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Share a News Story With Coworkers, Pay a Fine
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Aug 16, 2007 01:37 PM
from the better-just-send-the-url dept.
from the better-just-send-the-url dept.
An anonymous reader sends us to InfoWorld for news that Knowledge Networks, an analyst firm, has settled a copyright complaint, agreeing to pay the Software and Information Industry Association $300,000 for sharing copyrighted news articles internally with employees.
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Submission: Share a news story with coworkers, pay a fine by Anonymous Coward
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Article Text (Score:5, Funny)
The Knowledge Networks settlement is the first under the Software & Information Industry Association's Corporate Content Anti-Piracy Program, launched in October.
Knowledge Networks' marketing group had been distributing press packets to some employees on a regular basis, the SIIA said. Those packets contained articles under copyright and owned by SIIA members such as the Associated Press, United Press International, and publishing company Reed Elsevier, the trade group said.
SIIA litigation counsel Scott Bain called Knowledge Networks a "reputable company that made a very costly mistake." One of SIIA's goals for the settlement is to deter copyright infringement and educate other companies about the need for compliance programs, he said.
A Knowledge Networks spokesman declined to talk about the case in detail. "We are happy the matter has been resolved amicably," said spokesman Dave Stanton.
Knowledge Networks, based in Menlo Park, Calif., has agreed to take steps to avoid further problems, including sending its staff to an SIIA copyright course, SIIA said.
In a statement distributed by SIIA, Knowledge Networks said it regretted the actions.
"[We] disseminated copies of relevant newspaper and magazine articles in the good faith belief that it was lawful to do so," the company said in the statement. "We now understand that practice may violate the copyright rights of those publications. We regret that those violations may have occurred and we are pleased that this matter has now been resolved."
Asked if internal distribution of news articles was commonplace at many companies, SIIA's Bain disagreed. "Companies do not do this all the time," he said. "Some companies have compliance procedures in place to keep it from happening."
Compliance procedures include staff designated for licensing and compliance, sufficient budgets for the content licensing needs of the company, education programs for staff, deals with major content outlets, and strict policies and internal penalties for violating copyright, Bain said.
SIIA learned about the situation through a confidential tip, the trade group said. The person who reported Knowledge Networks will receive a $6,000 reward.
Re:Article Text (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Article Text (Score:4, Funny)
Thank you for playing the, "I wish I could have free speech in America" game. You will be sued shortly!
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how about with:
the cloak [the-cloak.com]
tor [eff.org]
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... must now pay the fine of $300,000 immediately, or be subjected to further lawsuits.
You're taking this out of context. This suit was over a company using a publishing service's news reports internally to conduct their business (marketing research) without licensing the copyrighted material. This is just dumb, and they deserved the fine (presumably assessed with respect to how much it would have cost to license the news for internal use, plus legal fees).
Simply re-publishing a single article from InfoWorld on Slashdot isn't even remotely comparable.
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Not so anonymous... (Score:2)
Re:Article Text (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Article Text (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe when producers of culturally relevant material actually recognized that they were participating in social process, but not anymore. Now, the sole purpose of producing anything is to get as many people as possible to buy it, and treat the rest as criminals because they might read/hear/see it without paying for it.
No, copyright holders have lost all perspective and have long since abandoned the idea that their place in the world does not exist solely to make them richer.
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IANAL, yours, mine or otherwise. My language is meant for communication with other human beings, not to be taken as courtroom legalese. I understand that nowhere in copyright law do the words "personal use" exist as such.
I also wish to state that most of my direct exposure to copyright law has been in educational settings, and for educational purposes. I understand that educational use gets some additional sway in what is acceptable. Nonetheless, a quick Google search brings me this:
paragraph 8 (by my cou
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17 U.S.C. 107 [cornell.edu] states that under fa
Re:Article Text (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. IMO lawyers are dangerously underfavored.
I propose that lawyers fees be severely limited above a certain threshold of award. That way, victims can still receive significant compensation when they are wronged in a way that warrants it, and the lawyers can still make more money on a higher award, but more like year-end bonus money than tri-state-lottery-winnings money.
Actually, the odds of getting lottery winnings money are on par with winning the lottery. I know lots and lots of lawyers, but no one who gets that much. Really, like with the lottery, the hype surrounding the few who get it overshadows the reality of the majority who don't.
In any event, what's wrong with the present fee system? A lawyer can't force a client to accept a particular sort of fee; but they do both have to agree on something. Typically, a client can choose between either paying an hourly fee, regardless of the outcome of the case, or a contingency fee. Under the former, the client has to pay set fees (e.g. $x per hour) win or lose, but if he wins, keeps the entire award (so long as he's not behind on his bill). Under the latter, the client pays nothing up front, and nothing if he loses, but pays a percentage of whatever the award is if he wins. Usually it's about a third, since the lawyer took the monetary risk.
If you prohibit or materially reduce contingency fees, then it means that plaintiffs that cannot afford to pay lawyers up front and come-what-may will be effectively unable to hire lawyers at all, since lawyers won't take cases where they bear the risk but are likely to get too little of a reward.
If you really think that lawyers are profiting unjustly, then fine, but I suggest that you consider not only various possible reforms, but the ramifications that these reforms might have, both positive and negative.
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now that I've told my office (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that I've distributed this article to my office peers, I suppose I'm now open to legal scrutiny. WTH?
Supposedly the antagonists in this story claim this is not a common thing for companies:
I suspect quite the opposite. Sure there are companies big enough and diligent enough with deep enough pockets to engage in OCD behaviors such as this one -- applying bizarre policy to bizarre and grey legal matters.
I can't help but wonder what these antagonists think... do they want as few people reading their material as possible?
And, talk about hostile controlling behaviors, also from the article:
So, to appease SIIA, send staff to their copyright course (wonder if it's free... probably not), and let SIIA issue public releases stating offender's public remorse for it's transgression.
Sometime I'd just love to find an employee of one of these types (SIIA, RIAA, you name it), and follow him around for a couple of days and issue a complaint the first time I see him reading even a snippet of an article over someone's shoulder on the bus or train, or tapping his foot to even a motif from some else's music player.
What a crock!
If they go RIAA with this (Score:2)
Then again, maybe this is will be the wakeup call that everyone needs to see that things are working right.
Transporter_ii
Re:now that I've told my office (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright becomes trackingright to squeeze every possible cent out of the work. If you dare come up with a new way to derive enjoyment from a work, they'll seek ways to ensure they get paid for that too.
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Re:now that I've told my office (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is that they aren't entitled to every penny they can get.
Copyright law (to the extent it's compatible with the US constitution) is an government granted exclusive monopoly on distribution of works for a limited period to the extent that it promotes the progress of science and the useful arts.
The natural state of things is that ideas, knowledge, etc. are yours, until you choose to share them with the world. Copyright (again, to the extent it's constitutionally protected) extends the natural protection with an artificial incentive to produce works by providing an additional measure to increase the ability to capitalize on your works, allowing sufficient time to capitalize on the production before it reverts to it's natural state - a free for all idea in the wild, which others may build on.
The original copyright period was 14 years, with good reason - given the relatively slow pace at which one could manufacture, print, distribute, and sell works worldwide, it was decided that this was enough time to allow the author to make enough of a profit to make it worth doing in the first place - promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. Given the speed of technology, distribution, and the number of books competing for readers (reducing the time a book can stay "on top") - copyright protection should be getting shorter, not extending longer and longer.
Furthermore, fair use was an integral part of copyright protection. Remember, the purpose of copyright law is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. Allowing an absolute monopoly on works is in direct opposition to the very principle copyright law was founded on. It's been horribly abused, and is in fact the basis of the original EULAs. When you run software, it's copied to RAM, so you need a copyright license to run it. This legal theory was used to justify the position that they could take a license (which grants freedoms subject to terms), and use it as a means to circumvent both the doctrines of fair use and first sale. Fortunately, the law now contains a specific exemption for running, installing, and backing up software, which would render the argument moot. Unfortunately, companies now just pretend that the EULA is a contract (which opens up other legal issues, but it's rarely challenged in court).
I ask you this - do you honestly believe that there is a single author on the planet who would choose not to write a book simply because his descendants only could profit from the royalties for 50 years after his death instead of 75? The lack of such people shows that modern copyright law is unconstitutional, and the modern enforcement of copyright law (DMCA, EULAs, $150,000 statutory damages, Blizzard vs BNETd, copy-protected door openers, chipped printer cartridges, etc.) show that the system is being used in direct opposition to it's intended purpose. With the notable exception of so-called "copyleft" licenses, copyright has become a tool to bludgeon people into submission, to suppress thought, stifle innovation, and quash competitors. As such, is it any surprise that so many people have distrust or outright hostility for the entire illegal system? Is it really any surprise that so many people choose to disregard the potential consequences and infringe anyway?
Even those who simply want free music and don't figure they will get caught demonstrate the issue at stake here. Just laws, right laws, laws that society supports are enforced vigorously. Murderer, child molesting, etc. are met with some of the harshest punishments available nearly everywhere. There aren't many "murderers rights" lobbyists, and child molesters often have to be separated from the general population in prison to avoid serious harm to them. People demand punishment for what they consider to be just laws, with genuine victims. Politicians cater
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Of course it has. If, as an advertiser, I get better ROI from one publication than another, guess where my dollars are going? You're right that the publisher is concerned only with how much money they can get out of the advertiser, but that is dependent on how effective advertising with you is (or more accurately, how effective it's perceived to be). That's why print adverts often have the "call and quote code ABCX1"
Evil, and More Restrictive than Paper. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't help but wonder what these antagonists think... do they want as few people reading their material as possible?
They want money, what else? The proposed remedies are an extortion - pay $300,000 per year in "compliance staff" or $300,000 in fines or some kind of "reasonable licensing" fee. This case also has the stink of nailing a smaller player to score propaganda points and lay down favorable judgement before they go after bigger fish like Google.
The sickest thing about this is that the end result will be more restrictive than paper. People have shared newspapers, magazines and clippings from them. They did this even before copy machines made it easy to duplicate the material. Now that computers have made it costless to duplicate information and make sure everyone who needs it can have it, these turds come out and advocate technology that's about as restrictive as clay tablets. You have to wonder if sending lists of links with excerpts is next on their list of "piracy" and how any organization can tell anyone anything if they win.
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Simple, send him/her a link to the source of the article. Co-worker sees the article, original content provider gets their ad money.
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The internet is a special case. If you send this article to your peers, you're most likely going to send the link...You're not going to print it out, bind it up, and distribute it as part of a new employee orientation packet...That is not authorized reuse.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that had to buy bound xeroxes of newspaper/magazine articles for classes in school...The reason that those are so expensive is because they pay the royalties to get the rights to reprint that work.
Re:now that I've told my office (Score:5, Insightful)
Bunch of damn anti-copyright zombies not reading the damn story. This is what copyright is supposed to be about. You write a well researched article that ends up in a trade magazine, and then some PHB at IBM decides he likes it, sends it down to the printshop, and runs off 10,000 copies so he can give one to every employee, and what do you get? Squat.
What do you think someone is going to get out of free distribution in this case? You think Bob, writer of economic trend stories, is going to get more people buying his articles because some joker ripped it off? Maybe he'll sell more seats at his concerts! Come on.
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Dilbert photocopies (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dilbert photocopies (Score:5, Interesting)
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The summary is awful. This isn't about "sharing" anything. It is about unauthorized reprinting of someone else's copyrighted work. The analogy isn't "Singing someone a few bars of a new hit tune by the watercooler" it's "Burning a copy of the CD for everyone who works in the building, and distributing them." The first is fair use, the second is systematic copyright infringement.
Bogus! (Score:3, Funny)
Wow! This is really interesting news! (Score:3, Funny)
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Share News Story With Coworkers? That's A Paddlin' (Score:2, Funny)
Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie (Score:5, Insightful)
The copyright industry will force everyone to keep quiet all the time. But the phones will still ring in movie theaters - they just won't be able to record the movie without getting caught.
The current overreaching copyright regime inhibits, rather than promotes, the progress of science and useful arts. It secures for unlimited times to parties other than authors, like publishers and agencies, exclusive rights. That inhibit, rather than promote the progress that justifies the Constitution's original compromise with our inalienable freedom to express ourselves, even by copying another's content.
At one time, for a few hundred years, economics meant copyright was the compromise between perfect freedom and perfect commerce. But now technology and global interconnectedness have reduced the time in which exclusivity is justifiable, even as corporations have extended the "limited times" to longer, indefinitely long, periods.
We have to scrap this thing and start over with new limited times, shorter than the original 17 years (a human generation) of the late 1700s. Or it will scrap us, as it has already done for far too long.
Sane Copyright Reform (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that was fine at a time in history when in order to put something in a tangible form required great effort - a printing press or whatever and a physical distribution network- but now - it's a matter of CTRL-C > CTRL-V > SEND/PUBLISH (etc).
The 'fixed and tangible form' is as near to the fluidity of verbal communication as make
It also needs to handle software better (Score:3, Interesting)
Copyright is supposed to promote progress by helping new ideas to be spread as widely as possible, so they can be picked up and built upon by others. That's how progress happens, by incremental steps, each new idea standing on the shoulders of those that came before. Copyright specifically protects only the expression, not the ideas, so it's not necessary to wait until the term expires before you can incorporate the interesting ideas into your own work.
But the brain-dead way we apply the concept of copy
Sensationalist Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
So, everybody who's yelling about getting in trouble for reading over a coworker's shoulder, or not being allowed to email links just needs to calm down and read the fine article.
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So don't photocopy articles... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't photocopy articles for commercial purposes.
If you are running a business and you need, say 500 of your employees to have access to this information, then you really probably should be paying for more than ONE (1) magazine subscription..
Go talk to the magazine/newspaper company and negotiate a contract to provide the information you need to your employees.
As a slashdotter, I know I'm supposed to believe that "information wants to be free", but there are costs for gathering and reporting news. If anyone can photocopy the news without permission, it becomes harder for the newspaper to recover its costs.
The photocopying of journal articles has been held NOT to be a fair use - which is probably why the defendant settled. See American Geophysical Union, et al. v. Texaco, Inc., a Second Circuit court of appeals case from 1994.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?
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The court held that it was not fair use for Texaco research scientists to make and keep photocopies of articles from scientific journals. Texaco had a large library of scientific journals, and its 500+ researchers could check them out, and would routinely make photocopies of articles they found interesting to keep at their desks.
One judge dissented.
Here is the majority's response to the dissenting opinion (This is all you really need to read to
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Now, sure. You might want a 500 reprints of an article. But if this comes up a lot, then you need to turn to one of the news aggregation services - and pay the costs.
Re:So don't photocopy articles... (Score:4, Interesting)
But you are incorrect if you believe that by merely quoting an author you are thereby protected from copyright liability. Copyright infringement does not depend on a lack of attribution. Copyright infringement is not plagiarism.
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Problem with COPYING not LINKING?? (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA doesn't have the specifics, but I am willing to guess that the problem was that the accused was copying the text of articles from site and redistributing that, not passing on the link to the story.
Why the important difference? Copying and redistributing would deny the news publisher of whatever ad revenue they would receive when the reader went directly to their site (and subsequently were served the ads). Something similar could be said about a newspaper/magazine clipping.
Something like this is, of course, all about money, so my speculation is that the causation is the loss of ad revenue.
I wouldn't mind ... except (Score:2)
Typically inaccurate headline (Score:2)
This: "Firm's marketing group distributed press packets to employees containing newspaper and magazine articles under copyright "
...does not equal this: "Share a News Story With Coworkers, Pay a Fine"
Bang-up reporting as usual, kdawson. Do you possess even rudimentary reading comprehension skills?
xxxA acronym club (Score:2)
I'm so telling (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps I'm missing something (Score:4, Interesting)
A company is a single legal entity, right? (Okay, we'll ignore subsidaries and parents for the moment, let's just "yes").
If this was an individual, buying a magazine and then photocopying pages--but not distributing them--there wouldn't be a snowball in hell's chance of a case.
The parallel applies: the company wasn't redistributing articles; despite the spurious use of "distributing", "making copies available only within the company" is not distribution in the copyright sense. It created copies, and gave them to itself.
Even in the software world there's nothing legally preventing you from this (you might be prevented through license terms from using--or even installing--more than one copy simultaneously, but there's nothing stopping you from making the copy in the first place).
Had this gone to court, I'd be surprised if the outcome had gone the same way.
Summing it up: (Score:3, Insightful)
New Hotness: SIAA
We're doomed.
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They could have just sent links to the original articles and saved all the hassle.
Re:it just occurred to me that.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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