Greetings World News! A couple of us mods from /c/politics have volunteered for tribute and will be helping out on mod duties from here on out! Nice to meet you!

I’ll keep this short because you didn’t come here to hear me talk (“You’re right!”)

Job 1 is making the sidebar a little cleaner and easier to follow. I don’t want anyone to have any illusion as to why content got removed. It should always be clear and concise and not up for debate.

When it comes to copyrighted material, my opinion is super simple:

  1. Don’t repost the whole article. Boil it down to the 1 or 2 paragraphs that make the point. That falls under fair use.

https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/

  1. If you can’t find the 1 or 2 paragraphs that makes the point, MAYBE that’s not the best article to use. 😉 “Brevity is the soul of wit” and all that.

  2. None of which matters if you use articles that aren’t paygated. If the whole thing is readily available, there’s no reason to copy/paste anything. See if you can find an alternate source.

  3. If you aren’t sure if something falls under fair use or not, assume it doesn’t. Err on the side of personal liability. “Could someone catch grief over this?” If yes, don’t paste it.

That’s it! Happy World Newsing! Verbing weirds language!

Edit OK, I lied. When posting from the web UI, it will helpfully offer to create an archive link of your choice. Archive links ARE allowed. I have cleared this personally with multiple admins now. If it proves to be a copyright issue, we can simply remove the link.

For some reason, my preferred apps, Boost and Voyager, don’t have that option. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

  • fiat_lux@kbin.social
    152·
    11 months ago

    If the whole thing is readily available, there’s no reason to copy/paste anything

    Just a bit of a tangent: readily available unpaywalled content is not the same thing as accessible content. For people with disabilities, the archive links had the helpful side effect of stripping a lot of things that made the content inaccessible to them.

    I understand the position you’re taking regarding copyright issues, and the choice of implementation, and I will be following the rules around it. I just didn’t watch people to think it was as simple as “no other reason”.

    Good luck generally with moderation efforts though, I appreciate the effort you’re all making.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      I wonder too if maybe that’s one of the reasons it offers to generate an Archive link when you submit through the web interface. ADA access is definitely a thing. Regardless, as noted in the addendum, archive links ARE allowed, just don’t copy/paste the whole shootin’ match.

      • boredtortoise@lemm.eeEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        Hmm. Pasting the text content is also good for usability and to hinder site tracking. Users can refer to the subject matter on the app they’re already on instead of jumping to a web view or a browser

    • Spzi@lemm.eeEnglish
      21·
      11 months ago

      Please explain like I’m living under a rock. I would have to guess what each sentence might mean. What makes you concerned?

  • Spzi@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    11 months ago

    there’s no reason to copy/paste anything

    I find it very convenient to read articles without having to leave Lemmy. The reasons for this:

    • Here, I’m used to the page layout, fonts and colors. I’m accustomed to it and can instantly tell what the content is and where it is on the page. When visiting a new website, these are uncertainties. Sadly, many websites employ dark design schemes which make it a pain.
    • I don’t have to deal with ads, adblock disable requests, cookies, and so on when I don’t visit another website
    • It’s easier and faster to stay on Lemmy than to right-click, select to open in new tab, switch to that tab.

    For these reasons, I always appreciate when someone pulls the whole article, or even parts of it, into Lemmy. I also believe these reasons are shared by many others, which means it makes a more informed comment section when more of the article is readily available.

    From the sound of it, I guess you’re declaring these rules for legal reasons. I can’t change anything about that.

    I just wanted to clarify that there are good reasons why many people are happy to avoid opening external sites if possible.

  • Quokka@quokk.auEnglish
    52·
    11 months ago

    Why the fuck are you “respecting” something as reprehensible as copyright?

    Sounds like this place is well on its way to be another reddit.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      5·
      11 months ago

      Super simple… the people running lemmy.world are volunteers and don’t have the money to withstand a copyright action should one arise. That’s really it. Nobody wants the liability.

    • fiat_lux@kbin.social
      3·
      11 months ago

      Ever had to randomly spend your ‘free’ time on a legal issue about bullshit that you don’t want to spend your time and energy on and have to go up against people who do that bullshit for a living? I have, it blows. This is a risk mitigation measure nobody really enjoys, except the people who pay lawyers to enforce copyright laws.

      It’s also a large vulnerability in volunteer-run systems operating in public spaces, unfortunately. I wish I knew of a fix for that.

  • Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    11 months ago

    The answer is pretty obvious, but I have seen a lot of folk on lemmy (and elsewhere) who think this is a good solution. Might be worth coming down on it:

    Copy full text of article into an LLM and ask it to rewrite that article “to be more understandable”. There is the bot that automatically does that for every article (and mostly just increases the misinformation and what not…), but I have seen more than a few people suggest doing that for the text portion of a post.