Franc Zabkar writes:

On 10 Apr 2009 17:33:10 -0400, (Samuel M.
Goldwasser) put finger to keyboard and composed:

A couple weeks ago, someone emailed me that chunks of the
Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ were being used by so called "experts" on
justanswer dot com in replies to questions, and getting paid for it!
I notifed justanswer and they did remove the offending posts, but it's
not clear that there was any further action taken, including any
penalty in $$$ to the people doing this, or to justanswer.

And, apparnetly there is no way to search through anything more than a day or
so old to see if there were more copyright violations. So, to keep
watch, someone would have to check through all postings on a daily basis,
which is clearly not something desirable.

It's acceptable to use Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ material privately
for any reasonable purpose. What's not permitted is to benefit
financially from redistributing it, or pieces of it, in any form.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

I haven't seen any of the justanswer postings, but would it be
acceptable to post a section of the S.E.R. FAQ provided that the
poster linked to it, and thereby gave it the attribution that it
deserved?

I do things like that in this newsgroup, but of course I'm not paid
for it.

What the copyright page at www.repairfaq.org/sam/copyright.htm says
specifically is:

"Use of any material from the FAQs in any way, shape, or form without
attribution is strictly prohibited no matter what the intent, even if
free. And not to put too fine a point on it in case this isn't
obvious: This means that it is totally illegal to incorporate *any*
FAQ material in a product or service (or advertising or promotional
material for a product or service) that is sold for profit without
prior authorization - period. In addition, placing FAQ material on a
page with sponsored links as with the Google AdSense program, or for
use as a means of attracting visitors to your Web site to boost
traffic and advertising revenue is also forbidden. Violation of any of
these principles will not be tolerated and legal action will be
considered if a friendly reminder is not adequate to correct the
transgression."

Putting a link in and saying: "Go to this link to find the answer."
is acceptable. They can earn their $9 or whatever doing that. But
coying and pasting blocks of text from the FAQs is not.
But the sort of bozos who knowingly plagerize would never provide a link
since that would take the person to *another* Web site where they could
then find answers for free in the future!

Note that posting sections of the S.E.R FAQ to USENET groups with
attribution is always OK because they are free.

--
sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ: http://www.repairfaq.org/
Repair | Main Table of Contents: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/
+Lasers | Sam's Laser FAQ: http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersam.htm
| Mirror Sites: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_mirror.html

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