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Old 06-24-2004, 11:05 AM
Ottor 246 Ottor 246 is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Somerset, PA
Posts: 200
Scanning the history book

As an undergrad, I was required to take a class on communications law. Here's what I can remember from that class, taken many years ago. Please do not construe this as legal advice, since I am not a lawyer, just a PR flack.

Whether or not GF would have a fit is hard to say. They must, howver, "agressivley protect" their copyright. Faiure to do so will lead to the loss of copyright protection. There was a case several years ago where Disney sued a day care center for painting Disney cartoon characters on their walls. They had to do it, because if they didn't, it would establish a precedent where anyone could use those characters in a similar manner and Disney would have no legal recourse.

The PR coup in that case was that Universal came in and offered them Hanna-Barbara characters (I think) to use instead. It made Disney look pretty bad. The use of the Universal characters was ok, though, because they had permission to use them.

As long as your site is not making money for you, GF would probably only make you remove the material. If you are making money from it, they could probably sue to recover that money, plus real and punitive damges, etc.

That's assuming that someone from GF finds your site and sees the pages, which they might not.

You might be better off to get permission from GF before you start. If you get it, everything would be kosher. Either way, you wouldn't be sticking your neck out.

Also, keep in mind that, as with a term paper, you may quote passages from a book, as long as you attribute them to their source. I'm not sure if there's a limit to how much of it you could quote.

I don't know any more than that. I just wanted to make sure
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