Dear Steemians,
today I would like to pose a question to you, as this is the reason my blog got quiet over the last months:
How does the copyright of research articles affect posting on Steemit?
Lady Justice in all her glory
I have actually written quite a number of articles already about the topics I mentioned (e.g. the origin of the capsicum species, the works of our perception of spicyness, breeding). In these articles, I quote other papers and articles in a scientific manner to give credibility to my claims as they were shown in past research. But is this allowed? Almost everything is copyright protected, especially research papers (pervertly so!).
There is an exemption to use copyright-protected material, the „fair-use“ case. This applies e.g. for news reporting, parodies of original content and research. But this use is limited and it is kind of a „gray area“ without defined hard borders. One aspect which in general stands against fair use, is commercial use. If copyright protected work is used by other people and they post it somewhere where money could be generated (even if only through ads), this is usually ruled as a violation of fair use. Also a simple re-telling of the research story is probably not going to cut it, as re-telling is also not considered fair use, it has to be some sort of original creation. This goes on for many use cases, but unfortunately it does not look good for posting research reviews on Steemit. Especially, as Steemit posts are not deletable after 7 days, and possible copyright violation claims would probably get really uncomfortable...
Is anyone here with a background in law, that could elucidate this? I already searched Steemit for copyright related articles, but the articles could not give definitive answers. Especially in case of quoting copyright protected research articles I (and surely many others) would be very grateful for answers!
Dysprosium
P.S.: I generally do not ask for this, but this case is an exemption: If this matter concerns you, and you would like to help it solve, please resteem this post. The greater the reach, the more probable we reach someone who could help out!
Picture taken from pixabay.com