copyright intellectual-property religion publishing copyright-notice
If a bulletin posts an article that doesn&#39;t abide by fair use, who is liable?
<p>If an article that doesn't abide by fair use is published on a bulletin, it definitely seems that the author of the article would be liable. But would the bulletin be as well? In other words, does a bulletin or similar publishing party need to inspect the legality of articles it posts, or is that primarily the author of the article's responsibility?</p>
<p>An example could be a church bulletin that unknowingly shares an article quoting a Bible translation without attribution. While the author of the article would likely be liable to be sued by the copyright owners of the Bible translation—at least in theory, anyway—would any bulletins that publish the articles also be liable, meaning that before they post, they need to inspect the articles for potential legal issues?</p>

<p>A publisher also &quot;needs&quot; to inspect the legality of anything that it publishes: they too can be sued for copyright infringement. Publishers protect themselves in two ways. First, via their review and acceptance procedures they attempt to detect infringement, following general (not necessarily reliable) guidelines as to how much copying is &quot;fair use&quot;. Second, the license agreement / copyright transfer contains an indemnification clause whereby the author vows that they have the sole right to authorize publication of the material, and the author agrees to legally protect the publisher (pay their legal costs and any judgments, etc) in case their have infringes copyright, or any other legal harm that could arise from publishing the author's contribution. (Incidentally, quoting without attribution has nothing to do with copyright infringement, instead that is the unrelated legal but intellectually scurrilous practice of plagiarism, or at least sloppy work. Copyright infringement is copying without <em>permission</em>).</p>
