[JONAT] Copyright caution

[jonat@autox.team.net]

Alan:

I've been a working journalist in Canada for close to 30 years. Won many awards for writing and, recently, named an
editor of the year.  Here's how copyright works in Canada.....
If the story is written by a staffer, copyright belongs to the publication and to nobody else. If the story comes from a
freelancer there is often a one-time only copyright to the publication, with copyright otherwise being held by the
freelancer. Freelance arrangements, however, can have a wide range of copyright priviledges.
Basically, if you post/publish something that you do not have upfront legal rights to, you are exposing yourself -- and
everybody else who played a part in posting the previously published work -- to legal damages. It's a crap shoot, do you
want to take a chance  ... because if it goes wrong it can cost you and others a lot of money.
 Now, one way of getting around it is for you to write a report yourself and post that, focusing your legitimate and
legal report on the first one. As in ...."The Beamville Bugle gave great coverage to the JONAT tour recently. The report
mentioned .... etc. etc."
I can assure you Alan that at our daily paper and, in fact, across our chain of daily papers, copyright is taken very,
very seriously.  Improper use of our content is seen as theft, intellectual theft, because it is.
Do you take a chance? Do you not take a chance? It's your call....
If you have any questions, I'll be pleased to try and answer them.

Good luck
Jeff Booth
Slot Editor / News
Major daily paper/Ontario
Assistant Sector Co-ordinator/Toronto Sector JONAT



>
> On Wed, 2004-07-07 at 13:44, SidPacks@aol.com wrote:
>
> > Victor...good point on the copyright issues.  I suspect we have enough IT
> > types on the ....
>
> My daughter the journalist just arrived from Ottawa.  She tells me the
> story copyright may belong to the paper and it may belong to the
> author.  It depends who 'pitched' the story.  In the case of the story
> she wrote for the Ottawa Citizen, she pitched it, so she owns the
> copyright.  Feel free to reproduce it on the jonat site.
> She also said that even when the paper owns the copyright, they usually
> don't mind if it appears on other websites as long as some credit to the
> paper is given - "Story originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen" for
> example.
> Whether the rules are different in the US I don't know.
>
> Alan Heartfield
> Winnipeg SC
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