Forum reading group possibility?

[Jessica23]

You have to be circumspect about what would be permitted, not only under UK law but also by the website owner & his affiliates.

 

Mantaspook, is this something has arisen before? Do you know what Geoff's views are/would be?

 

I can see completely that there is room for interpretation in the statutes you've quoted from...but I'm still at a bit of a loss as to why publishers would start issuing lawsuits over a common or garden reading group when there are sites out there that contain full works illegally. Surely they'd have bigger fish to fry?

 

Also, do you know how, for example, the national newspapers get round this? Or the academic sites, of which there are hundreds?

 

And while sufficient acknowledgement may be subject to judicial interpretation, I don't see how any fair-minded judge could argue that citing author, title, publisher, place of publication and year of publication (as is standard), couldn't be seen to be sufficient.

 

Confused.

[Mantaspook]

I have noticed that some websites that formally hosted full or part texts have been closed down with a comment like “We have been asked to remove the text by the publisher as the work is still under copyright.”

 

Whilst I agree that it may be unlikely that a publisher would even be interested in a reading group that uses quotations, the law is so nebulous so it may be prudent to establish some clear guidelines to be followed; therefore I have asked Medusa to advise us what the official SF policy would be.

[sauerkraut]

Sorry, folks, for getting the copyright details wrapped round my neck. Those figures limiting the lengths of quotations were guidelines issued by the Society of Authors, not actually part of the Copyright Act itself. There's some more about it here

 

Hopefully it should still be possible to discuss books without direct quotation if need be. But are we allowed to say anything negative or do we have to worry about being done for defamation ??

 

I suppose either way we'll have to hold fire with History man's idea until we have the official SF view on the subject?

[medusa]

Hi folks

 

The idea of a reading group is a lovely one, and I'm sure it would be well supported on SF.

 

However, the legal minefield that exists around copyright law is quite a large issue as to whether a group could be set up- and that's before we start on whether there is a defamation issue surrounding any comments that are negative about a book or an author.

 

For the moment I think it wise to assume that the legal issues are just too complex for a group to be set up on SF. I will ask Geoff to add questions about the group to his list of things to inquire about when he next talks to the legal bods that help him out occasionally, but for the moment I think that the reading group is likely to go into the 'no' pile along with a number of other groups that would be legally challenging.

[Ron Blanco]

The idea may have taken on water but it remains afloat.

 

The idea is now listing badly. Can anything be salvaged from it?

[Conker2]

What happened to this idea?

 

The thread seemed to get bogged down in copyright and legal issues, but I don't see why. I've seen book groups and online reading groups on the web, and copyright and legal issues just don't affect them. They don't have to quote text and they don't seem to worry about defamatory comments. If someone doesn't like a book and says so, this is hardly a sue-able issue. I should think as long as they don't actually spread lies about an author it shouldn't be a problem.