Good Evening Gather or Audrey's Crazy Coffee Club

I am filling in for William again tonight and hope we will all be of good cheer and welcome one another.  I am in the middle of a severe thunderstorm area also and it is thundering and raining now. If I leave suddenly you will know I had to get off the computer. 

I have received replies to my letters to Gather which I would like to share with you.

Tom Gerace responded to my letter to him on 6/20/07. I shared Mary Anne's response last evening.

Audrey,

Generally speaking, copyright law and fair use are very complex. Many times how they are applied can vary depending on the type of content involved. As you know, copyright law is not determined by Gather; rather we strive to make sound decisions regarding all concerns brought to our attention. We are all aware that many social media sites have been in the news on a regular basis because of how they are addressing these issues on their sites.

For the time being, Gather is permitting jokes that have been forwarded via email to be shared on gather. They should be cited as coming from an email, and they should not be a comic’s routine. Gather staff is actively working with experts in the copyright field to ensure our policies and processes are always within copyright law and fair use guidelines as this area evolves. If we learn of any changes needed on Gather.com’s stated policies, those changes will be clearly communicated to the membership.

Best,

Tom

This morning I noticed that all three of the articles for this group were flagged and I wrote this to Tom.

Tom, Last night I filled in for William M on the Good Evening Gather article. It was published in three segments due to the length of each and downloading time for many. The second article was flagged last night. In the past hour, since 11:30 AM CDT someone has flagged the other two segments, stating copyright violation.
>
> I would like to know who is doing this. According to the fair use segment of music copyright laws it is not a violation to used quotes from songs if it is not for profit and the performer/writer is identified. In all cases but one last night this was done. It seems that someone is being overly zealous in this matter and wants the evening articles to disappear. Perhaps this is because of the popularity of them. These articles bring a lot of viewers to Gather that might otherwise not be here.
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> Please do me the service of explaining Gather's viewpoint on music copyright laws, and tell me who is flagging my articles. I think anyone who flags should have to leave their name on the article as the person responsible for flagging it.
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> Sincerely,
> Audrey Hauser
> Audrey67

I received this reply from Carolyn Richards.

Dear Audrey,

This is Carolyn Richards contacting you on Tom's behalf. I have checked on your article and have reviewed the content report that was submitted to Gather last evening.

Song Lyrics are copyrighted and by law cannot be republished without proper permission. We are actively working with the members who posted the song lyrics to have their comments removed, at which point in time your article will then be released back onto Gather.

Given the tremendous volume of content that is published on Gather during any given day, we rely on our members to alert us if and when they identify terms of service violations on the site. Likewise, we expect that members will leverage this report system appropriately and not abusively flag content because they do not agree with the publisher's point of view.

With regards to content reports, Gather has recently implemented several changes so as to ensure that reported content is reviewed within the day that it is reported. Articles or images whose reports are deemed to be invalid are acknowledged and released by Gather Editorial as quickly as possible. And, as we identify cases whereby individuals are inappropriately flagging content, we will attempt to further educate those members on our policies and procedures. If a member fails to adhere to our policies after he/she has been contacted 3 separate times by Gather, his/her account is then closed.

Gather treats every community issue that is brought to our attention, objectively and fairly. If there are specific situations whereby you feel a Terms of Service violation has occurred that we may have overlooked, please e-mail me back with links to the articles and/or comments in question, as I would be glad to look into them for you.

Thanks in advance for your patience as we work through this issue. Should you have any further questions or concerns please do let me know.

Regards,

Carolyn

Carolyn Richards
Member Services Manager
Gather, Inc.
 From this time on I will ask that  no lyrics or other copyrighted items be published in comment here. We can still talk about our favorite songs however.  I do feel that there is a overzealessness on this subject where Gather is concerned, but let's not give them and reason to question. 

Now let's settle in and have some fun/  I will supply refreshments and since gather is currently allowing jokes forwarded in email you can share those as long as you state it was in your email.

I think we have some fine budding comics here so be innovative and do some of your own jokes. Come on Greg, you know you are dying to tell some jokes.