In light of the recent copyright infringement lawsuits, DU's detailed policy is as follows:

[madinmaryland]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules_detai...

Copyright issues and Bandwidth Theft
Do not post entire copyrighted articles. If you wish to reference an article, provide a brief excerpt and include a link to the original source. Generally, excerpts should not exceed three or four paragraphs.

Do not plagiarize.

Do not steal someone else's bandwidth by posting images that are hosted on another website. Democratic Underground is a high-traffic website, so posting images from other sites will cause their server load to increase dramatically, and might even cost the website owner money. If you wish to post an image from another website, you must contact the owner of the other website to get their consent.
Democratic Underground has the ability to block remote linking to images hosted on other websites. If you are a website administrator and you would like images from your website blocked, please send us an email to let us know.

Do not link or share copyrighted digital media such as mp3s or DVDs.

Wherever possible, please make an effort to link directly to the original source of an article, instead of linking to sites that have re-published someone else's content.

This does not address the issues of copyrighted images. Is there a policy we should be following on DU?

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BulletproofLandshark]

2. "Copyrighted" is correct. n/t

[taterguy]

4. No it isn't

[NutmegYankee]

6. http://www.copyright.gov/

Notice how the Government spells it.

[blondeatlast]

9. That's write, you right copy for adds, write?

Me two!

[taterguy]

14. Do you trust the government?

[pinboy3niner]

20. It's a nefarious government misspelling conspiracy!

[NutmegYankee]

22. Why not - other than boil you in oil...

douse you in salt and dunk you into Ketchup, what do you have to fear from the Gov?

[pinboy3niner]

24. Yeah. They're real batards!

[BulletproofLandshark]

7. Yes it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copywriting

Copywriting is the use of words to promote a person, business, opinion or idea. Although the word copy may be applied to any content intended for printing (as in the body of a newspaper article or book), the term copywriter is generally limited to such promotional situations, regardless of media (as advertisements for print, television, radio or other media). The author of newspaper or magazine copy, for example, is generally called a reporter or writer or a copywriter.

(Although the word copywriting is regularly used as a noun or gerund, and copywrite is sometimes used as a verb by professionals.)

Thus, the purpose of marketing copy, or promotional text, is to persuade the reader, listener or viewer to act — for example, to buy a product or subscribe to a certain viewpoint. Alternatively, copy might also be intended to dissuade a reader.

Copywriting can appear in direct mail pieces, taglines, jingle lyrics, web page content (although if the purpose is not ultimately promotional, its author might prefer to be called a content writer), online ads, e-mail and other Internet content, television or radio commercial scripts, press releases, white papers, catalogs, billboards, brochures, postcards, sales letters, and other marketing communications media.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

Copyright are exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. Copyright does not protect ideas, only their expression or fixation. In most jurisdictions copyright arises upon fixation and does not need to be registered. Copyright owners have the exclusive statutory right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation of the works for a specific period of time, after which the work is said to enter the public domain. Uses which are covered under limitations and exceptions to copyright, such as fair use, do not require permission from the copyright owner. All other uses require permission and copyright owners can license or permanently transfer or assign their exclusive rights to others.

Mad's original post clearly referred to copyright.

[zonkers]

8. ha. you are funny!

[MajorChode]

3. Write you are!

[AlabamaLibrul]

5. haha..... what? n/t

[Ezzard]

10. "taterguy"???

MY GOD....It's Dan Quayle!!!!

[blondeatlast]

11. Good one!

[madinmaryland]

13. Heh! Oh, and Welcome to DU!!

[madinmaryland]

12. Lighten the fuck up, Francis. If not, then

LFP will come over from the lounge and tell you to shut your piehole!

[taterguy]

15. Oh, like I'm sooooo scarred of LFP

Whoever the fuck that is

[Electric Monk]

16. LeftyFingerPop?

I'm not sure, I just read here.

[taterguy]

17. If you're not sure, why waste bandwidth speculating?

[Electric Monk]

19. Was I wrong?

[taterguy]

26. What's your fucking point?

[Ignis]

23. Sick burn, man!

[madinmaryland]

18. Yeap. That is LFP.

[apocalypsehow]

21. Dang...I Recced just because of the entertainment of seeing a cranky spelling cop in action...

[taterguy]

25. Am I here to amuse you?