copyright-violating reviews

This member's reviews are almost all copied and pasted from other sources, including reviews from sources like The Guardian or The Independent, reviews on Amazon, book jacket/cover descriptions, Wikipedia, and more. You can google the text of the reviews to see that most are not the member's own. (I think there is one, very short one, that is the members' -- at least I couldn't find it any where else. I googled each one since July individually, before flagging. I think I did the same back in July for the earlier ones, but I'm not sure, and the system doesn't tell me whether I've already flagged them.)

http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=Alinea

I left a private message for the member back in July, asking him/her not to reproduce others' reviews because that is almost always a copyright violation, and pointing the member to the terms of service and the wiki page on reviews. I left another one today.

What's the text of your PM? I've found a few more who have a majority of questionable reviews:

http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=EBurggraf

http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=MissBoyer3
(an English teacher)

http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=jhennessy

http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=hickmanmc
(this one is tough, as it combines likely copyright violations with true reviews)

http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=GCJCPreKClassroom

I'll be glad to message them, but I thought my comments may be too harsh.

Here's what I used in this case, in July:

Please do not reproduce reviews or book descriptions written by someone else in your review field, as that almost always constitutes a copyright violation, which is against the LibraryThing terms of service. The review field is for your own review of the book. For more information about reviews, see here: http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Reviews

In retrospect, maybe that is not clear or strong enough, so here are other possibilities:

Reviews need to be your own review of the work. It is not permitted to copy and paste reviews written by other people. Many of your reviews seem to constitute copyright violations, which is against the Terms of Service:
"You may not post any content that violates copyright or other intellectual property law."

Or maybe that's too strong.

#3 Is it permissable to add these reviews to the published reviews field? Then maybe the text could be amended to add that this is the field where other folks reviews can be posted without copyright violation.

If I've misunderstood the use of this, let me know as I've never added a published review.

It's permissible to add a short excerpt from those reviews to the published reviews field, with a link to the full source. It's not permissible to copy and paste someone else's entire review into the published reviews field.

The published reviews field is also only for established publications - online or print magazines, newspapers, etc. It is NOT for reviews on personal blogs, Amazon customer reviews, Wikipedia descriptions, book cover descriptions, etc.

#5 Thanks for the clarification. I don't plan on adding anything to this field but it's useful to know what is permissable.

>3 rsterling:

Thanks. I think I'll try this and see how it goes.

Reviews need to be your own review of the work. LibraryThing's Terms of Service prohibit copy-and-pasted reviews written by other people (including professional reviews and back-of-book descriptions) in the Review field. For more information about reviews, see the wiki writeup at http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Reviews ; the Terms of Service are at http://www.librarything.com/privacy

> 3, 7

Not trying to muddy the waters, but genuinely curious: I agree that back-of-book descriptions don't belong in the Reviews field, but is that because reproducing them violates copyright, or because they're not reviews?

Would it, for example, be legitimate to put the publisher's back-cover description of the book, in its entirety, into the "Descriptions" field . . . on the same grounds that it's legitimate to use images of the book's cover art in the "Cover" field?

(The argument for the latter, as I remember it, is that a book cover is commissioned by the copyright holder -- the publisher -- for the express purpose of raising awareness of the book among potential readers, and that reproducing them in a setting like LT serves, rather than infringing on, the copyright holder's interest in the work and will not draw their ire.)

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer; don't take my word as final authority for any of this.

I would modify #7 to this:

"The REVIEW field is intended to be your own review of the work. LibraryThing's Terms of Service prohibit copy-and-pasted reviews written by other people (including professional reviews and back-of-book descriptions) in the Review field. For more information about reviews, see the wiki writeup at http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Reviews ; the Terms of Service are at http://www.librarything.com/privacy"

"need to be" doesn't work for me as well.

just my 2c.

>9 lquilter:

I like that change. I'm also now leaning towards "prohibit entire copy-and-pasted reviews" as it's certainly permissible to say something like:

School Library Journal said, "One of the best books ever. Everyone should buy this." I agree; what a great book!

>8 ABVR:
Not trying to muddy the waters, but genuinely curious: I agree that back-of-book descriptions don't belong in the Reviews field, but is that because reproducing them violates copyright, or because they're not reviews?

My guess is that, while the book descriptions are protected by copyright, they likely fall under fair use in most contexts. But their use in a review field tends to border on plagiarism, which some jurisdictions do recognize as a moral right protected by intellectual property law.

In this case, though, the terms of use/privacy policy page require that users who contribute content "represent and warrant that you have ... right(s)" to the material. That's likely not true for most back-of-book descriptions.

Of course, I don't speak for LibraryThing or any publishing company.

10>

I wouldn't worry about that "entire" nitpick; nobody's going to think that the TOS prohibits obvious fair-use quotes like your example, and it opens it up to people lopping off one paragraph of a lengthy review and thinking it's okay.