I keep seeing stuff about copyright worries and reposting things from
books, articles et. al.  While I'm no lawyer, I did a little research on
Copyright laws when I worked as a computer tech in my college's library.
I didn't go in depth, but I believe that it is not a copyright violation
if you are reproducing an article or section of a book, with proper
quotation punctuation and article information for a non-commercial
publication (which the FML could clearly be defined as).  The article
information in the case of the NY Times article, would have to include
(at the very least) the authors name, the proper title of the article,
the publication it appeared in and the issue, section and page the
article appeared on.  It could also include, although I don't think this
is _absolutely_ necessary for a well known publication like the NY Times,
the publisher's info which would be taken from the second or third page
of the publication.
 
        If the post includes all of these things and is properly quoted, then I
don't think there is any danger of copyright law violation.  If there is
anybody out there who knows more about this, please let us know.
 
[Moderator's note: The article as sent to the FML didn't include most of what
you say is required, but of course I could have corrected that.  You may very
well be correct that it would be OK - I simply don't know for sure and my
primary goal here is to keep the FML alive and myself and CUNY out of trouble
even if that means erring on the side of caution.  If I get a definite opinion
from, say, CUNY's legal department, I will let you know.  BIG]
 
        One note though.  (This is true, at least for college papers where they
call it plagarism, but is still copyright violation.) A paraphrase of an
article without the proper acknoledgements to the original author and/or
direct quotation where non-common words or phrases from the original are
used because translation is not possible, _is_ a copyright violation as
far as I know.
 
        Regarding the NY Times article, it is stated at the very end of the
article that the case was brought against the city by ferret owners in
response to a case brought against one ferret owner for refusing to turn
in his pet to authorities.  The case started 3 years ago (according to
info in the article) and ended up in Federal Court (I am assuming based
on the fact that a federal judge ruled).  My guess is that in the case of
a suit being filed against a city government (the ban was brought by the
NY city government not just the Health Dept.), the courts in that
jurisdiction are probably not considered impartial as the local court
system is run by the city.  I'm assuming (I know I shouldn't be, but I
wish I had fact) that a case like this would go to Federal Court for an
impartial ruling.  Either that, or some of the information we are missing
is that after going through the appeals process in city court, they
probably hit the maximum number of appeals on the same case and had to
appeal to a higher court.  Any lawyers or law buffs out there who can
corroborate or refute these assumptions?
 
Sorry this was long and only slightly about ferrets.
 
Jim Makowski
[Posted in FML issue 1101]