Share a News Story With Coworkers, Pay a Fine 243
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.
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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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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Damn the number is
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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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Thank you for pointing out that crucially important fact! The idea that damage due to copyright infringement is only possible if it is done for financial gain, or if the copyright work is commercially traded, has legs, and is preposterous.
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A preposterous argument is ridiculous; clearly absurd, and the motives, intelligence or sanity of the person proposing the argument should be examined.
Now the idea that damage due to copyright infringement is only possible if it is done for financial gain does 'have legs', at least in the sense that it would convince many people. However,
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This is old-school copyright infringement. Nothing to see here, move along. You cannot reproduce copyrighted material in its entirety and distribute it to hundreds of people.
<mode=Devil's advocate> True enough, the law says you can't take an article and photocopy it for your internal newsletter. You can, however, leave the original in the breakroom for everybody to read. Or clip the article from the magazine and attach it to a circulation list (read it, check off your name and pass it on).
You can even make a single photocopy for your own personal use. So, say in the first example, there was also a copier in the breakroom and everybody made their own copy for personal u
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
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I don't think the initial moderation was "moderator bias," I think the mod was simply clueless. (S)he didn't get the joke.
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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.
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.
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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Knowing how many people view their content seems like a reasonable g
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What's wrong with squeezing every penny out of the reporter's work? Don't you want every penny of salary you're entitled to get?
That presumes they're entitled to any and all money they can get.
Let's make something very clear: the content providers don't give a damn that you aren't seeing the ads; they only give a damn when you can't be counted. They're not concerned about the advertisers being paid attention; they are only concerned about how much money they can get out of the advertisers to sell to them your attention based on their content's page views.
The advertiser's actual return on investment has never been the content prov
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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"
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But ROI has always been unmeasurable and unreliable. Whatever hard numbers you get from people actively informing you of where they heard of your product still leaves as a guess how many aren't reporting, or how many are lying. ("This guy says he first read about our product on the inside of his ex-girlfriend's chest cavity." (*)) Everyone in the advertising business has a vested
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But ROI has always been unmeasurable and unreliable.
WTF are you talking about? I pay google $100 to place my ad up for some search terms. I see which search terms people click on. Then I also see which search terms result in a user filling out a form, clicking a deeper link, ect...
Money spent / number of actions = cost per action.
Now take cost per action and divide it by the number of financial transactions resulting from the action vector.
Number of actions / financial transactions = number of actions needed per sale
Now compare the margin of each financial
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If these guys aren't getting the compensation they desire for the work they produce, then let them stop producing the work. Let it dry up; there's obviously not the paid demand they thought for the product.
Using the law to artificially prop up an activity for which there is not enough paid demand is just asking for trouble in the long run.
Note that the "paid" aspe
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They are paying in units of "risk of getting caught" which are currently valued far lower than the currency units used to otherwise obtain that mus
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
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.
Think again. (Score:2)
For God's sake, it's not "more restrictive than paper", and trying this sort of thing with paper would also get you in trouble. ... It's the legal equivalent of making multiple copies of a newspaper, every day, and passing it around the office.
Can you tell me how I'm supposed to pass an electronic copy of an article or whole newspaper to my co-worker, without making a copy?
this example is pretty much a no brainer--either all copyright is meaningless and unenforceable, or this was just a blatant violati
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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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For God's sake, it's not "more restrictive than paper", and trying this sort of thing with paper would also get you in trouble.
The idea that this is the legal equivalent of sharing a newspaper is ridiculous.
Well it sure seems like they want sharing one copy and making multiple copies to be equivalently illegal, and making it so that in a workplace there isn't one newspaper subscription shared by everyone but instead there are some 50 copies of each paper delivered to the company each day, one for each employee. Or charge higher rates for "business delivery" than individuals pay.
I seem to remember reading a story (sorry, no cite) where a newspaper was upset with the local library for making the current editio
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Uh, one question, how many employees can actually use one physical copy of a newspaper a day?
You mean use any section for any part of the day, such as the comics?
Depends how long it takes to get to the person who tears out what he/she wants.
Anyway, these days it isn't about how many actually use a work, it's about how many could potentially use a work, and what compensation is due. The papers aren't selling articles; they sell access to articles on temporary, disposable media (paper). If you want back issues available on another media (microfiche), pay up.
See Bruce Springsteen pays 56 times too
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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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Would it have been legal if they bought enough physical newspapers with the stories in them and clipped them for each packet? What if they clipped them, made a single copy of each for better presentation in the packet, and retained the original clipping as a backup, having one secu
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And what if these packets were distributed electronically by an e-mail that embedded the web-sourced stories inside framesets or iframes?
Personally I don't have a problem with that but I know there have been court cases about framing. It usually seems to come down to intent - were you trying to pass the content off as your own?
And what if the employees read them behind a proxy server that cached the remote articles?
Fine provided the proxy server respected the cache control headers in the original article (e
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Would it have been legal if they bought enough physical newspapers with the stories in them and clipped them for each packet?
Yes.
What if they clipped them, made a single copy of each for better presentation in the packet, and retained the original clipping as a backup, having one secured original for every copy (i.e. fair-use copying for archival purpose)?
Still Legal.
Would each copy truly have to be made from a unique albeit identical original, or is that just an artificial restriction to make copying more onerous, and if so, why not require all copies be made by re-typesetting them in an original Gutenburg printing press?
Copyright was lazily written because it originally had the benefit of the delivery vehicles limitations setting the boundaries for the definitions of fair use. It the above example you could make legitimate arguments for this not being fair use, that only one copy was used to make other copies. Even though you did purchase enough copies to cover an original for each packet, you didn't make true backups of each one - you shifted to an equivalent number of backups assuming it was the same -
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As for resetting them in the Gutenburg press, illegal.
So they gave a little in allowing the fair-use backup copy be made by a photocopier. (How about a mimeograph machine?)
It's amazing that photocopiers today aren't mandated to be connected to the Internet and pop up a legal challenge whenever more than one copy is attempted for any original, requiring an assertion that you have the right to make multiple copies, signed with a thumbprint, and sending a copy of whatever it is and the print to the home office to be checked by an automaton for possible prosecut
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Calm down, construct a reasonable argument for fair use/anti copyright - and help yourself out. Copy mechanism doesn't matter. Its a moot point.
Also, your thought that its amazing that copiers don't require a thumbprint or some such shit is ridiculous. Think of it this way, the copyright holder has the right to EXERCISE th
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No one gives a damn if a million people read/watch/listen to a copyrighted work, though TV tries to limit the re-display of content (e.g. can't record a football game, and then play the recording in a public venue), and music and text try to control derviative work
Not a mater of legality, a mater of legal costs. (Score:2)
This practice is nothing more than legal extortion.
-Rick
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So they don't even know for sure that what they did was wrong, but they buckled under. Wow. Three hundred grand for a "maybe." You've got to wonder how hard they leaned on them to get that kind of response. If that isn't extortion
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Yes, but:
The person who reported Knowledge Networks will receive a $6,000 reward.
So my recommendation is:
1) Send article to coworkers
2) Rat yourself out
3) Profit!
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.
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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
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The entire control revolves around who has the right to copy. The definition of "copy" ne
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
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Binary only code can not be protected. So it will be disadvantaged.
Your idea is good. And though it's far from current practice, keep in mind that persistence with a good idea that well models real practice is the key to seeing the model applied in new rules.
And publishing the idea w
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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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Nevertheless, the article does raise a lot of questions.
I wonder if posting a snippet of a news article on a company Intranet would be considered a copyright violation? I know for a fact that many attorneys routinely shuttle snippets of text clipped from Lexis/Nexis back and forth during the preparation of a case brief or pleading. I also routinely receive clippings from co-workers that they have passed along in order to "educate" me about a particular issue. This article makes me feel that these behavi
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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.
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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?
You're missing the point (Score:2)
xxxA acronym club (Score:2)
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Time to ban enforcement by trade groups (Score:2)
Especially trade groups that specialize in enforcement. If it's bad enough for the copyright holder to bring a claim, then let them do it. But these Gambini-esque trade groups are making a living off the money they're extorting from companies and individuals.
It's like letting the mafia enforce the speed limit.
but where's the beef? (Score:2)
There's obviously more to this story than was in TFA.
Points that need clarification:
1) The entire point of press packets is to disseminate information, some elements of which are expected to be under copyright because press packets typically contain articles and extracts of articles from many different sources. TFA doesn't indicate if Knowledge Networks was duplicating these press packs on their own dime, or what...
2) As other people have pointed out, the headline on the /. story doesn't have anythin
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.
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Buying one copy gives you the right to that one copy. It in no way gives you the right to make u
Well, it serves them right... (Score:2)
oh..."co-workers"...nevermind.
$6,000 reward (Score:2)
I bet that was Anonymous Coward. He gets around.
Uh Oh (Score:2, Insightful)
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Summing it up: (Score:3, Insightful)
New Hotness: SIAA
We're doomed.
s/i/a/i (Score:2)
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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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