Thanks for you offer to help Nancy. Once I get it back up, I may ask a few of you to look through it...with a very scrutinizing eye.

Actually, I have no concrete reason to believe there was any complaint.

I haven't had any notification of one, and my website was never taken down by google. I guess it would be taken down if there had been a complaint and I would have been notified.

I took it offline on a "oh my gosh...what if it is me?"...sort of panic when I saw a message on google search about some entries being deleted due to a copyright complaint. I'm sort of conscientious (paranoid?) that way. In reality, my website was still showing up...just oddly not until page 4 when it had been showing up on page 1 over the past weeks... Anyway, if there was a complaint, the process would include notification to me...and there hasn't been any.

So...anyway, I have taken these few days to review everything to be sure I am not in any sort of violation.While I had definitely sourced and cited everything, there still remains a question of 'how much' is allowed. Just citing it doesn't mean you can use it, even within fair use law, as I'm trying to understand what I am reading about the law. So, I am being pretty cautious, and removing any excerpts that involved more than one or two small paragraphs, sometimes even less. People will have to open the links, and read for themselves.

There are only a couple of things I've removed that I think were truly valuable information, not really covered in any other source, but for those few things...I will go through the process of requesting permission to use it. I'm trying to stay away from using things that aren't from sources available free online....just in case. I've left only a few small things sourced from things not available free online online. One example is the B12 symptoms list from a medical textbook. I'm not sure about it, but I'd hate to have to remove it...and it seems it would fall under the factual information exemption. ["Copyright protects the particular way an author has expressed himself; it does not extend to any ideas, systems, or facutal information coveyed in the work" Source: U.S. Copyright Office; Fair Use; FL-102]

I am going through the File for the THIRD time today (48 pages...ugh). First was to look for anything that might be a problem. Second was removing some things that might be. And third...triple checking, I guess. Heck, for a moment, I was even worried about whether I could copy all the PubMed references, but I've been reassured that is all public domain so long as we link back (which I do).


Here are some more things on copyrigt (well, I guess you covered both of these!):
http://www.google.com/pagecreator_dmca.html
And on Fair Use:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

And while I think all I have falls within Fair Use, there is still a question of 'how much' is ok...and that all depends on consideration of the four factors outlined in the Fair Use document (outlined in your post above).

Last, but not least, my husband got home from a short business trip last night, and reminded me that his brother in Ohio was a Copyright attorney...lol. I guess I thought he was a Patent Attorney...but maybe the same specialty or close enough. So, I will run this all past him, although I'm sure he won't be thrilled if I ask him to look through 48 pages...lol!

I think I'll edit my first post...so people don't think there was an actual complaint.

Cara

One last thing...I still have everything that was originally in The GLuten File and more, of course. If someone happens to terribly miss a particular excerpt for a particular reason...just ask me about it..and I would be able to get it the information to you privately. I think mostly, people won't notice any big difference between the old and new. Maybe I'll have a Where's Waldo sort of contest to see who can spot what might have changed....lol...and what is sadly missed.