I am not Rick or Jim, and I am not speaking for them but I cannot imagine how posting a link to anything could be a copyright infringement. Unless the link itself were copyrighted itself in the first place and held by the owner(s) for exclusive use.... but how would that work and what would be the point? And that is the finest point of the law I can think of; in the real world, who would even try to prosecute such a thing and why?
Copyrighted material is 'illegal to copy or reproduce' but every single day gazillions (technical term) of people use the copiers in libraries to copy pages of every type of book imaginable. While technically illegal, his is NOT what a copyright is intended to stop at all, it is intended to stop any entity from making a profit by duplicating an original work. So, for example, the almanac publisher does not care if someone, even many people, copy a page here and there but instead do not want any entity to re-print or electronically duplicate the original work for a profit.
All the way back to the beginning of your question, I think you just got a bad call from someone who does not really the rules he / she is trying to enforce. In a perfect world, we would all park correctly in the center of a parking space.... but in reality, bad parking is just that and nothing more; can you imagine ANYONE pressing for civil or criminal prosecution for being off- center in a parking lot slot?
Now, in a larger sense, that forum has done what it usually does so very well.... it riled you up! It riled me up too until I learned my lesson, which is not to frolic over there in the first place.
but also
The fact that you may have been honestly and in every true sense actually help someone does not matter in the least.
Brian
Rick or Jim, does sharing a link or recommending a web site constitute copyright infringement and therefore put this forum in legal jeopardy? I'm not talking about posting material directly to the forum or using the forum for as a file sharing medium.
