I would like to make a community dedicated to posting interesting science questions that have been asked and answered in other sites.

The post would be a copy of the question and the comments would be copies of the answers that were found to be interesting - always with the username attribution and the link to the original post.

With this format, users would not need to leave the site, and it is easy to discuss the answers directly in the comments.

But I have my doubts about whether this is appropriate, as I think that it might be copyright infringement.

So, what do people in Lemmy think? Would this format be blatant theft and wrong? Perfectly reasonable? Somewhere in between?

  • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
    6·
    2 years ago

    A substantial percentage of Reddit content is lifted directly from TikTok, YouTube, 4chan, even Tinder. Not to mention the vast amount of content lifted from news websites.

    Legal or not, Reddit has no moral leg to stand on.

    That said, while not as bad as, say, YouTube, they’re known to break their public API regularly, making it a headache to maintain third party apps.

    From the Lemmy side, it depends on your server maintainer, but I can’t imagine there are many who would be concerned about the ethics as long as you’re attributing properly. And many optionally DGAF even if you don’t.

    • Salamander@mander.xyzOP
      4·
      2 years ago

      could it be covered by fair use, as long as it’s part of (or offering to have) a discussion about the topic?

      It is an interesting point. Commentary is generally considered fair use when - for example - someone makes a video in which text is shown and the text is commented on. I think that directly copying the comments and not commenting on them would not be transformative enough to fall into fair use. But you are right that putting it up in the context of generating a new discussion could be transformative enough - but that could open loopholes (for example, displaying a full movie without permission at a public venue for the audience to critique could be considered fair sue).

      But adding an explanatory comment of why that particular comment was chosen could be transformative enough to be “fair use” by most people. Looking into it, it is messy and complicated. It seems that in the end the reality is that to find out whether something is fair use or not, the commenter or platform would have to sue you and then a judge would need to decide.

      But people share all sorts of screenshots on social media without it getting purged, maybe there’s some different rules?

      My guess is that either the platform or the person that made the comment would need to actively sue for something to be done about that, and not many people see this as something they would want to do. I am sure most people post comments online without worrying about the copyright of their comment work.

      If Reddit has not gotten rid of Removeddit, I don’t think that they particularly care about their comments being copied.

  • Daryl76679
    4·
    2 years ago

    I think it is perfectly fine. A lot of the internet revolves around copying and sharing things several times over (moldy memes are a great example of that). I say go for it. It’ll do nothing but bring more scientific knowledge to Lemmy

  • serenity@jeremmy.ml
    4·
    2 years ago

    Interesting questions. I wonder what Aaron Swartz would think about this (No irony or sarcasm here. Was just reading a book about him). DuckDuckGo used to have instant answers at the right of the search result showing one answer from StackExchange. For some reason I don’t see that anymore from DDG (Did they remove it ? Or am I using some browser add-on blocking it?), but in that case you could if I recall correctly read the question and answer without even going to the StackExchange site. Can search engines be sued for copyright infringements for showing too much data ?

    • Kromonos@fapsi.be
      4·
      2 years ago

      Unfortunately, I have to disappoint you. Copyright infringement also matters when private individuals are affected. E.g. when a private person uses CreativeCommons, MIT, or GPL license. CreativeCommons is mostly used for text.
      In addition, you need to read the TOS of the platform to see if they do not take the rights, as Facebook does, for example.

        • Kromonos@fapsi.be
          2·
          2 years ago

          And I’m running several lawsuits against individuals because of copyright infringements. So it definitely matters enough.

            • Kromonos@fapsi.be
              4·
              2 years ago

              I would say so too, if it was more than just a hobby. Nevertheless, anybody can add the Creative Commons license to their work as long as it is their own work.
              Hobby bloggers like to make this their own. But I understand the point you’re making.