Exposure to the general public??

Marilyn Porter · Member

Exposure to the general public??

dave06 · Guru

Marilyn I back you up 100% on this, surely what is said in the confines of the forum should stay ( one would have thought ) with the target populace, in this case the grey nomads, if it is open slather and able to be shorcutted by a google search then one must watch ones P'S & Q'S, something that me and my big mouth cannot do, this situation opens one and all up to all sorts of litigation proceedings, if one does not choose ones words very carefully, I did exactly as you said and indeed came up with your comments (as well as everyone elses) I also find this rather alarming

Webmaster · Guru

Hi Marilyn,
I agree with you that posts from this forum should not suddenly appear elsewhere without being 'authorised' to do so by the original author. I can only assume that someone has cut and pasted your comments and then put them on another site without asking ... it's bad form, if nothing else. I couldn't actually find the site you mentioned. Perhaps if you could either post or email me the link, I will write to the website involved and make the point to them.

Basil Faulty · Guru

This happens, yes there can be litigation... There has been litigation....The rules of copyright are quite clear, no one has any legal rights to cut and paste any remarks, posts etc to anywhere without first getting approval and "release" for them to do so. You can complain to ACMA about this but chances of them doing too much are limited. http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/HOMEPAGE/

It has happened to me quite a bit, where I have been asked a question on a forum, given an answer and discovered thst the person has taken my post and quoted it verbatim elsewhere even in one case some bloke was writing a book on "problem solving on the road" and had hoped that it was OK for him to make money without giving any credit to me.

One has to remember that all these fora are vitually public and no one knows who is who or what in strict reality so Marilyn it is always best to assume that someone and not necessesarily "Big Brother" is watching. Believe me when I say you are not the first to discover this annoying little visissitude of the "NET".

Marilyn Porter · Member

Type in Google: Forensic Services Police Bush Safari. Scroll down & you will find my forum question: What are you doing during the NSW Sept/Oct holidays? Click on. What do you think?

Basil Faulty · Guru

Marilyn Porter wrote:

Type in Google: Forensic Services Police Bush Safari. Scroll down & you will find my forum question: What are you doing during the NSW Sept/Oct holidays? Click on. What do you think?

Unless you gave permission then this is a breach of copyright. I'd politley, but firmly ask them how it got there and if you want it removed then direct them to remove it.

Basil Faulty · Guru

I just typed into Google "Magic Place you have been" and got this result:

MAGIC Place you have been... - The Grey Nomads Forum

Post Info, TOPIC: MAGIC Place you have been... Basil Faulty Senior Member Posts: 120 Date: 06:45 PM Jul 6, 2008 Views: 441. MAGIC Place you have been. ...
www.activeboard.com/forum.spark?forumID=51933&p=3&topicID=18827546 - 54k - Cached - Similar pages

Obvoiusly Google searches everywhere....

Webmaster · Guru

Hi Marilyn,
I see now what you mean - it's not a cut and paste issue, it's a link to our forum which actually comes up in Google. I don't know if there's too much we can do about that - as Basil suggests, I guess Google gets everywhere. I've tried Googling a few other topics and found that they didn't come up, (except of course the Magic Place post).
I'll contact the hosts to see if there's anything we can do to protect our forum and will let you know.

twobob · Guru

Marilyn

I did a google on you, apparently you are a Doctor (Pediatric Gastroenterology, Pediatrics), and an Artist, a Loans officer, A black woman (who is deceased) and a high profile business woman.

Me, I am just twobob - comedian (apparently) - sorry Basil - just did not have enough memory to search your name

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

Anything that is published has the potential to be on the www.
Most things that are publically available will finish on the www, this includes any club minutes and all forums, including this one which is a public forum, open to anyone to access.
It is a fact of life in the age in which we live.

Cheers,
Peter.

dave06 · Guru

quite right, but a direct link is not legal, nor warranted, it is a breach of copyright

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

dave06 wrote:

quite right, but a direct link is not legal, nor warranted, it is a breach of copyright

I'm not sure, dave06, but I don't think that is correct.
Everything on Google is a direct link.
Reading it or linking to it is not a breach of copyright, copying it (and then pasting it) certainly is.
It is a bit like someone taking your photograph in a public place and then publishing it. It is not nice, but there is nothing that you can do about it.
The fact that registration and signing on is necessary to access this forum (and most others) might help to 'lock it up' though, let's see what the Webmaster can find out.

Cheers,
Peter

dave06 · Guru

well I'll reword it, it doesnt seem right, somebody has done something somewhere or there would be direct links to all of our threads, I have googled a few others and there is not that many that come up

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

dave06 wrote:

it doesnt seem right,

We agree!

Cheers,
Peter

Basil Faulty · Guru

Yep it aint right....I am going to prepare and provide some, well yuppies and those who hold business meetings in Public Coffee Shops would call them "Tools" and hopefully I can offer some advice and we can "workshop" these problems. Maybe it will help some of you who are just too trusting, I have learnt from very bitter personal experience just how smooth, devious, underhand, deceptive, nasty, sleazy and generally unsavory some people can be on the internet. It may take me a while to get this together but I hope some good can come of it. Since a particularly nasty experience I have become somewhat of an internet vigilante and have gone out of my way to have sites that are offensive, or cheat, phish et al shut down with some degree of sucess. It is hard - a while back I directed another forum member to another forum like this for him to have a look, I had a good snoop around and discovered that even though I am very broad minded there were topics being discussed that were really sickening, specifically a fully detailed "report" of a sexual encounter with an intelectually handicaped woman, I had the site closed but it is now up again but with limited topics....
Now to each his own, but there is a line that not even I would cross, Marilyn has shown us another, somehow her post on here got put elsewhere and she is disturbed by this, quite justifiably, lets see if we can find out how this happened?

dave06 · Guru

perhaps a name and shame plus disbarring from the site for the guilty culprit would be called for?

Basil Faulty · Guru

dave06 wrote:

perhaps a name and shame plus disbarring from the site for the guilty culprit would be called for?

At the least, I think that public exposure would be quite legally defensible too....

Webmaster · Guru

The forum helpdesk has come back to me and said that, unfortunately, there is nothing they can do to stop Google from searching our forum. However, one of our members suggested that Google only searches the first topic on each page, so all the posts which appear in the 'sticky' posts are the most likely Google targets. I will close those sticky posts off and ask people to create new topics instead. I'm not sure if that will solve the problem, but we can try it.

Basil Faulty · Guru

Webmaster wrote:

The forum helpdesk has come back to me and said that, unfortunately, there is nothing they can do to stop Google from searching our forum. However, one of our members suggested that Google only searches the first topic on each page, so all the posts which appear in the 'sticky' posts are the most likely Google targets. I will close those sticky posts off and ask people to create new topics instead. I'm not sure if that will solve the problem, but we can try it.

It will probably stop it. Then on the other hand you may also limit the forums abilty to grow or find new members if you don't allow some ability for Google to find us, eg a potential member Googles a query I would have thought it would be good if this site got the hit rather than some other site. I believe that maybe we should just be aware that this is happening and perhaps be a little more circumspect in what we post (Me included). We have to realise that whatever you post in any of these forums is virtually in the public domain.

Maryilyn's problem was really not a Google problem rather someone had copied and pasted her post onto another site, and that is very difficult to stop.
One way of stopping or limiting the theft of material is to create the various sub fora within the main forum as "Members Only" that means you have to be a registered member to view or post but the headings can be found by Google. Then as webmaster you have to vet who has acess to what, at least you would have control of your forum by doing that.
It's a very complex issue.....

dave06 · Guru

maybe, and this may just be stupid, but perhaps we are a little bit touchy and should just realise that what we say here can be viewed by all and sundry, we are after all only a keystroke apart, it doesnt seem right that it goes out to the world but isnt that what we are doing in a small way anyway