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I am also against this, stealing of others property for profit or putting on ones own website without permission. The only way we here in the USA can copy anything legally for profit or to republish is with the owners written consent.

However in our copy write law here we do have a fair use clause, which does give us the right to copy things for our own viewing purposes only, at least thats the way I have read it.

For instance:

Just an example,I think Here we can go to a library and copy a recipe out of a book or a chapter out of a book as long as its for our personal use only, or for certain educational purposes. We can't republish it in any way though without the authors written consent.



At least this is what I have read from reliable sources, I am not an attorney though and this is not legal advice. I can't be held responsible for anybodies actions. Anybody who has questions on copy write laws needs to contact a licensed attorney.

In the end though I always recommend getting permission from the author, it's the nice thing to do. Again this is not legal advice, it is just something i have read from a reliable source. Be sure to check with your attorney if you have any questions. Every country has different laws.



17 years experience with freshwater.

OK.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

May I ask AquaClear_Fan what brought all that on?

Have I missed something previously?

Hi fish platy, just stating my feelings on the subject at hand,no big thing, I'm just speaking in general about it and what Ive heard on the law here in the USA. Just wanted to get how I felt about it off my chest and maybe see how others might feel on the subject.

17 years experience with freshwater.

Oh........... you were just venting.

Well that's fine. That's what the recovery room is for.......... whatever's on your mind.

It's just the way you started out, like you were in mid sentence........ "I am also against this,...........", that kind of had me stumped.

So, are you a student or something, that this has caused you to bring this subject up?

Maybe it was the announcement about plagiarism at the top of the forum that prompted the post?

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Before you criticize someone walk a mile in their shoes. That way you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

There are, of course, protocols in existence to cover this issue.

The simplest protocl to adopt (and one this is also used in professional scientific papers) is the Harvard Protocol. This involves including an indication that you are using a verbatim quote ,followed by the source, usually listed as author, date of publication of the work in question, and page number(s). For example, if I wish to quote innes on Acanthodoras spinosissimus in a printed work, it would look something like this:

This recent introduction is one of the best-armed creatures we know of. A larger fish picking it up as a morsel of food would receive a sensation somewhat as though it had taken a chestnut burr in its mouth. Besides the rows of erectile spines visiblein the photograph, there are many other small erectile ones over the body, so say nothing of the menacing, stiff dorsal fin and a special contrivance now to be described. It will be noticed that the side or pectoral fin is long and powerfully constructed. Just above and parallel to it is a row of strong spines on the body. When the powerful pectoral fin (a wak affair in most fishes) closes on an enemy and holds it against the saw-like sides, some flesh is going to recieve quite a ripping in tearing itself away from this tuch-me-not fish. (Innes, 1966, p. 209)

The Protocol is adaptable to website quotes too - as in:

(Planet Catfish, http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/species.php?species_id=81)

which references information on the same fish.

Of course, for posts here, one does not need to adhere strictly to the Harvard Protocol (or whichever other protocol is being used) so long as there is sufficinet information in the post to allow the original reference to be traced. However, for material intended for printed publication, particularly in professional circles, strict adherence to a chosen Protocol of this kind is mandatory. It makes for terse reading at times, but then the entire style of sciientific publications tends to be terse by the nature of the material described.

At the end of the material, a list of references is usually given, each reference having a format such as:

Innes, Dr William T., Exotic Aquarium Fishes, TFH publications, 19th eedition, 1966, ISBN 0876660901)

In my case, because I point people at this work so often in my posts, and because this is an informal environment, it is usually sufficient for me to say something such as:

"According to the venerable Innes book ..."

because everyone here knows what I'm talking about (some people here have copies of this in their personal libraries) and I don't think TFH Publications is going to be too worried about my adhering strictly to the Harvard Protocol in informal posts on a tropical fish bulletin board. However, if I were to publish material in print, especially if I were to publish a book of my own, then I would have to be much more careful. In my case, i would probably devote a whole introductory page to the venerable Innes book and its landmark status as the first comprehensive aquarium text covering the entire gamut of aquarium fishes as known when it was first written, and explain to my readers that virtually every other work written since then follows Innes' lead in a number of ways. From that point on, I could continue making references to Innes in a somewhat less formal manner because I would have devoted considerable space to the prior work. Incidentally, if you DO have the good fortune to acquire a copy, even though the information has been in some cases superseded by the march of technology and added information from professional sientists (not to mention the discovery of new species), the book is a classic of its kind, and still contains much that is relevant to the keeping of fishes in aquaria today. Innes was also one of the very few authors to devote time to explaining the meaning of the taxonomic names of fishes, a topic that is all too often omitted from more recent works, and which can be quite illuminating about the fish in question. For example, on page 171 we have:

Meaning of name: Rasbora, a native name; heteromorpha, varying in shape (from most members of the genus)

This fish is now of course renamed as Trigonostigma heteromorpha, having been moved to a new Genus on the basis of such research as mitochondrial DNA studies that were unavailable in Innes' day. But, the insight that Innes gives into the meanings of scientific names of our fishes is wonderfully illuminating at times, this example being an appropriate choice, because the fish in question does have a body shape that differs markedly from other Rasbora species, and also possesses a breeding technique that is at variance with the rest of the Genus, again leading scientists eventually to reclassify it. thre are a number of interesting anecdotes about the history of fishkeeping in that book too, which are worth repeating - for example, under Hemigrammus ocellifer Innes writes (p. 112):

Admitting that this is one of our most popular aquarium fishes on the basis of its own merits, there is little doubt that the clever name, "Head-and-tail-light Fish", did much to give it a vogue. The inventor of this label is Mrs C.H. Peters. It would seem she ought to be in the advertising business, for she has seized upon the most attractive feature of the species, and dramatised it.

It's all there if you spend time delving into it.

Of course, while the world of fishkeeping would doubtless benefit immensely from a revised version covering all of the species we now know, the problem with this (as discovered by TFH when they launched the looseleaf edition of Axelrod's companion work Exotic Tropical Fishes, which owes a great deal to the Innes book in style and format) is that the resulting book would rapidly need to be spread across several volumes, and that is just for the freshwater fishes. Add the marine aquarium fishes to the list, and the resulting work would be huge - assuming a bare minimum of one page of text per species, a modern update would probably require some 6,000 pages not including photographs, which would expand the size still further if, as Innes did, a future editor included a photograph of each individual species with the text. Plus, the work would become obsolete almost as soon as it left the presses, for doubtless some new aquarium species would be discovered (e.g., the Galaxy Rasbora that has become a 'hot item' in the fishkeeping news recently) whose omission would immediately condemn the work as being no longer comprehensive. Which is probably why most aquarium textbooks these days only attempt to cover a restricted subset of species ...

And with this little dissertation, I shall leave you all to ask yourselves "how on earth does he write this stuff?"


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

"how on earth does he write this stuff?" and "man, I should really read what he wrote" is exactly what I was thinking Cali.

AquaClear_Fan - I comepletely understand your view. Although, I too was confused what brought this on.. but the fine line between "Personal Use" and "published work" can be confusing and it's a topic that doesn't hurt to discuss once in a while.

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"it's the neck, it creaks under the weight of too much heavy thinking."