This week: Fair Use Only Edited by: Annette  
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2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
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| Downloading and distributing copyrighted materials without authorization from the rights-holder is never an example of fair use. ~ Harvard University: Digital Millennium Copyright Act |
Yes To Read & Review
At the bottom of each static item here on Writing.Com, there is this disclaimer:
© Copyright 2013 Annette (annette at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Writing.Com, its affiliates and syndicates have been granted non-exclusive rights to display this work.
It means that the poem, story, chapter, or thoughts captured in the text above the disclaimer are the sole property of the person who typed them up. Writing.Com is merely displaying it. That means WdC does not monetize our creations.
But what about the membership fees?
That's not monetizing our creativity. We can have paid account and put zero things into it, if we so choose. We can have an unpaid account and put up to ten items in it. Whether a paid or unpaid account, the copyright disclaimer stays the same. Writing.Com does nothing with our writing except to display it so that we can be seen, find readers, and get reviews.
The Copyright we have on our creative writing means that our text is ours to show, set to private, or delete from this site. We can also choose to display it somewhere else, like in a printed book. Or make gift wrapper out of it.
Asking for reviews on Writing.Com is to ask for another human to interact with our text, read it, think about it, form thoughts and opinions, and then let us know what they thought. A human reader will never get every detail right. Some parts of the text will go right past them. And some human readers will copy a small part of the text to explain their opinion or to show an error that should be fixed. Getting that kind of feedback is priceless. The perspective of another human will always be different from our own. Knowing how our text landed, or didn't is what it's all about. It may not always be what we want to hear. Our precious words, so carefully put together, didn't find favor in the eyes of another. But at least we got them to look! 
No To Copy & Paste
The laws surrounding fair use of the creative writing of others mostly revolve around the issues from copying a whole text and reselling it without compensating the original creator. Anyone can tell, this is outright theft.
A whole text can be made available for non-profit uses such as educational purposes, research, critique, or commenting. For instance, a university professor can buy a short story once and then make it available to students for the purpose of teaching storytelling with it. This example is considered fair use.
Copying a whole text into an Artificial Intelligence program for the purpose of extracting a machine made "review" is not covered by fair use. The person who copied the text is lacking all basis for their actions. Since they are not reading the text, they can't claim to use the text for personal education, for criticism, or for comment. On the contrary, here on Writing.Com they are likely to monetize those reviews for review rewards in the form of gift points. Some of those gift points come from the system. A whole lot of those gift points come from reviewing groups. Reviewing groups are funded by the hosts and other donors. Real currency is exchanged for those gift points.
Once a text has been copied into an Artificial Intelligence program, it becomes part of that program. While it probably won't suggest a word for word recreation of the same text for someone else, those sentences, phrases, ideas, and quirks of a human writer are now subject to being doled out without any human thoughts.
If a writer chooses to paste their own text into an Artificial Intelligence program to get a review, that's their right. They can do that. But nobody else should do that. And no writer should think that it's something that they have to accept for their work.
What can you do to protect your writing and your online privacy?
The first step is to find out who can see your portfolio. Log out of your account. Take a look around the site as a visitor. Find your own portfolio and poke around without logging in. What can everyone see?
The second step is to log back in, and methodically set anything that should stay within the Writing.Com community to "Registered Users and Above" as a minimum setting. This can be done for most parts of a portfolio. The only thing that is truly set to "always on" for anyone to see is the ""Portfolio" Tab" . All other parts can be set up with some level of privacy. |
Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
Replies to my last For Authors newsletter "Language Barrier"
JCosmos  wrote:
I have a great example. Many years ago, when I was in the Peace Corps in Korea, a pretty nurse asked me, “When are you going to eat noodles?” I replied, “Why not today?”—and everyone burst out laughing. I had just unknowingly proposed to her!
I knew the words, but not the cultural context. In Korea, that phrase is a euphemism for “When are you getting married?” because noodles are a traditional wedding dish. She eventually explained what it meant.
Co-pilot explanation follows:
🥢 Cultural Phrase: “When are you going to eat noodles?”
In Korean, the expression is:
- 언제 국수 먹을 거야?
(Eonje guksu meogeul geoya?)
Literally: “When are you going to eat noodles?”
Idiomatically: “When are you getting married?”
This phrase stems from the tradition of serving noodles at weddings, symbolizing longevity and happiness. Saying this is a playful way to ask about someone’s marriage plans.
🇩🇪 German Translation
To match the idiomatic meaning (not just the literal one), you could say:
- Wann wirst du heiraten?
(When will you get married?)
If you want to preserve the noodle metaphor for storytelling flair:
- Wann wirst du Nudeln essen?
(When will you eat noodles?) |
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For Authors: January 21, 2026 Issue [#13545]
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