A delicate moderation issue on my forum

harishankar

I need the help of a few experienced hands here. I am not sure whether this is the right forum. I post here because it is essentially a question regarding moderation on my forum.

A person who signed up on my forum posted reviews of books found on Amazon.com which were identical. A member identified this and notified a moderator and so his topics were closed immediately..

On further investigation, it appears that the member who posted the reviews was the same guy who posted them at amazon.com. Naturally I cannot be 100% certain of this, but it appears to be the case.

So I am not sure of what to do here. Should I delete those reviews submitted by that member? Is it technically a copyright violation or not? I read amazon.com's policy but I am still unclear as to where they stand with regard to this...

Any help will be appreciated
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Patrick · Administrator

I would guess that Amazon.com allows users to retain copyright to their reviews. But, you may want to verify that. If that is the case AND you want duplicate reviews on your site and you feel it is the same guy, I would go ahead and allow them, I think.
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harishankar · Posted: 9/26/2005, 10:23 am Post subject:

Thanks patrick! Smile

It appears to be the same guy, almost 90% sure of that... because he changed his amazon "pen-name" to his forum username after the issue was brought to his notice. Naturally I haven't really had time to investigate it too deeply but I rely on my moderator who is very reliable...

Also the same user claimed that he submitted the reviews on other forums as well without any issues, but I haven't really verified this part.

So it would not be a case of copyright violation since the same author has submitted them... Maybe an e-mail to amazon would help. I'll check
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Patrick · Administrator

Cool. Well, one way to verify is to say "Change your Amazon.com username to XXXXX (something not normal)." And then once he changes it, you know it's him. Smile

Sounds like that's what you might have already done.
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harishankar · Posted: 9/26/2005, 10:28 am Post subject:

Well technically I cannot take the credit because the whole issue played out before I stepped in... Razz

My moderator was the one who brought it to my notice at this point.

So I guess the only thing left is to check the position with amazon.
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~HG~ · Posted: 9/27/2005, 5:20 am Post subject:

Why not just add a disclaimer to the content in your overall_footer.tpl just to cover yourself ?

I mean it would be a full time job just checking posts to see if they were copyrighted somewhere else.
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Teknomancer · Posted: 12/2/2005, 3:55 am Post subject:

I don't think it's that easy. I mean I heard even if you give credit to the owners of the copyright, using their material plus giving credit still amounts of violation of copyright.... sticky issue.
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Nick · Posted: 12/5/2005, 4:27 pm Post subject:

Is this the first book review he's posted on your board?
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