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Old 04-05-2011, 09:22 PM
tony tony is offline
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Forum software can be set to withhold every single post for review by a moderator before it is released to appear.

We don't think our members would like this. It interrupts the flow of posting and spontaneity. It would require full-time moderators 16 hours a day and those moderators would have to be skilled in spotting copyrighted material.

For example, I tripped across a post by accident that was almost 18 months old. It was completely lifted from another site, without the poster even writing that the material had been copied. (Crediting the material, by the way, does not get you off the infringement hook.)

Here's how it happened. I wanted to know something about a certain subject related to Florida. I searched in Google and found the first search result pointed to Talk of The Villages. I was quite proud that one of our poster's work was so astute. I even remembered reading it when it was posted and was impressed then. I had thought the poster was perhaps a retired expert, or at least a very advanced amateur in the subject. I never even suspected, not even a little, it was stolen.

Again, by happy accident, I went back to Google and looked at the second item in the list of search results. There I was horrified to find, verbatim, the identical material on a very knowledgable web site on the topic. That, in fact, was the original work.

That original poster was quite cavalier in the reply to my Private Message in which I explained my discovery. I asked if any other of the poster's entries had been lifted, cut and pasted, and was assured none had been. I still had to search and research every post made by that member to be sure.

This is why I have asked members to help us and let us if they suspect a post has been lifted from another site. We will check and not reveal who told us. We will simply ask the original poster to rewrite the post and link to the original.

Let me ask: Would you like to have every post held for review until we can release it appear?