This week, the View cheaply uses this introductory paragraph to casually mention that the column's name has been changed to reflect its broadening scope and its shrinking reliance on statistics. More importantly, the View takes a good hard look at the copyright issues at h2g2.

There are 10 entries on the What's Coming Up page, compared to 21 last week. And there are 478 entries on the Peer Review page, an increase of 22 since last week. If we add the two statistics together, we get a total of 488 entries, compared to 477 last week.

If there are more threads in Peer Review, that doesn't necessarily mean there are more entries worth considering. For instance, I saw five entriess that had been submitted twice (WJ Linton, Shoplifting, Alcohol, Hillbilly Hollywood, and Rock Music). There is even one entry (Led Zeppelin) that has five different threads in Peer Review. Theoretically, multiple threads are removed by h2g2 staffers after the Scouts spot them and send along a recommendation for removal. After all, most multiple submissions are the result of simple user error. However, it seems many of the multiple submissions have missed the Scouts' careful watch over the past month or so.

I am also seeing an increase in the number of entries submitted that clearly violate h2g2's Editorial Guidelines or the instructions listed at the Peer Review page. I have seen a couple of recent instances where researchers have submitted portions of the Hitchiker's Guide book series. This is considered copyright violation, and certainly doesn't produce an 'original' entry. Also, I have seen submissions of people's personal pages and mere links to web sites the researcher likes. Neither of these constitutes an 'entry' acceptable for Peer Review.

You can see my previous columns if you need more information on How to Submit an Entry for Peer Review or How Peer Review Works and the Top Mistakes Writers Make. I would guess I'm preaching to the choir here. It seems most mistakes on the Peer Review page were made by people who are relatively new to h2g2. It's quite likely that such people haven't found this column yet.

I'm looking for up to 7 additional people planning to submit an entry to the Peer Review page within the next two weeks. Volunteers must be willing to send me a brief email weekly telling me how things are going and how they feel about the submission process. I would like to thank Joanna and Bossel for volunteering to share their experiences and their angst with me in future columns.

If you would like to volunteer, please respond to this thread. I am seeking the widest variety of entries possible, so there is no reason to fear that I will reject your help based on the content of your entry.

Before I head into a discussion on copyrights, I must mention that I am not a lawyer. Nothing written in this entry should be construed as legal counsel. Each person at h2g2 is responsible for their own interpretation both of h2g2's copyright agreement and of this column. Anyone who has legal questions after reading this entry is urged to contact a lawyer in their local area or h2g2's legal department.

A copyright is a legal protection for works of an individual and creative nature. It is an extension of property law, where individuals are given ownership rights over their creative works. The goal is to benefit society by motivating individuals to produce more and better works of art. It is believed that people will be more likely to expend their time and effort on creative works if they feel secure in their ability to profit fairly from them.

Copyright law covers:

• 
  fiction, non-fiction, and poetry
  
• 
  musical compositions, live performances, musical recordings and music broadcasts
  
• 
  plays, movies, short films, and television shows
  
• 
  paintings, sculpture, illustrations, designs, and computer-generated art
  
• 
  web sites and computer software
  

Copyright law varies from one country to another, but most countries have minimum standards for protection as outlined by the Berne Convention of 1886 and/or the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952. The Berne Convention sets minimum copyright protection at the originator's lifetime plus 50 years, and signatory countries agree to uphold copyrights that have not been formally registered. The Universal Copyright Convention sets copyright protection at a minimum of 25 years, and allows member countries to refuse copyright protection unless the creative work has been formally registered with an appropriate government agency.

Both conventions provide methods whereby copyrights recognized in one country are automatically recognized in every other member country. Both conventions allow copyrights to be inherited after the originator's death. And both conventions hold that a copyright holder can sell, lease, or give away their copyrights in part or in full at their leisure. If a country signed on with both conventions, the more stringent Berne Convention rules are the ones that apply.

The internet is a great place to research copyright issues if you are curious. For instance, you can see whether your country participated in either of the international copyright conventions at the International Copyright Law FAQ. You could also check out the Copyright FAQ for the UK or the Copyright FAQ for the US.¹ You could even look online for Places to Formally Register a Copyright .

Copyrights cover works of a creative and sometimes ephemeral nature. Other forms of intellectual property are typically covered by different facets of property law. For instance, practical inventions are covered by patent law. Well-known characters, corporate identities, and brand names are covered in many countries by trademark law. We will not be discussing these, as it is unlikely that anyone will start a home business, develop a well-known cartoon character, or post intricate design specifications for a new widget at h2g2.

Also important, copyright law only covers a specific work. It does not cover the concepts behind the work or the facts contained within the work. For instance, copyright law does not come into play if two different people write scientific treatises making the same discovery, write similar books detailing a famous person or event, or write similar poems with the same enlightening subject or emotion. Copyright only comes into play if the specific words used in the books are so similar that it would have been impossible unless one person ripped off the other person's work.

To summarise, copyright law does not cover:

• 
  practical inventions
  
• 
  corporate identities or brand names
  
• 
  facts or raw data
  
• 
  ideas or concepts
  

Copyright law is important for h2g2, because one of the site's primary functions is to jointly develop a guide to everything on Earth. Such a guide is subject to copyright law, as is the rest of h2g2 -- since it is a web site. If h2g2 did not take special legal action, the company's own members could sue it for taking the entries they submitted to it voluntarily and publishing them online. Because of this, h2g2 asks people to read its copyright clause before accepting membership at the site.

Copyright law is also important to h2g2's members because everything posted to the site is subject to h2g2's copyright clause. The clause could possibly limit the members' ability to profit from their own creative work. The copyright clause covers entries submitted for inclusion to the Edited Guide, entries not submitted to the Edited Guide, community pages developed by users, personal pages housed at h2g2, and all posts within h2g2's forums.

Finally, copyrights are especially important for writers at h2g2, who must worry about infringing upon the copyright of other researchers, internet sites, or books. h2g2's copyright clause does specify that site members must not commit copyright infringement anywhere within h2g2. And anyway, doing so is illegal in almost every country in the world. If a researcher uses facts or ideas they came across elsewhere, they are not committing copyright infringement. If they copy someone's words or images and pastes them into their document, however, they had better have express permission to do so.

Originally, h2g2 took sole copyright of everything produced by its members. This meant that h2g2 could profit from the works posted within the site, but the members who wrote or otherwise created the works could not. There was at least one complaint that this policy acted to supress serious writers. So h2g2 changed its copyright policy late last year to a milder non-exclusive clause.

If you can't remember seeing this clause, it could be that you didn't bother reading the site's Terms of Use when you registered.² You had to click on a button that said you agreed to these conditions before h2g2 would complete the registration process. A summary of the same clause is also conveniently present in the site's help files under Don't Panic: Contributing to H2G2.

Non-exclusive copyright agreements are extremely popular with content-driven web sites and magazine publishers, where work from one location might easily be published elsewhere in addition. Some book publishers and music publishers also use non-exclusive copyright agreements. With a non-exclusive agreement, the author retains their ability to sell their work elsewhere later on. For instance, a researcher from h2g2 could ellaborate on an Entry they wrote about some academic subject and then sell it to a trade journal.

The company granted non-exclusive copyrights will typically reserve the right to profit from the work themselves, to modify the work, and to republish it later in its original or modified form. h2g2 is no different in this respect. In fact, h2g2 goes one step further than some non-exclusive copyright clauses by also reserving the right to resell your copyright to a third party. For instance, h2g2 might sell a number of Edited Guide entries to a book publisher several years from now for a lump sum and/or royalty payments. The authors of those Edited Guide entries would not be legally entitled to seek payment from h2g2 if this occurred.

This is all perfectly legal, since the authors (including you) have agreed to the copyright clause before handing over any creative content. In the words of h2g2, if you do not want your content to become subject to the scenario in the paragraph above, then 'it is suggested that You do not provide such content to the Service.'

This might seem harsh and greedy to someone unfamiliar with common practices in regards to copyright law. But if you get right down to it, most mainstream publishers take an even harder stance when procuring their copyrights. h2g2 can afford to be a bit more lenient since it is not currently paying its authors.

In the same way that h2g2 establishes a contract with its members in regards to copyrights, mainstream publishers also make their content creators sign contracts that include copyright clauses. If they didn't, the originator of a work could sue the publisher in a court of law by claiming that they never agreed to have their work published.

This is important because anyone trying to republish work created at h2g2 will be asked to sign such a contract. Their ability to profit from their work is therefore determined in part by their ability to sign a contract that meets local publishing standards. Such standards vary from country to country and from one publishing industry to another.

In most cases, a publisher's contract that includes a copyright clause will also include terms whereby the company gaining copyright privileges agrees to pay the author. The end result is that the author gets paid according to the contract, and the publishing company gains whatever profits remain after paying the author.

Of course, the content creator does not always get paid and the company does not always profit. Some contracts specifically sign all profits away to charity; others specify that the author can never profit from their work; and yet others actually specify that the author will owe the publishing company money unless their work generates a certain number of sales.³ Contracts involving copyrights can be wildly complicated, so it is important for you to read them carefully and hire a lawyer if you're unsure what you're signing.

Some mainstream publishers will demand either 'first rights' or 'exclusive rights' to the content they pay for. It is very important for members of h2g2 to understand that you can not offer these rights if you have already posted your work to h2g2. Where contracts are concerned, placing your work on the internet is still 'publishing.' And h2g2's copyright clause (which you agreed to) prevents you from owning any 'exclusive' rights to your work.

If a researcher were to sign a contract selling 'first rights' or 'exclusive rights' to work they published at h2g2, they could later be sued by their publishing company for breach of contract. Between the legal expenses and the award of damages to the publishing company, such a law suit could easily cost the defendant more than they profited in the first place. It might even be enough to bankrupt someone who lives on a budget.

Luckily, many publishers do accept 'non-exclusive' copyrights. And the number doing so is growing, largely in response to the new reality of internet publishing. The trick is to explain the necessity for such an agreement as soon as possible in an up-front and honest manner. If a company seeking to publish your work refuses due to the copyright situation, it isn't considered rude to ask the publisher for references to other companies that might be more flexible.

If you hope to have your work published, it is often helpful to research the contract standards for the appropriate industry in your country. The internet and the library are two great places to start. Contract lawyers and industry employees can also be a super resource, if you know someone who knows someone who is one.

The reality is that the huge majority of the content posted on h2g2 is unlikely to be republished elsewhere. A surprising percentage of the words written here are from informal posts in forum conversations. Even after these posts are filtered out, most of the Entries written at the site are unsuitable for mass consumption. Try a few random article numbers if you don't believe me. And even after we narrow the range down to Edited Guide Entries, one must admit that super-short essays are often overlooked in the publishing world.

It helps to remember that h2g2 must pay to have all the casual conversations and unintelligible entries presented online along with the relatively few gems worthy of lengthy consideration and republication. My guess would be that the site is unable to pay its members for their copyrights, in light of the company's expenditures for equipment and personnel.

My positive experiences with h2g2's paid staffers leads me to believe that it holds great respect for the site's members. If it were feasible for h2g2 to compensate writers for their part in aiding the company through monetary payments and/or site-related merchandise, I tend to believe that such a plan would be put into operation. And I'm sure any compensation would be dispensed fairly and retroactively.

However, it would be folly to expect a reward anytime soon. As it is now, h2g2 is a privately-owned business still far away from its goal of presenting a complete guide to everything on Earth. It is not a publicly traded company with an established niche of paying consumers and previously proven products. While h2g2 is growing quickly, it still maintains a relatively small staff and can be assumed to be under various budget restrictions. The reality is that h2g2 may never be able to afford to pay its researchers.

h2g2's non-exclusive copyright agreement allows users to resell the work they publish at the site, but also allows h2g2 to profit from the same material. The agreement is necessary both to run the site without fear of lawsuits, and to provide some hope of eventual profit from the site's contruction and maintenance. However, the agreement is at odds with some of the contracts designed by mainstream publishers.

Researchers should carefully consider the likelihood of republishing elsewhere. If the work they are planning to submit is in a form unlikely to be republished or the author feels certain they will never choose to seek profit from it, there is no reason for the author to hesitate before contributing. If, however, the author plans or hopes to republish their work elsewhere, they should weigh the benefits of publishing at h2g2⁴ against the decreased likelihood of finding a mainstream publisher willing to accept 'non-exclusive' rights.

Researchers should always be careful to respect the copyrights of other people. Copyright violation is a serious legal offense in most countries, and is certainly considered unsportsmanlike conduct at h2g2. Thus, one should get explicit permission before copying anyone else's content. However, it is perfectly okay to incorporate the ideas and facts suggested by others in collaborative forums. While it is considered polite to give due credit to the people who have inspired you, it isn't legally required.

The View will not appear next week because the entire Post is taking a week off. But in two weeks, the View will take its first look at personal user pages. They come in a thousand different flavors. It seems everyone has their own ideal. But are there some things we can all agree on?⁵ I'll take a close look at some of the best and worst things about h2g2's numerous personal user pages in two weeks.

Fragilis the Melodical

Click here to see previous weeks' Views.

Opinions expressed in this column are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of h2g2 or the Post. This entry in particular should not be miconstrued as legal counsel.

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