Please remember copyright laws bind us. While composing your posts, if you use a source, please quote small passage, and link to the rest. Please do not use the “mass copy-and-paste” technique of posting. That way, lawyers stay happy, and life is easier for all.

Thank you.

BUMP

However, please don't post links in an opening post.

If you open a topic that requires a link, please put the link in a separate post.

Thanks.

Hi Boo, and welcome to Fool Moon. How's Atticus?

When search engines such as Google,etc. send out their robots to scan websites for material, the robots look at the opening posts first.

When these robots or spiders as they're now called see many links in opening posts, they make the (often unwarranted) assumption that the site in a transfer site, a link site, in other words, a site which doesn't contain much information of its own, but merely lists other sites which point the reader to the information they want. This puts them lower down in the search page.

Link sites, because people tend to stay on them only a brief time, do not get as much advertising as discussion sites such as Fool Moon.

Finally, clicking on a link takes people out of Fool Moon to another site, and we'd rather have those people stay right here with us.

Since Fool Moon depends upon advertising revenue to pay for our servers and expenses so we can remain a free site for our members, and since FM is not in fact a link site but a true discussion site, it does not benefit us, and in fact harms us, to have links posted in opening messages.

Thus the request to keep links to a minimum, and never in an opening post.

Hope this helps. If you have further questions, please feel free to ask.

Dax

Ah. Makes sense. I wasn't even considering that avenue of thought. Thanks. It had me a bit perplexed.

I think this needs bumping back up the board

Given the whole thing SOPA at the moment, it might be an idea for this to be at the top again.

It would also be helpful to know what the Fair Use doctrine is.




The Fair Use Doctrine is one of the most important limitations on the exclusive rights of the copyright holder. It allows that copyright can be infringed because strict application of the law impedes the production and dissemination of works to the public. The Fair Use Doctrine was added as Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976 and was based on a history of judicial decisions that recognized that unauthorized infringements of copyright were "fair uses."


Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.