About Furl, File Sharing, and Copyright
I tried Furl, thought it looked interesting, but chickened out on doing some of the sign ups…now I'm going to try it again. Amy Gahran has been writing a good bit about Furl and it sounds pretty darn useful.
This article, though, is about copyright and is a good read. All of us who write online in some form or another need to watch this. Amy has great information and links here.
I've been writing recently about the online personal archiving service Furl (10 Cool Things to Do with Furl, More Furl Tricks, and One More Furl Trick: Pre-blogging). I wanted to clear up a potential controversy I've seen brewing.I've recently had some private conversations with online publishers and copyright lawyers about Furl. Predictably, these professionals expressed strong concern about (and opposition to) the idea that users of an online service might archive their intellectual property and freely share it with the public, outside of their personal control. That would, they said, constitute unauthorized republication and thus copyright infringement.
Being an online publisher, I can understand and largely share their concern – although personally I don't feel that online archiving necessarily threatens the value of my own content in any way.
To clear up any potential confusion over Furl and copyright, I recently spoke by phone with Furl founder Mike Giles. He clarified where Furl archives fall in terms of copyright law…
(Read more…)
There is an unofficial Google Group for Furl users
http://groups.google.com/group/furl-users