The Lounge Rules

Dear Loungers,

Thanks to copyright trolls like this guy, we're going to have to change the way that you guys share news articles here in the Lounge. To make a long story short, a lot of the stuff that gets posted in here is theoretically protected by the newspaper/magazine/website's copyright. This hasn't been much of an issue in the past, because most publishers simply appreciate the attention (and can't argue that the value of the copyright is being damaged with a straight face). Unfortunately, it seems as though the goal of these copyright trolls isn't to actually win a big lawsuit, but to force smaller sites to settle instead of hiring an expensive attorney to defend. Given the overriding principles of Slickdeals, you can imagine that we don't aim to rack up unnecessary attorney fees.

So, in response to this- we're establishing a new policy for pasting and linking articles:

From now on, posts SHOULD NOT INCLUDE LARGE BLOCKS OF TEXT FROM AN ORIGINAL ARTICLE. You can still quote from the article, but only use what you need to make your point (you guys are kind of doing this now by bolding particular parts- just quote what you might otherwise have bolded). Also, please err on the side of under-quoting.

I know that this will make things a little tougher on OPs, but I really do think that the extra bit of burden will (1) cut down on the number of lazy starts to threads, (2) help establish a focus for the discussions, (3) make threads less intimidating to jump into, and, most importantly, (4) help SD avoid being sued.

A similar note has been posted in the Podium.