Reprint Of Usenet News Group Thread

[MDC29]

What is the name of your state? Nevada

In the recent past, there was a thread in one of the usenet newsgroups containing all positive comments about the products (educational books, DVDs, etc) made by the company I work for. This morning one of the ad people asked me if there were any legal issues to consider if they were to reproduce the comments in a magazine advertisement. It should be noted here that the comments were made by actual customers of our products. The thread started with a question from a prospective customer seeking user feedback. 15 or so customers responded to his question with all positive comments about the results they obtained from our products.

I'm not a lawyer and I am certainly not qualified to give the ad person any reliable opinion. I rationalized that if the information posted by people in the Usenet newsgroups is available for viewing by the general public, then presumably, there should be no legal issue in reprinting those comments in a sort of, "here's what our customers have to say about our products" ad presentation. Am I correct?

I would be most appreciative of any information that I could obtain in this forum.
Many thanks,
Dax

 

[seniorjudge]

What is the name of your state? Nevada

In the recent past, there was a thread in one of the usenet newsgroups containing all positive comments about the products (educational books, DVDs, etc) made by the company I work for. This morning one of the ad people asked me if there were any legal issues to consider if they were to reproduce the comments in a magazine advertisement. It should be noted here that the comments were made by actual customers of our products. The thread started with a question from a prospective customer seeking user feedback. 15 or so customers responded to his question with all positive comments about the results they obtained from our products.

I'm not a lawyer and I am certainly not qualified to give the ad person any reliable opinion. I rationalized that if the information posted by people in the Usenet newsgroups is available for viewing by the general public, then presumably, there should be no legal issue in reprinting those comments in a sort of, "here's what our customers have to say about our products" ad presentation. Am I correct?

I would be most appreciative of any information that I could obtain in this forum.
Many thanks,
Dax

Since most of those testimonial ads are undocumented anyway, what is wrong with saying something like, "These are the greatest widgets ever!" --Dax

You are accurately quoting someone but you are not documenting the source.

(If I were an advertiser, I would think pulling quotes from a Usenet thread would be pretty crappy, so I would just as soon not document the source.)

 

[MDC29]

My mistake, I should have mentioned that we will indeed quote the source so that any interested party can verify the comments.

 

[JETX]

Though you probably wouldn't have any repercussions from your repeating statements made by others... to remove all risk, you should remove ANY information that specifically identifies the person.