamtl]

Hi,

Here's a general question for anyone here with legal expertise. Can a member of a forum such as Doom9 claim intellectual property rights for a guide he or she has written in the following context? The guide consists of instructions for the use of software that the guide writer has not created.
The guide is posted as a message on a publically accessible internet forum, such as this one.
The poster of the original guide forum message eventually decides to edit the message by removing the guide. Since it is the first message in a thread, the rest of the thread is rendered substantially ineffective since the root message with the original instructions is no longer available.So, as I wrote above, is there any legal basis for this claim of intellectual property?

It is my understanding from readings I've done on the internet that participants in online forums relinquish copyright to whatever they post on the forum simply by the fact that they participate in that forum. This is much the same as when sending a letter to the editor of a magazine or newspaper. Therefore, in this sense, is it more reasonable to assume that the owner of the forum where the guide is posted is in fact the only party able to claim "intellectual property" rights for a guide posted on his or her forum?

Thanks,
Ursa

[adam]

Publishing a guide on a public forum or sending a letter to the editor does not assign your copyright to the publisher, nor does it make a public dedication of your copyright (AKA- put it in the public domain.) Read just about any disclaimer in a newspaper or magazine and they should say about the same thing... you retain any copyright you may claim but you grant them a license to amend your work and to publish it. Maybe you are thinking along the lines of freelance work, but in that case you are an employee of the publisher so the picture or article is a work for hire and thus the copyright is owned by the publisher. But just publishing your work alone does not have a negative impact on your copyright.

The real question is whether you can even have a copyright in the kind of guide that would be published on a site like this (ie: how to use a chain of software to achieve a certain result.) Copyrights can only subsist in orginal expressions of an idea. An illustration of a process by itself cannot be copyrighted. It is not an expression of an idea to just convey the method by which some software program works, or the chain of commands it would take to convert X to Y. For lack of a better word, these are just "facts" which anyone could determine themself. The compilation and bare expression of these facts constitutes a database which expressly cannot be copyrighted.

Now you can claim copyright in certain elements of a guide, basically in the expression of that database of facts. The idea is that anyone can determine how to convert RM to AVI, and anyone can write a guide explaining the process, but MY guide uses these 5 pictures layed out in this manner, and there's this animated gif running along the side, etc... THAT is the original expression.

If this guide is just some text and screen grabs in a forum thread then there's probably not even anything contained in it that could be copyrighted, but I'd have to see it to be sure. I really can't elaborate anymore without knowing what the actual dispute is. The forum operator wants to publish the guide or an equivalent of it and the author objects? The author wants to exploit his claim of copyright and wonders if he/she has waived any part of it by publishing it?

[ursamtl]

Basically, it was a guide for converting stereo sound files to surround sound using a combination of freeware tools available for download on the internet. The author posted his guide as the opening message of a forum thread in July 2002 even though the use of the software for this purpose was briefly discussed on a professional mailing list in May 2002 (the mailing list is available to anyone who subscribes using an email address). Nonetheless, he recently claimed it was his intellectual property and removed it from a huge thread, thus rendering the rest of the thread pretty useless without the original guide. At no time did the guide contain any statement of copyright. After removing the guide from the public thread, another forum member had a PDF of the thread available for free download on an FTP site along with the freeware tools as a courtesy. The guide author demanded that the guide be removed from the FTP site, again citing intellectual property rights.

[dragongodz]

well a guide or instructions can be copyrighted. take a look at third party books about using programs etc and you will see copyright on them. the copyright is for their instructions on methodolgy and steps etc.

now if posted on a forum becomes the interesting point. if some was answering a question then i dont think you could really call it a guide etc. however being a first post, especially if it says "this is a guide on how to..", then it becomes harder. technically they have still written the guide and not just answered a question so even though its not a traditional format they are still presenting you with their work.

as for the need for copyright to be stated for it to be so...i dont think it does. atleast not in all countries.

[Mug Funky]

hmm... it was posted on a forum, so one can assume that possibly many thousands of digital copies exist in people's browser caches. should they be removed too?

i think the forum's role as publisher comes in here. by signing up to a forum, you tacitly (or explicitly) accept that what you post on that forum will be publicly available. in many ways, the "edit post" function is a privilege. there's a lot of forums out there that don't allow editing of posts.

i think this person owns the copyright on his guide alright, but he has granted the right for it to be copied and distributed for free by posting it in a public forum.

now... does that mean the pdf copy of the thread is a publication in another form? here's where a third party has made available a copy of the original work (plus those from many others, in the form of the replies to the thread). this is a little complicated.

i would tell the person that it's really not worth it, and if they like, they can write another, better guide and not let anyone see it :)

[ursamtl]

Interesting responses. Here are a couple of links to articles concerning this on the web.

http://www.caslon.com.au/ipguide19.htm

http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/05-01/field.html

The guide was removed from the FTP site and a new replacement guide has been written. I was more or less just curious on the overall general issue. It seems to me that if someone writes a public guide on how to use someone else's free software and not for something completely unforseen by the software creator, it's kind if hard to claim the guide is his intellectual property. I've discussed this with one of the software authors and he agrees that the claim is without basis.

[adam]

Originally posted by dragongodz
well a guide or instructions can be copyrighted. take a look at third party books about using programs etc and you will see copyright on them. the copyright is for their instructions on methodolgy and steps etc.

Like I said, the copyright is for their expression of those instructions on methodology and steps, not on the steps themselves. There is nothing preventing someone else from writing a book detailing the exact same methodology, the copyright just prevents people from substantially copying the source. A book is typically going to be divided into chapters, with a table of contents, and with certain introductory material and thorough analysis of each of the steps. Those are the types of things you would look at to see if it has been substantially copied. If the forum post we are dealing with is nothing more then a how-to (click this, then this, then this) then it likely cannot be copyrighted.

Originally posted by dragongodz
as for the need for copyright to be stated for it to be so...i dont think it does. atleast not in all countries.

Exactly, it depends on the country. Some countries like the US use the creation rule meaning that the copyright was created as soon as he made the guide, even before it was actually posted. Other countries use a pure notice rule meaning that you can't prove you have your copyright until you have published it with express notice language such as, "all rights reserved."

Rather then worry about which rule controls, just do the safe thing and respect the author's wishes. Remove the PDF showing the exact post he made. Make your own similar guide using his as inspiration. Don't copy his, just use it to learn the steps and then make a new guide from this knowledge.

[Doom9]

I don't recall the specifics, but since the people running a forum are at least partially responsible for their member's post, that makes them at least partially the copyright owners as well. As a general rule I'd say you're at least not as much protected as when you publish a guide on your own site. In fact, the signup procedure often involves relinquishing some rights explicitly (forum operators have the right to remove or edit).

[adam]

A copyright can only be held by one individual or a corporation, it cannot be shared. A forum administrator does not gain any copyright, or part of a copyright, in the material published on that site by its users. Its analogous to the "letter to the editor" example posted above. The forum administrator is granted, either expressly or implicitly, the right to publish the material and the right to amend it for use with that publication, ie: edit, move, lock, etc... But the copyright is still completely with the author. They have not relinquished any of their rights, they have simply granted you a license to do certain things with the material. So a forum administrator probably does have the right to continue to publish a guide even after the author has requested that it be removed...but this example presented is a little different since the forum administrator is arguably publishing a copy of that guide.

[dragongodz]

It seems to me that if someone writes a public guide on how to use someone else's free software and not for something completely unforseen by the software creator, it's kind if hard to claim the guide is his intellectual property. I've discussed this with one of the software authors and he agrees that the claim is without basis.
sorry but thats wrong. look at all the books published by third party companies and look at guides written by people such as Doom9. they do not need to be the programmer to write a guide and have copyright for their work. so thats irrelivant.

If the forum post we are dealing with is nothing more then a how-to (click this, then this, then this) then it likely cannot be copyrighted.
depends on the detail aswell. if it is a simple press button A and then button B then indeed it may be iffy. if great detail is given on what to do and how then this where it becomes unknown.

the complicated part is that it was posted on a forum. if the author had just posted a link to a page that was the guide then i dont think any of us would disagree he would have the right to say who else could publish or ditribute in another form(such as a pdf) the guide. in the end it is probably easier to just respect the authors wishes and either get someone else to write a replacement guide or to find and provide a link to one on the same subject.