copyrights

Good to see that everyone understands copyright issues. Kicha made a valid point in saying that "It takes to be the owner of an IPR to feel the pain when someone infringes that." Really, I would be annoyed to read a story that I had written attributed to someone else or if it has been modified. This has been a reason why I had said we could not simply copy and paste from a website. I know sometimes, you may feel that you want the article to be present so that we can understand it more. But if an article can be found on the net, it would be better if you can just provide a link to it. The least thing we can do is atleast acknowledge the rights the author has. Kicha had rightly pointed out that we often take IPRs for granted. That time has ended. Companies have started /starting to have IPR policies in place. Clients too have started to understand the importance and are now demanding the same. As most of us work for s/w companies, our understanding of Intellectual Property has to be higher than when we were just students. Though it is not enforced properly in our country, plaigarism in college can get you suspended. All universities abroad view plaigarism as a serious crime. This doesn't mean that you cannot quote anybody without permissions. It means that if you can explain an article in your own words, you can do so and provide a link to the original article quoting its source. For example,

The Hindustan Times today reported that Infosys has acquired an Australian IT firm, Enterprise Information Services for 23 million USD. Read the article on Hindustan Times...

Here I am not breaking any copyright laws, I am just linking to an article in a newspaper that is available freely to all netizens. The trouble is when we get articles through mails like Daddy's Day, we do not know who the author was (till now). It is a good idea that Cheryl suggested, Type a few lines of the poem in Google within quotes, you'll get results (with a little patience). It is better to spend a few more minutes online than be stuck with a copyright infringemetn case. BTW, I had mentioned this quite some long time ago about using images. It is also not an ethical practice. When you display an image in a webpage, every time that page gets loaded, the browser tries to display the image from its original location, which might on somebody's server. This uses up the bandwidth of that person. So someone else has to pay for displaying the image in your webpage. It is a bad practice. So when ever you want to display an image, you can link to the picture through text links. There is a wonderful way available on the Internet to share content. It is called Creative Commons. Have a look at this site and the ideas they wanted to share. Update: Before I could post, Kicha had posted the news suing the same method I was about to explain. Meanwhile, Manny, it is your call. Shall we credit the author of the poem (Daddy's Day) properly or remove it and give a link nstead (Rini's suggestion)? You can also put your name under the poem you posted, so that you can slam a copyright infringement case on some poor soul. BTW: Please close the HTML tags you use properly. Now someone has forgot to close an italics tag. Everything is in italics now.