Copyright

In today's very troubled - not to say litigious - times, ethics, morality and copyright have never proved so important.

Some believe that this site will infringe copyright by the material it produces/allows access to. This is not the case, and hopefully we will be able to explain why, without resorting to very nasty and technical legal jargon.

Throughout, the term "material" defines the original page before being altered by our website.

Quick links:

1. Material is freely available.
2. Material is not stored.
3. Material is no longer 100% original when viewed through this site.
4. Newly issued material is clearly marked as such.
5. Manipulated material has to be requested.
6. Site is intended for personal use only.
7. Demand for original material is not supplanted.

1. Material is freely available.
   Every page viewed through "The Voices of Many" is one page accessible in the normal fashion through a web browser. Even if there were a method for the site to access material restricted in any way - even password protection - they would not function and deliver restricted content. Only pages that could be entered into a normal web-browser can be retrieved - cookies, passwords and secure (HTTPS) connections are not supported.
2. Material is not stored.
   Once a page has been manipulated within our site and delivered to your browser, it is not saved on the original website (even if this were possible, which it isn't), nor by us, and therefore cannot be redistributed. If someone else were to request the same manipulated page, the server would reprocess and regenerate the new page. If this is confusing, please see our guide to how the site works, found here, which will hopefully clear it up. Basically, it is not stored on a hard disc or other permanent media, just loaded into a temporary store (server RAM) while undergoing manipulation, then delivered dynamically to your browser. After that the page itself is deleted from the server.
3. Material is no longer 100% original when viewed through this site.
   The site does not download and redisplay the existing content - which would be breach of copyright. Instead it takes a temporary copy and performs manipulations which result in a parody of the existing work. In both US (where the server is located) and the UK (where the author lives), parody of an existing work is allowed as "fair use" of the original material. There is in some cases a requirement that the resultant text is defined as a parody and not the original source material, which we have provided in any resultant content. (A parody, by definition, is to take an original work and base a further work on it)
4. Newly issued material is clearly marked as such.
   Although as stated above as a requirement for some cases, we attempt to make it clear that any material viewed through "The Voices of Many" is indicated as being different to the original source material. Where we provide the service to manipulate a block of text, we make it clear on the result page that this is the result of manipulation, whereas with manipulated pages, we add a banner of sorts to the top of the page to clearly indicate the source of the material and that it is a parody of the same.
5. Manipulated material has to be requested.
   Any material generated by the site, by the user, requires pressing a button to specifically request the information, and therefore it should be clear that by pressing the Submit button, that it is a new interpretation of the original information - not a re-iteration - that has been provided. Where a third-party posts a link to access the services of "The Voices of Many", intermediate pages will be used where necessary to ensure the user is aware that this is a new interpretation, not a re-iteration of existing content.
6. Site is intended for personal use only.
   As stated in the disclaimer, the site is intended for personal/private use only, and thus neither myself (Peter Spicer) nor the site can be held liable for any misuse of the site, or any information generated therein. For example, if a free newspaper/pamphlet/leaflet were to be given to you, it would be legally in the same vein as the Internet - the content will be copyrighted and subject to applicable laws, even though the distribution method allows (with copyright holder's permission) the content to be provided freely. If the information were torn or cut up, changed around and recombined into a single document, and forwarded on, no breach of applicable copyright law would be in force; the new document is essentially a parody of the original document (a parody does not have to be humourous). The results of this website are equivalent to this (the act of breaking down and reassembling material is essentially the act of the website)
7. Demand for original material is not supplanted.
   The original website will still be in demand; the service provided by "The Voices of Many" is not contrived to supplant or replace the pre-existing, and subsequently parodied material. This also helps support the argument of fair use (it would not be fair use to parody a work, only for demand for the original work to be under-demanded as a result)

Phew. If you are unsure, please understand that we are not trying to stomp on your work or otherwise upset the delicate balance of things in the world - we are merely trying to look upon the World Wide Web in another form.

If you still feel that your copyright is being infringed upon, despite the above, please get in contact with me, Peter Spicer, via this page, and I will do my best to help. Alternatively, there are methods to stop websites being manipulated by The Voices of Many. For information on that, please see this page.

Last updated: 10 September 2005. Please note that this is subject to amendment at any time, and that any new information will come into effect immediately - unless specifically stated elsewhere.