[boar_d_laze]

KissTC,

In your discussion of copyright law are you giving your lay opinion or your legal opinion?

It isn't actually that complex, and your summary is neither wrong nor right. It's incomplete and not helpful. Further, it appears you misunderstand the Berne Convention. In pertinent part it says that the signatories accept that other signatories may and will enforce their own law regarding intellectual property; and further accept those laws as valid. In other words, the other signatories recognize and accept United States law as it applies to U.S. intellectual property. You are wildly incorrect as to any effect the Berne Convention has on U.S. copyright registration. By the way, copyright registration is not particularly germane to this discussion.

Whether or not a person may post, without permission, the work of another is subject to a multi-pronged analysis which depends on the type of material, on the intent of the the person copying the original work, and many other factors. I won't go through all of them. This isn't law school, and you aren't my student. This isn't a case, and you're not a client.

While your list of excepted activities is correct in some respects, it begs many questions. More importantly though, it does not relate to the subject matter here. When writing on legal matters it is important to be precise. To date, no one has successfully protected a single recipe. There is, as far as I know, no controlling U.S. statute or regulation in the Code. However, there is a fair amount of case law directly on point. Every opinion agrees that individual recipes are not protected -- at least as lists of ingredients and simple instructions. That is the law as it stands.

Giving credit is more a matter of ethics than of law.

The administrators of this site have decided on a policy which is both prudent and fair. Whether or not the law allows more latitude than the policy is of no consequence. The site is a private place and our continued participation is, as it should be, at sufferance of the management. Furthermore their liability may be somewhat different than an individuals, in that many people may individually take enough information from another to constitute more than would be exempt.

I hope this clarifies,
BDL