I have received several articles to communities of which I am a moderator. Quite a number of them have been non-original material.
I say that now clearly, I will reject everything I even suspect of being a copyright violation or if I feel that the copyright status cannot be determined. Don't bother to submit it unless you have written it yourself or have the original author's explicit permission to re-publish it. In the latter case, it should be marked "Copyright © (year and original copyright holder)" followed by "Used with permission." and I reserve the right to check that information before approving your post.
You cannot, as many people do, take a text from a website, copy and paste it and finish with the link to the original. That is still a copyright violation, because the copyright holder has the right to determine WHERE his or her text (or image) is displayed. The only thing you may do, is to publish the link to the original and perhaps give quoted pieces of text. But it must be bound together by your own article; the quoted text must not be your whole post.
You also must be aware that the original author can have sold space to advertising on his site, with the explicit condition that his text appears only there. If you republish it, he will violate his agreement with the advertiser, you would harm him financially, and you would get sued for damages (which you would surely have to pay - and rightly so).
In this case, remember that translators have a certain copyright of their translations. If it is a translated text, it is not enough if the original text is in the public domain, the translation must be as well.
Then I have seen that people take articles from websites supplying free material for use, and if the conditions of the website's terms are satisfied, that is no crime. I think, however, that it is counter to the principles of read.cash and just a way to get more money from the read.cash fund; I routinely reject such material as well. I would do the same with texts from the public domain taken right off, if there is not any special reason for republishing it here (more than getting money from the fund).
The only previously published texts I would approve of are those were you have written the text yourself but published it somewhere else first. There is nothing wrong in that and I would not reject any article on that basis, provided it can be proved to me that the poster here is indeed the same as the original author and copyright holder.
Perhaps you say I am too strict. Well, I have been involved in publishing for a long time; these are sound principles based on respect for personal property - and copyright is immaterial property. You may do whatever you like with your own creations, but don't mess around with those of others.
Read.cash, as it is now, is full of copyright violations. I cannot do much about them, but I will do my best to keep my communities clean. It doesn't mean they will be, I can make mistakes, after all I cannot check and control everything, to some extent I must go on my gut feeling.
To better understand copyright, I recommend everyone here to read Understanding Copyright, by @Velalisieur. It is a bit long, but explains the elements of copyright very clearly.
I also want to address another detail, and this is just my personal view: much of the material submitted is too "thin". My feeling when I see it is that this is from someone who wants to write (perhaps to get points for the read.cash fund) but doesn't really have anything to say. Or they find an isolated fact and deliver it somehow without any personal touch, and without perspective, context and framework. That is just bad writing. I don't want that either in my communities. People who come there to read, should know that it is not wasted time, that there is a certain minimum standard of the material.
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I truly appreciate the good job you are doing. Many people do "copy and paste" work a lot on read.cash. Asides that, many articles are being transfered to the communities they are not supposed to belong. I have rejected some. Thanks again.