Caltrops - Site Comments





	[quote name="Commander Tansin A. Darcos"][quote name="Back in 2005. Senor Barborito"][quote name="Seriously, don't you ever learn?"]He said basically you have posted to the public domain on someone else's message board. You can certainly assert anything you like, and they can claim to grant you anything they like in regards to copyright. But unless money is involved or someone is reproducing your work stating that they created it, there's nothing much to see here. Specificly, he said almost all fair use rules can be defensibly applied here. Criticism, comment, reporting all apply and the burden suddenly is laid on you to explain to a judge why your freely available publicly accessible work that exists on someone else's website can't be quoted, even in it's entirety, as long as they are stating you wrote it when no financial damage occurs to you. There's the letter of the law, and then there's the amount of work people are willing to pay/do to nitpick it to death. [/quote] First off, I do not for a minute believe that posting to the Internet has ever been considered publishing to the public domain, ever. This topic is interesting enough to me that I'll bother to read up on some cases this evening - MPAA vs. 2600 should have some bearing hee, amongst others.[/quote] I wanted to reply to this even though it is a few years old (I was looking for something else), and because I thought it was an interesting (and very common) misunderstanding. To quote the <i>Board of Inqury</i> in the movie, <i>Crimson Tide</i>, "On the record, you were both right. But you were also both wrong. Off the record, you both created one hell of a mess." No, it is <i>not</i> in the Public Domain, he does own his words and has a copyright on what he writes; this copyright is automatic, requires no notice, and this has been the rule in the U.S. since 1988 when the U.S. became a member of the Berne Convention. However, fair use does apply here. "<font color=violet>Even unauthorized uses of a copyrighted work are not necessarily infringing. An unlicensed use of the copyright is not an infringement unless it conflicts with one of the specific exclusive rights conferred by the copyright statute. <i>Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken</i>, 422 U.S. at 154-155... Copyright protection "subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) (1982 ed.). This protection has never accorded the copyright owner complete control over all possible uses of his work... A challenge to a noncommercial use of a copyrighted work requires proof [] that the particular use is harmful... Actual present harm need not be shown; such a requirement would leave the copyright holder with no defense against predictable damage. Nor is it necessary to show with certainty that future harm will result. What is necessary is a showing by a preponderance of the evidence that some meaningful likelihood of future harm exists. If the intended use is for commercial gain, that likelihood may be presumed. But if it is for a noncommercial purpose, the likelihood must be demonstrated...</font>" - <i>Sony Corp v. Universal City Studios</i>, 464 U.S. 417 at 464 (1984). [quote]Assuming for a second your 'lawyer friend' is correct, my immediate followup question is what happens if I copy my Metafilter post into a JPG, slap it on a CafePress T-shirt, sell one to my Aunt Ethel, and THEN mail you a DMCA takedown formletter?[/quote]You don't send a DMCA takedown notice to the <i>poster</i>, you send it to the owner of record of the <i>website</i>. Since posers, err I mean <i>posters</i> here, can't remove their postings, only the owner of the website could do that anyway. The owner of the website (Ice Cream Jonsey, for Caltrops) would also send a copy of your notice to the poster as well, which is a requirement of the law. So the poster could also then send the owner of record of the website a <i>counter-notice</i> claiming you're wrong, that it is fair use and they are not infringing, and then naming the court where you can sue them. You then have 10 days to do exactly that. If you don't sue within 10 days, the use is then considered not infringing until suit is filed, and the original posting can be left up (if it was not taken down because the response was received very quickly) or restored if it was taken down. Also, a DMCA notice made in bad faith can subject the copyright owner to damages including compliance costs, court costs and attorney's fees if it is shown that the usage really was non-infringing, e.g. as legitimate obvious fair use. [/quote]