Copyfraud Is Stealing the Public Domain 263
malkavian writes "This community has complained long and loudly about the very one-sided approach to copyright, and the not-so-slow erosion of the public domain. On top of the corporate lobbying to remove increasingly larger parts of the public domain, there is now an growing pattern whereby works are directly taken from the public domain and effectively stolen by a single company leveraging protections provided under copyright law. The Register's article is based on a paper by Jason Mazzone at the Brooklyn Law School, which starkly details the problems that are now becoming evident as entities grab control over public domain works. The paper proposes some possible solutions, such as amending the Copyright Act. From the abstract: 'Copyright law itself creates strong incentives for copyfraud. The Copyright Act provides for no civil penalty for falsely claiming ownership of public domain materials. There is also no remedy under the Act for individuals who wrongly refrain from legal copying or who make payment for permission to copy something they are in fact entitled to use for free. While falsely claiming copyright is technically a criminal offense under the Act, prosecutions are extremely rare. These circumstances have produced fraud on an untold scale, with millions of works in the public domain deemed copyrighted, and countless dollars paid out every year in licensing fees to make copies that could be made for free.'"
Combating Cyberfraud (Score:2, Interesting)
What we need is for someone to create a program, open source of course, where people can create text files of public domain works, submit said works and then those who have the program, can download those works they want and forever have access to them.
There are programs available on the religous side [crosswire.org] for those works which are in the public domain (i.e. early church fathers, bibles, dictionaries, lexicons, etc), but I don't see any for the non-secular side.
Perhaps if a few started a website and elicited volunteers to help with the code so that the program - lets call it "Free Works", is available for all OS's. Then students, scholars, professors, and the general public could and would have access without having to pay such outragous fees for something that should be free.
I'm glad someone's pointing out this fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
I requested a paper via interlibrary loan, and attached was the standard boilerplate that it is copyrighted work, a licensing fee had been paid for the copy to be used only for the purposes of scholarly research, additional copies were $1.25 each to be paid to XXXXXX, ... blah, blah blah.
The paper was written in 1869.
Idiots. To use copyright maximalist terminology: they're *stealing* from the public domain.
Re:Combating Cyberfraud (Score:1, Interesting)
Then why doesn't the professors, students, etc know about it?
Civil remedies (Score:3, Interesting)
We'd probably get farther if we could sue fraudulent companies, rather than prosecute them as criminal cases. In that way we could have someone like EFF or some watchdog take these guys to court and sue them for damages as well as return of fraudulently obtained earnings due to willful abuse of copyright. That would hit them where their soft spots are and lower the burden of proof from reasonable doubt to preponderance of evidence, a much harder thing for their lawyers to weasel out of.
While it would be nice to throw people in jail for this, and that should remain on the books, the fact is that having the state prosecute for this runs into the same problems every time: the state is less interested in prosecuting people who have good lawyers and lots of special interest cash for something that Middle America doesn't really understand all that well and is divided on the implications of. There's no glory for the prosecutors, and it's expensive for the state when they could be busting somebody that will give them some juicy publicity.
it is your moral duty (Score:2, Interesting)
to ignore copyright law
no, more than that
it is your moral duty to do your utmost to circumvent, outmaneuver, and otherwise destroy copyright law and the tools that enforce it
i am not in any way joking. copyright law has nothing to do with artists rights and rewarding artists for their work. it is all about extracting cash from you for your own culture for the sake of some bottom line on some accounting sheet
copyright must be destroyed, we must outright waged war on it on all fronts
Re:Combating Cyberfraud (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Combating Cyberfraud (Score:1, Interesting)
I say we use the copyfraud tactics against them -- set up an entity that claims copyright on public domain works, and then attached a creative commons license to it, effectively granting them protection from future copyfrauders.
Simple, market-based solution (Score:5, Interesting)
But let's also update the tax code to capture the full monetary value of these copyrighted works. Oh, and since "intellectual property" does not deteriorate over time as would a piece of real property, the tax code should explicitly disallow depreciation.
I suggest we start collecting back taxes on all of those old "Steamboat Willie" cartoons that Disney started putting out in the early part of the 20th century, along with old music catalogs and so forth. Let's see how truly valuable these IP assets are, and how many are suddenly not worth keeping copyrighted.
Some Nasty Pop Culture Examples (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember how the movie It's a Wonderful Life used to be played in the afternoon on every single station with air time to fill leading up to Christmas? This happened because the movie bombed in the box office, and the studio didn't bother to renew the copyright.
Then Aaron Spelling bought up various IP rights relating to the movie, such as ownership of a song used in one scene. He assumed control over distribution of the movie, based on a complicated legal theory that a lot of IP lawyers consider totally bogus. But this theory has never been challenged in court, and never will be — nobody's going to start an expensive legal battle over their right to show a movie without paying a fee.
Another one that really bothers me: the documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, about NYC elementary school kids learning ballroom dancing. Lots of music, of course, and that ended up costing them lots of money in "clearance fees" for the right to use it. How much? By the time it went to DVD, $140,000, almost half the cost of making the movie.
People who make this kind of movie don't have a lot of cash to throw around, so they did what they could to minimize it. At first, they only paid for the rights for a couple of weeks, so they could show the film on the festival circuit, and get some investors to cover the rest. They also dubbed over any music that they thought wasn't important to the movie, such as a scene where some kids are playing a video game.
One particular outrageous case: there's a scene where a woman is walking down the street, and her cell phone rings for 6 seconds before she answers it. The ring tone is the theme from Rocky, and the director decided she had to have that little bit of music to make the scene work. For that she needed clearance from Sprint (ring tone rights) and EMI (publishing rights). Sprint saw it as product placement and let her have clearance for free. But EMI wanted $10K! She finally bargained them down to $2K. Even so, she winces every time she see that scene, and has to tell herself that that six seconds was worth that much.
She told an interviewer that if had known what a big hassle music clearance was going to be, she probably wouldn't have made the movie.
Now, all you amateur lawyers are screaming FAIR USE! FAIR USE! . And for once you're right. Every lawyer I've heard talk about the subject agrees that music that happens to be overheard while making a documentary is fair use; only music performed for the film requires clearance. This is not just pro-electronic-free types. This includes pro-industry lawyers with a very narrow definition of fair use!
But despite the unanimity of legal opinion, this hasn't really been tested in court. Insurance companies that bond productions prefer to err on the side of caution, and the entertainment conglomerates that control facilities and distribution networks have an interest in keeping things narrow. Everybody agrees that if there's ever a test case, the documentary-use-is-fair-use doctrine will almost certainly prevail.
But will there ever be a test case? Again, money is an issue. When you're struggling to raise a hundred K or two to get your indie documentary made, an expensive court battle is just not an option.
Legal joke: "Sir, I've examined the evidence, and you have an extremely good case. The only question I have for you is this: How much justice can you afford?"
GPL and other open source licenses (Score:2, Interesting)
This would appear to be the primary motivation not only for the GPL, but for other open source licenses as well (ex BSD).
Were source code put directly into the public domain, not only companies use the source code without contributing their changes back to the community (which the BSD license does allow), they would be allowed to appropriate the source code and stamp their own copyright on it (copyfraud it, which even BSD-style licenses explicitly forbid). Not only could they sue anybody else that used that source code, but potentially the original author of that code as well.
I guess open source and GPL authors could see copyfraud coming a mile away.
Simple solution... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Combating Cyberfraud (Score:5, Interesting)
It would have been nice if the summary had named this "single company". Apparenly, if I read the article correctly, they are called "Kessinger Publishing".
Bringing public attention to corporate misdeeds is a very effective way to encourage better behavior on their part. Here's some possibly useful information:
Kessinger Publishing
PO Box 1404, Whitefish, MT 59937, United States
(605)892-0560, (605)892-0561 fax, http://www.kessinger.net/ [kessinger.net]
Kessinger Publishing appears to be a privately held corporation and I didn't find any names of owners or management. I'm betting someone with Lexis access could find that info.
Trademarkfraud too (Score:4, Interesting)
What Disney copyrights is the animated features they create retelling those stories
That doesn't stop Disney from bringing flimsy accusations of copying against other publishers of animated films. Look at GoodTimes Entertainment [wikipedia.org].
and they also trademark the appearance of the characters in the features.
Why should Disney have the right to trademark such appearances when they are based closely on the original illustrations that entered the public domain along with the text?
Re:Combating Cyberfraud (Score:3, Interesting)
They should rent them out to Google Books. They claim it's damn near impossible to find the copyright holders on millions of books (thus allowing them to claim them as "orphans"). It's an odd admission for a search company, but there it is.