Copyright Violation: NC State University Dept of ECE

[joeO]

I was browing the website of the Depeartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC and noticed that they had a photogallery setup of previous events pertaining to the ECE Department.

A long-time user of Coppermine, I quickly noticed that their photogallery looked strikingly similar to Coppermine sans the 'Powered by Coppermine' footer.

To make certain that it was in fact Coppermine, I looked at the source of one of the pages, and quickly noted

Code Select Expand

<!--
  Coppermine version: 1.3.3
  $Source: /cvsroot/coppermine/stable/themes/stein/template.html,v $
  $Revision: 1.2 $
  $Author: gaugau $
  $Date: 2005/04/19 03:17:13 $
-->

A link to their website is http://www.ece.ncsu.edu/photos/, and their contact is ece-webmaster@ncsu.edu.  I just thought the developers would like to know that their product is being used without proper credit given to their hard work.

Regards,
JoeO

[alanselbyjr]

Well, its certainly obvious that its coppermine, but copyright violation? I think its proper for folks to diplay "powered by", but its not copyright violation is it? And I'm not sure its in the terms that you must display 'powered by'.
Here comes a big can o' worms...

[joeO]

Maybe it isn't a violation of the copyright, but it does go against their policy (GNU?).  I remember reading this in the FAQ:

You mustn't remove the line - it's part of the deal: you're allowed to use Coppermine on your site, but the line stays! It's more than justified to give credit where credit is due; be glad you're able to use such a great piece of software for free.
You are allowed to change the way the line looks by editing the CSS class to make it fit into the design of your site; edit /themes/yourtheme/style.css, look for the class "Footer" and change it as you wish.
Note: don't ask stupid questions on removing this line in the Coppermine Photo Gallery Support Board - your posting will be deleted!

[Joachim Müller]

thanks for the notification. I'll contact the site admin of ece.ncsu.edu
Locking this thread now.