Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Harlan Ellison Can Sue AOL Under DMCA

Posted by timothy on from the one-man-not-to-have-against-you dept.

mbstone writes "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that sci-fi author Harlan Ellison can go ahead with his DMCA lawsuit against AOL. Seems somebody posted some Ellison stories to Usenet, AOL made 'em available, Ellison complained, and AOL blew him off."

2 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Pray the jury is sensible. by sudog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If an author can sue every single ISP for damages, everywhere, we enter a nasty realm of "okay time to shut anything that might be infringing down."

    What ISP can afford to filter every newsgroup manually? What ISP can sit there and act on anything but complaints?

    An author deserves protection, but the person responsible for posting it is the one liable--not the ISPs who provide the avenue by which an author's works are distributed.

    What's the matter, Harlan? Not enough money lining your pockets from your successful writing/consulting/speaking career?

    Bah.

  2. Re:Absurd by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful
    No he doesn't. As the article write-up points out, he asked AOL to remove the (clearly) infringing articles, and AOL blew him off.

    You could infer that he plans on suing every NNTP server operator on "the web" (you mean the 'net, right?) if he has asked every single NNTP server operator, individually, to remove the files from their servers, and every single one of them has refused.

    It strikes me as a reasonable request and I think Ellison is within his rights to go to court over it.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.