May a mental health professional or anyone else for that matter post New York Times articles in a newsgroup environment ?
Posting a New York Times article in a non-commercial newsgroup environment for the purpose of discussion is permitted only when it is not possible to link to the article on www.nytimes.com . Since most articles in the NY Times are also available at the NY Times website www.nytimes.com then even a non commercial group of mental health practitioners MAY NOT have articles posted to their group or listservs.
Another reason why it is not permissible is New York Times articles posted in compliance with their policy must be removed within 30 days, and include the following copyright notice: © 2004 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by Permission.
Most discussion groups, be they on Yahoo or MSN or other servers, archive their posts. There they are not removed with in 30 days but on the server indefinitely. In fact one need only go to internal search feature of these groups and type in a key word or two and copies of an article will pop up years after it was posted.
And, one rarely sees the copyright notice “© 2004 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by Permission”. The reason for this is that permission has not been granted in such circumstances and in fact permission was never asked.
What can you do?
Well for small groups of, 20 or less, you can email an article. The NY Times as well as many news services have an "Email this Article" feature located on the pages of most articles which allows the e-mail distribution of an article to up to 20 recipients. The use of this feature is limited to personal, non-commercial purposes only.
For most situations involving discussion groups of 20 or more members in an email based forum , only the URL may be distributed with a link back to the article on www.nytimes.com . “Under no circumstances is e-mail distribution of New York Times articles to discussion groups allowed without permission.”
Well for small groups of, 20 or less, you can email an article. The NY Times as well as many news services have an "Email this Article" feature located on the pages of most articles which allows the e-mail distribution of an article to up to 20 recipients. The use of this feature is limited to personal, non-commercial purposes only.
For most situations involving discussion groups of 20 or more members in an email based forum, only the URL may be distributed with a link back to the article on www.nytimes.com . “Under no circumstances is e-mail distribution of New York Times articles to discussion groups allowed without permission.”
Example, You may take a relatively small quote from the article such as “It's probably no surprise that doctors are less likely to admit a serious mistake if they think they can get away with it…” and say something like, This is a very interesting article from the NY Times of Sept 9, 2006 that deals with MD’s who would tend to hide their mistakes. But what about the rest of us doctors with PhDs and masters level therapists? Are we any better on admitting when we are wrong? Then you give the URL of the Times article so that the reader can look up the article.
That would be a far more meaningful discussion than simply cut and pasting the entire article with no comment as was done on one group on Sept 9, 2006 on one of the more popular psychotherapist exchange. Lastly, the Times states that “If the above procedures are not adhered to, we do contact the violating party to inform them of their infringement and request that it be discontinued.”
Lastly, the Times states that “If the above procedures are not adhered to, we do contact the violating party to inform them of their infringement and request that it be discontinued.”
Sounds fairly clear however why then is the practice so common?
Common reasons that mental health professionals claim that they don’t get permission to post articles and my response:
Some say they are not aware of copyright laws.
I suspect on some discussion groups that may be the case. However on groups of mental health professionals we have members who all have or should have PhDs and/or at least masters degrees from accredited colleges and universities. Some of have published themselves. Are we to believe that at no time did any of their professors educate them on the importance of intellectual property; or that if we discovered someone taking our published work without permission we would not be concerned? It is a difficult case to make and extremely sad if one could make the case successfully since it is a commentary on our professional education.
It’s too difficult to post the URL.
“Ibid” - If someone with a PhD or masters degree has not learned by now how to set up a hyperlink and they are using a computer perhaps they need to go back to school.
If I only post the URL the members of group won’t read the article.
Well that’s their choice of course. However you always have the option of writing a brief summary and list the main point of the article and then provide the URL. If others still don’t want to click their mouse onto the article either they are not as interested as you on the subject or their suffer from intellectual laziness in which case they are unlikely to bother reading the entire article anyway.
What the harm? It’s not like real stealing is it?
Well when I posed that question to the Publishing Director of the Health Publications division of Harvard Medical School this was his answer. “I realize you’re being provocative here but this “what’s the harm” response is either remarkably naïve or disingenuous and intellectual laziness. It is stealing intellectual property rights. If I go to see my doctor and talk with him for an hour and leave without paying – what’s the harm? He likes to talk and I’m helping him by giving him someone to talk to. I have a car that works fine, so I don’t need (or value) a second car all that much. But, that doesn’t entitle me to drive the new BMW off the lot without making any arrangement with the dealer. It’s stealing. See Copyright Infringement Vs. Fair Use.
The chances of getting caught are almost nonexistent. Name a situation where a mental health professional has ever sued for copyright infringement on the internet or even be asked to discontinue the practice. Riolo is an alarmist.
Well now I think we are getting to the heart of the matter. And frankly they may have a point. While one may find situations in academia where people were too free with taking the intellectual property from others it’s difficult to find a case where anyone on a news group got into trouble. Of course as Ed Colburn of Harvard Publications said, does anyone remember Napster? Again see http://drjohnriolo.newsvine.com/_news/2006/09/13/360133-copyright-infringement-vs-fair-use
In all probability if organizations like the NY Times do not take their policies seriously it is not too surprising that others might not also.
However, if mental health professionals with PhDs and masters degrees who make a living on building the trust of others think that it’s only a problem if we can get caught, what does it say about us?
I will have more to say about that when we discuss Fair Use.
