Would we be within our legal right to ignore VOA's request not to abridge or edit their public domain content?
We want to adapt and sell public domain content from VOA (voanews.com).
They say, "You are welcome to use any material that is published by voanews.com…There is no need to request further permission…" But "we ask that you not abridge or edit any VOA material which you may use." They also add, "All text, audio and video material produced exclusively by the Voice of America is public domain."
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/disclaim.cfm
Would we be within our legal right to ignore this apparent gentleman's request not to abridge or edit their public domain content??
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M$7 Answers
The first is rather small and easy to avoid, but you should be aware of it, and that is whether or not the material has a public expectation of conforminty to a standard of accuracy around it.
For example, you can't take the story of Santa Clause and how he lives at the North Pole and has a shop of elves working for him, and rewrite the story to change his suit to green, his workers to groundhogs, and his reigndeer to kangaroos. In Australia, a songwriter came up with a song about Santa Clause, saying that when he entered the southern hemisphere he unhitched the reigndeer and hitched up white boomers (albino kangaroos), and a group in Australia challenged the radio stations to stop playing the song because it was messing up their kids' heads who'd been taught that Santa Claus uses reigndeer. Eventually the musician got to keep playing his song, but only after appeal. The first Judge sympathized with the common folks' expectations of how the story should be kept intact.
The second, more important, and more likely to be relevant in your case is whether or not your jurisdiction is a signator to the Uraguay round of the GATT.
If so, then even if someone says in passing something like, "Oh go ahead and use what I just said", in fact, what's called the *moral* right of intellectual property rights remains with the creator of the intellectual property, even if they've given away a *copyright*, unless they've explicitly signed a document saying that you can chop up their stuff.
I've seen cases like this, where the original owner of the intellectual property didn't know he had that right, and thought he'd given away the ability to stop someone else from butchering his material because he'd made a public announcement that it was okay for people to "re-use" his content, and he was really depressed until a lawyer in international law overheard him sobbing into his beer, and said, "Did you *sign* a document telling *that person* that he was, in addition to getting a copying, also getting the *moral* rights to your material?"
The depressed person went "Huh?", and the lawyer said (in so many words) "Although it can be said that you gave away the *copyright* when you made the public announcement, that's not the same as giving away the *moral* right to the material, because since the Uraguay round of GATT, the *moral* right has been ensconed and can only be given away with a physical demonstration of intent in the form of a signed document where you're passing the *moral* right over. You can stop the plaguarist's butchering of your material by saying that he's offending your *moral* position. He can copy it, but he can't change it, and editing out bits and pieces is changing it!"
And so, the original creator of the content was able to get the plaguarist to stop chopping up his material because he hadn't signed over the *moral* rights, although he couldn't stop the plaguarist from copying the content whole-hog, because he *had* publicly given away a *copyright*.
In other words, if you're living in the USA, which is a signator to the Uraguay round of the GATT, then although VOA has given away the copyright, they have *not* given away their *moral* right to the material unless they've signed a physical document saying you can chop things up.
VOA is broadcast all over the world, so if you're not living in the USA, then find out if your country signed the Uraguary round of GATT. If it did, then you can copy VOA pronouncements in whole, because they have given away copyright, but they have *not* give you access to the *moral* right of the material without a signed document, and *moral* right is what you need to edit content when they've said as part of the copyright giveaway not to edit content.
If your defense would be to try and say that you had not offended their *moral* sensibility by chopping up their content, then given how they explicitly *said* that it's okay to copy, but only if copied in whole, that basically makes it impossible for any Judge to think you haven't offended their *moral* right, which is *not* the same as the *copyright*!
So... if you really want to chop up and edit their material, you have to send them a fax requesting permission, and they have to send you a legally signed document saying it's okay, otherwise, until then, all you can do is use their giveaway of the copyright as they say, which is to copy it in whole.
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M$This is an understandable definition of what "public domain" means legally:
-- Quote
Put simply, the public domain consists of works that aren’t protected by copyright or by other legal means. You are free to use public domain works however you wish, without seeking permission, because ...
* their copyrights have expired; or
* the copyright owner didn’t follow certain required formalities (so they didn’t get a valid copyright); or
* the works weren’t eligible for copyright in the first place; or
* their creators dedicated them to the public domain.
-- /Quote
http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/definition-of-public-domain.html
However, it's quite possible that the material is not fully in what is legally defined as the public domain, but only made available under a generous licence. For example licenses like Creative Commons or GFDL can give you plenty of rights to re-use material but still stipulate certain legally binding conditions.
VOAs copyright statement also points out that some of the material on their site is not owned by them, and is used under licence, for example:
-- Quote
Associated Press: VOA has a license from Associated Press to use AP photos and graphics. All AP material is copyrighted and the property of Associated Press, and may not be copied, published or redistributed without the written permission of Associated Press.
-- /Quote
If you are copying stuff from their site without full awareness of where it comes from and who owns it, you could be stepping on a legal landmine.
If you are planning on doing this on a large scale, esp as it is for commercial purposes, I would suggest you both discuss what you plan with VoA and get legal advice.
It's probably going to take a lawyer to determine if saying something like "We are putting this work in the public domain, but we ask that you don't do X" is actually putting it in the public domain in legal terms, which means renouncing all rights, unconditonally and forever.
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M$If you adapt there content on your website just be sure that it is factual and not missing any information to avoid any sort of legal mishap related to distorting information. If you use information from there website and present it in a distorted, nonfactual manner to suppose for example enforce a point made in a highly opinionated article it could potentially be considered slandering.
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M$
Having read the VOA disclaimer (i.e., your link), it is clear that they are only suggesting that you follow their (I don't know from where you got "this apparent gentleman") guidelines concerning their text, et al., and, as such, you are free to do as you wish, but, I am wondering why you wouldn't honor this reasonable request?
On the one hand, you asked the question rather than just "steal" their property, so you seem to be doing the "right" thing, yet I can't imagine why you wouldn't do as they request.
On the other hand, I wonder why (or even how!) you intend on making money from copying their material, which, by the very nature of your actions, is plagiarism, regardless of the accessibility of the source.
Keep in mind that much of VOA's material comes from private news sources other than that of the public domain, and, as such, you might get hit with a copyright infringement from someone other than the VOA, whether or not you charge clients/customers for it.
Furthermore, since the vast majority of people with internet access can get similar information free of charge (excluding the cost of the internet service provider, of course), I don't understand how you think you're going to make money off it!
In conclusion, you would be within your legal right to ignore VOA's request, within the limitations set forth in their disclaimer (I strongly recommend that you re-read it carefully; it is not as all-encompassing as you believe), but, you risk potential lawsuits from other, non-public domain sources, and, with all due respect, your venture seems to be doomed from the onset, per the above paragraph.
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M$
Thank you to all of you who have replied so far. Great responses. I tried to make my question as short as possible, and so I have left room for some misunderstanding.
Here's some background.
(1) We provide stories for English language learners at our website. We divide the stories into levels based on lexical frequency; thus, using a lexical profiler, we can rewrite stories (from VOA for example) where we use only the top 1000 most frequently used words in English. We could theoretically rewrite the story into 5 levels of difficulty, and this is very helpful for language learners. Learners can read stories at just the right level for them where they do not need a dictionary. There's more theory and rationale behind this, but that's the basic idea. The VOA special English stories also match the themes and categories at our site, and of course their odd public domain statement made us curious that they might be good for adapting for our English language learning site.
(2) We wrote VOA months ago, and they have ignored our request to use the materials. We have scruples, and want to honor their request not to edit or adapt their "public domain" materials, but also thought the request was odd. We are also scholars and acknowledge our sources. But we (a) would do a lot of work adapting these stories into levels; (b) in some cases actually improve the quality of the writing, and (c) add our own audio and photos; therefore, we were thinking about how we might adapt, edit, and possibly sell our versions of the stories to potential premium users at our site.
I hope that clarifies a little. BTW, I wrote John C. Dvorak on this, and gave his typical cranky geek response. I quote: "cripes.. public domain is public domain."
Simply put, you can not sell something someone else created, even if you adapt it. That would be like me changing the names in a Stephen King story placing it Hawaii instead of the Bahamas and taking credit for it. Even if the information is public domain you have to site the information and link to the original & I doubt your paying customers would stick around when they are getting recycled free information.
You can however link to the VOA and write commentary or editorials based on the content, it will be a much safer and more ethical business model.
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M$
As philipy points out, your example is incorrect. Stephen Kings' work is not in the public domain. It is copyrighted material. As for your main point, if it is in the public domain you can do with it as you will. You can even edit and modify it, changing it sufficiently that it is now copyrighted by the modifier, at which point you can sell rights to it. It is even possible to sell public domain information if people are willing to pay for it. For example you can take public records and make sorted data packages to sell to your customers.
This is incorrect by the very definition of "public domain".
It is interesting to note that VOA uses AP data and that is what makes this a bit of a minefield, You covered that point nicely. ^_^
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M$
Omicron,
I appreciate the effort you put into your answer, but there are a number of unsupported assumptions in especially in the "personal note" part of your answer. To be brief, we do not aim to reduce the vocabulary of our stories to the top 1000 words. We grade the stories into 5 levels, and the lowest uses the top 1000 words. The point is to make texts that learners can enjoy at their level, and as they improve they can move to higher levels.
Your Newspeak idea is rather humorous. It makes me smile because it's I'm sure you can't be serious about that one. Anyway, our site is about the liberal arts and sciences, and implied in that is something rather opposite from the purposes of Newspeak.
Cheers,
JP
PS: Our question was about whether we could use content that is in the public domain. VOA has virtually said, "this is public domain, but we request that you treat it as though it is not." We were curious about this, and wanted to ask for the wisdom of the crowd.
Thanks to all of you for reply. Best Answer choice coming soon.
Implied in such questions is that you should justify your answer and, where appropriate, cite sources to support your position.
@omicron and everyone else who thinks this is great answer, go vote for the nomination here
not often heard about but very true