Slashdot Mirror
Using the DMCA Against License Violations?
"eBay has several different mechanisms for complaining about this, and I used one of them. Other people have complained too, but so far the result just seems to be that eBay deletes the listings of the items (which have already been sold). Meanwhile the guy is still violating copyleft licenses (as well as selling other copyright-violating stuff, such as screensavers containing commercial porn images).
Apparently the most effective way to deal with this on eBay is to participate in their vero
program, which basically means sending the DMCA Police after the guy. For instance, if I wanted to sue the guy (which I don't), I'd need to know his name and address. The DMCA says that eBay has to provide that info to someone who complains about a copyright violation.
It seems like it would be a similar deal in the software world. The conventional wisdom about how to prevent infringement is to GPL your code, and transfer the copyright to the FSF, which will contact license violators and (theoretically) sue them if it comes to that. So how long will it be until the FSF is asked by an open-source developer to invoke the DMCA in order to deal with a license violation? In my own case, should I go ahead and join eBay's vero program? It would make me feel like I was in bed with the enemy, but it does seem like it would give me some very effective options for dealing with the situation. For instance, members of the program can have eBay run automated boolean searches for copyright-violating items, and get the results e-mailed to them periodically.
One possible reply to my question is 'Why do you care?" The problem here is that this guy is doing exactly what RMS originally designed copyleft to prevent: he's taking free information and making it not-free. His customers don't know that the books are copylefted, and have effectively had their own freedom taken away: they don't know they can modify the books, copy them, or sell them."
Just because you choose to do the world a service and give your work away, doesn't mean you shouldn't get credit.
Writing textbooks is HARD. Not everyone can do it. This guy is making a contribution to the educational world in a way in which non-rich people can afford it. That's a damn nice gift, if you ask me. The more education in our world, the better.
And you would tell him he should just screw off? I don't think so.
Personally, I'd use whatever legal means were at my disposal if I was incensed by what happened, up to and including the DMCA. Law is law. Turn something bad into something good.
--ZS
-- sigs cause cancer.
from the ebay link:
" LuxuriousityOffice is fully licensed so you have full usage rights. In addition,
you also have access to the complete source code and the right to modify the program and re-compile a new version
your own specifications! Try asking Microsoft for that with their office program!"
so I think that they are not violating the liscense.
Or do you have to disclose the original name? I mean If I can make any code changes I want, why can't I chang the name as well?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1: You'll have concrete evidence that he is violating your copyright, which can be brought to court and presented.
2: He has to send you the CD, which requires a valid return address. If he's smart he isn't using his own home address, but it is a start, and enough that you should be able to track him down via subpoena.
He is violating your copyright outright. This is illegal, and not dependant on a law such as the DMCA. The DMCA would make the CDs that he is selling your text on illegal as they are being used to circumvent your copyright. This is just outright blatant theft of your intellectual property.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
DMCA is relevant to your situation if the license constitutes "copyright management information."
DMCA provides several provisions, not all of which are wholly evil. Section 1201 (a)(1)(A) (the "anti-circumvention clause") provides that "no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." it goes on to list a variety of exceptions. The failure to include enough meaningful exceptions is a serious flaw in the law.
Section 1201(a)(2) (the "anti-trafficking" clause) goes on to provide that "no person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title" among other things. This is not an entirely bad thing, though it has been terribly abused by RIAA and MPAA to prvent the distribution of things that do have reasonable commercial value.
Section 1202 (b)(1) provides that "No person shall, without the authority of the copyright owner or the law intentionally remove or alter any copyright management information."
Rather than railing against the "DMCA" it would seem that supporters ofopen source ought to be strongly supporting 1202(b)(1). People concerned with legitimate security research ought to be interested in expanding the expemptions to 1201(a)(1), while people concerned with playing their digital content on devices of their choosing ought to be concerned with 1201(b) in general.
The copyright office is holding hearings on 1201(a)(1), though it is too late to participate if you haven't already.
Instead of uninformed bitching about DMCA as a whole, read the thing and express rational criticism instead of hysterical nonsense. You'll get farther that way.
These books are not covered under the GPL.
The GPL, broadly speaking, covers software. As the writeup states, these books were covered under the GFDL and the OPL. The GFDL is a little bit confusing as to its requirements, but there are a number of rules you must follow to either print a verbatim copy or to release a derivative work. It does state, in part that you must: In other words, if you release a modified version, you are still required to state the original author(s) on your own modified title page.
The OPL is more simple and explicit and says:
It also says that if you publish a derivative work you must cite the original work.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
It's not a "license violation".
Stop thinking about "copyleft". That has no legal meaning.
copyleft licenses are not USE licenses, like EULAs on software: they are licenses you can choose to accept that permit you to do things other than those things allowed by normal copyright law. I don't have to accept your license to read a copy of your book, or to posess it. All your license does is give me a way I can do something normally reserved for YOU by copyright law: Redistribute, for instance.
So, if someone is redistributing your work, they have to have your permission: There are two ways they can get this, in this case:
They can get it from you directly
They can follow the terms of the license you granted them to do so.
In other words, if they aren't following the terms of your "copyleft" license, then they are distributing a copyrighted work without permission. It's the same thing as if there WAS no license.
All the so-called "GPL violations" are the same thing as well. Not GPL violations.. COPYRIGHT violations.
These might be 2 obvious points, but I couldn't see them posted anywhere:
1) Have you tried contacting the guy using something as simple as e-mail, etc.? It is conceivable the the guy selling the books doesn't know that what he is doing is wrong, or that a little persistence and just the threat of legal action may stop him.
2) Getting the guys real name and address from ebay may be more difficult than you think. I know that I wouldn't sign up for an ebay account with my own name, and the e-mail address that I used would be some obscure one. If he signed up using a fake name and an e-mail address using a domain that he setup with another fake name, then you may be out of luck.
Just get an account on Ebay and "sell" your work. Post the information about the product, including the free download link. Make sure you reference your "competitor's" publication liberally---
You say: "Don't pay $20 for Joe's Physics CD-- it for free from the man who wrote it!!!"
You can drive the price into the ground, and put him out of business.
Think of the DMCA as a gun. Not necessarily what you want to use to uphold your rights. Normally only bad people or those with high authority (police, soldiers - in theory) use guns to get what you feel is fair.
A store owner who pulls a gun to stop a robbery is different than the robber who pulls the gun.
In many ways you are the store owner being robbed.....pulling the gun (the DMCA) may not be nice and it may not be what you want to do, but it can't be considered out of line to use more "force" than that which some may feel is necessary....add to that the law is on your side. Right or wrong I assume that in day to day life you abide by those laws which affect you, whether or not you agree with them. This is a two way street.