Newsletter User Agreement when Uploading

[wendyleewagner]

This evening I started to upload our RS newsletter to our ward newsletter page. After the file uploaded, I got a message prompting me to agree to the User Agreement. When I read the agreement, it says I agree that I am the author and owner of all content in the newsletter. As the newsletter includes the Visiting Teaching message verbatim, I am unsure if I can upload the newsletter.

Does anyone know whether this would be allowed? How about if other materials, such as a conference talk, is used extensively (albeit not in its entirety.)?

[aebrown]

I got a message prompting me to agree to the User Agreement. When I read the agreement, it says I agree that I am the author and owner of all content in the newsletter. As the newsletter includes the Visiting Teaching message verbatim, I am unsure if I can upload the newsletter.

I am not a lawyer, but in my opinion, you're totally fine with uploading that newsletter under the doctrine of fair use, as long as you are clearly citing the copyrighted work (making it clear what part of the content is quoted, and where it comes from).

[russellhltn]

I believe the heart of the issue is copyright, which is intended to protect the author from unauthorized distribution. I think citing fair use may be a little iffy when you're re-publishing the whole thing.

However, since it's church content intended for public viewing, I wouldn't worry about it. Anything else, I'd get permission.

[aebrown]

II think citing fair use may be a little iffy when you're re-publishing the whole thing.

But it's only the whole VT message, which is a small subset of an Ensign. So I think it does apply. Regardless of the precise legal principle involved, since the copyright holder is the Church, as long as you cite the source, it's pretty safe to assume that the Church is okay with such use.

[eblood66]

II think citing fair use may be a little iffy when you're re-publishing the whole thing.

But it's only the whole VT message, which is a small subset of an Ensign. So I think it does apply.

There is actually a 4 part test for fair use and amount of the material quoted is only one component. It is possible to quote an entire work and have it be fair use (depending on the other factors) and it's possible that quoting only a small amount is not fair use (depending on what is quoted and the other factors). I'm not a lawyer either but I have read a lot about fair use and I'm not sure this use would qualify when looking at all 4 factors.

Regardless of the precise legal principle involved, since the copyright holder is the Church, as long as you cite the source, it's pretty safe to assume that the Church is okay with such use.

Right. In fact, the church has explicitly given permission for this kind of use from a copyright perspective. Every printed copy of the Ensign includes this notice on the title page:

Text and visual material in the Ensign may be copied for incidental, noncommercial church or home use. Visual material may not be copied if restrictions are indicated in the credit line with the artwork.

There isn't really even a requirement to quote the source but that's always the ethical thing to do (and in this case the whole point is that it came from an authoritative source so you would naturally want to do that).