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Is changing the title of a published article a copyright infringement?
self | 7.7.2011 | self

Posted on 07/07/2011 5:10:04 AM PDT by wolfcreek

Couldn't find a definitive explanation


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Education; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 07/07/2011 5:10:09 AM PDT by wolfcreek
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To: wolfcreek

It messes up the forum search function. Before you post an article you should run a search using key words from the title. It cuts down on duplicate posts.


2 posted on 07/07/2011 5:13:01 AM PDT by SWAMPSNIPER (The Second Amendment, A Matter of Fact, Not a Matter of Opinion)
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To: wolfcreek

Why would you want to?

It’s probably closer to infringement than it is to plagiarism
but it’s bad mojo any way you slice it. Screws up the search
function, resulting in thread duplication.

In the blogging community, however, it’s considered a valid
way to steal.. er, create content. Change the title, change
a phrase or two and PRESTO! An original blog post!


3 posted on 07/07/2011 5:14:48 AM PDT by humblegunner
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To: wolfcreek

It’s possible. I have a license from a certain publisher to use their published works in certain specific ways, and the license document expressly forbids altering the work in any significant way. But I would say USING someones’s published work without permission, with or without changing the title, is most likely an infringement.


4 posted on 07/07/2011 5:15:19 AM PDT by Huck
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To: humblegunner
I don't want to. It was a debate with a friend.

Apparently newspapers can freely change the title of articles they reprint. (to suit their political slant)

It really messes up the search function.

5 posted on 07/07/2011 5:25:57 AM PDT by wolfcreek (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsd7DGqVSIc)
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To: Huck

Are there any written rules I can quote? Links?


6 posted on 07/07/2011 5:27:34 AM PDT by wolfcreek (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsd7DGqVSIc)
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To: wolfcreek

Here’s a rule. You cannot copyright a title but see a lawyer if you really do want to write a book by the same name as one currently in stock.


7 posted on 07/07/2011 5:52:01 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: humblegunner

Most stealing that goes on in the blogging community has to do with sites that automatically snarf up articles and republish the whole thing with a small ‘link to original’ at the bottom.

Yes there are some crap bloggers out there but most of the ones worth reading don’t steal.


8 posted on 07/07/2011 5:54:17 AM PDT by N3WBI3 (Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari)
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To: wolfcreek

???

When posting of this blog, and others...

The top space “Title of thread” is not necessarily the title ofthe article is it?

And the article title is still shown in the article itself.

Therefore, it might seem that the title of thread is whatever the poster deems it to be...???

I have seen posts here with “titles” prefaced as “My title:, etc.”


9 posted on 07/07/2011 5:57:39 AM PDT by gunnyg ("A Constitution changed from Freedom, can never be restored; Liberty, once lost, is lost forever...)
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To: muawiyah
I was asking specifically about articles.
10 posted on 07/07/2011 5:58:57 AM PDT by wolfcreek (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsd7DGqVSIc)
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To: gunnyg

Maybe that’s the proper prodedure, I just can’t find evidence of it in law.

Hard to debate without sources/links


11 posted on 07/07/2011 6:01:45 AM PDT by wolfcreek (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsd7DGqVSIc)
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To: gunnyg
When posting of this blog, and others...

Free Republic is not a blog.

12 posted on 07/07/2011 6:05:12 AM PDT by humblegunner
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To: gunnyg

It would seem that the thread title can be either the article title and/or anything else the poster desires; specifically, the article title itself should remain intact.


13 posted on 07/07/2011 6:06:15 AM PDT by gunnyg ("A Constitution changed from Freedom, can never be restored; Liberty, once lost, is lost forever...)
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To: gunnyg

The author writes the article and submits it to the publisher (unless it is self-published). The paper or other publishing source then has someone on staff write the headline. If you are citing an article, you as publisher of your publication can use any headline you want. You can find the same AP article in numerous papers with a wide range of headlines. So I do not believe you would violate any copyright


14 posted on 07/07/2011 6:14:19 AM PDT by rstrahan
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To: wolfcreek
Apparently newspapers can freely change the title of articles they reprint.

Newspapers subscribe to wire services. The ability to change headlines and delete content to save space are part of their contract.

15 posted on 07/07/2011 8:31:57 AM PDT by BfloGuy (There is no remedy for the inefficiency of public management. -- L. Von Mises)
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To: BfloGuy; wolfcreek; rstrahan; gunnyg; muawiyah; Huck; humblegunner; SWAMPSNIPER
Humblegunner and others are right: for citation purposes, there's no good reason to change a headline. It messes up search functions and there are a lot of other good reasons not to do it online.

However, the comments here by others about newspapers being able to change headlines are entirely correct.

Here's why.

Headlines in printed media have to fit into a certain designated space and that will be different for every newspaper based on a wide variety of factors ranging from font size to placement on the page. One newspaper may run a headline as a single deck across all the columns at the top of the page. Another newspaper may run a two-deck headline across two columns. A third newspaper may make it a four-deck headline across one thin column at the side of the page. Also, in general, headlines at the top of a newspaper page need to be larger than those farther down the page unless there's a deliberate effort to call attention to a package partway down the page.

Those three headlines will all be different lengths, and they may not even share very many of the same words.

All of those factors mean that newspapers will change headlines regularly — and possibly make changes multiple times as the page is being laid out.

That's why copy editors write headlines, not reporters, and the reporter may not even know what headline is going to be used until he/she gets the newspaper the next morning.

The next question is going to be, if there's so much variation from newspaper to newspaper, why headlines tend to be similar if not identical when posted online.

The short answer is that the headline you see on the webpage of a newspaper for an Associated Press or internal newspaper chain wire may not be the same headline you see in the printed edition. In a lot of cases, the AP story gets posted to the web when the newspaper gets it, but the headline could get changed more than once as the page gets laid out, and the story might not even appear in the printed edition at all. Conversely, many newspapers don't put their AP stories online or have them online only for a limited period of time, so just because you see or didn't see a wire service story online doesn't necessarily mean it appeared or didn't appear in the printed newspaper, or that it had anything close to the same headline in print that it had online.

16 posted on 07/07/2011 11:38:55 AM PDT by darrellmaurina
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