Using the DMCA Against License Violations?

bcrowell asks: "Here's a moral conundrum for you. The much-hated DMCA can be a tool to enforce copyleft licenses, and in my case, it may be the only effective tool. I'm the author of some free physics textbooks (all free as in beer, some free as in speech) that are available under the GFDL and OPL copyleft licenses. I've learned that there's a guy on eBay who is selling my books on CD and violating the license. (Selling is allowed, since they're free-as-in-speech, but he's violating the license in various ways, such as not informing his buyers about the license, and selling them under a different title and using the tables of contents in his ads without showing the license or listing me as the author.) It's not just me. He's doing the same thing with other copylefted books, such as this one." The submitter is worried about the ethics behind using the recent misuses we've seen so far. Those interested in this question might also be interested in Prof. Felten's answers from his recent Slashdot interview.

"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."

Comments

Lawsuits Lawsuits Lawsuits

[Kaz Riprock]

If your copyright (in which you make the book/software copylefted) is violated, you should have civil action available to you outside of the DMCA. If you need to sue this person specifically, I'm sure there are a number of ways you can get his information without resorting to the DMCA "must give" statute. My first guess (and this is just a wild guess) is that if you ask eBay for it and they refuse pointing you to their vero service, then you should probably find a lawyer who can bully them into it with either a lawsuit or some sort of pre-filing motion which would make them give it up or some how get them in some sort of "conspiracy" with the violator...

IAN only NAL, I'm not even a law student...but my guess is that the legal paths for you were already set well before the DMCA and it may just take some research or a good lawyer who can talk with the EFF and FSF guys.

Re:Hit him in the karma

[Anonymous Coward]

Well put, tjvitolo@yahoo.com . If Gregg has any questions, I'm sure he can e-mail you at tjvitolo@yahoo.com . Don't you agree, tjvitolo@yahoo.com ?