Share a News Story With Coworkers, Pay a Fine

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.

Comments

Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Analyst firm Knowledge Networks has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a complaint that it distributed news articles to its employees without permission of the copyright owners, a trade group announced Thursday.

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

[Cerberus911]

Prepare to get sued.

Re:Article Text

[cashman73]

By reposting the article's text and sharing said article with everyone on slashdot, you have just committed a violation of copyright law. The submitter, and Anonymous Coward, must now pay the fine of $300,000 immediately, or be subjected to further lawsuits.

Re:Article Text

[gurps_npc]

Why else do you think he did it anonymously?

Re:Article Text

[Eddi3]

Why do you think they submitted the article anonymously in the first place? ;-)

Re:Article Text

[darklynx489]

All /. er's please report to "Community Detoxification Room 93" to be punished for participating and contributing to the illegal spreading of news. Failure to appear will result in a full fledged manhunt and a bounty will be placed on your being for the amount of $30k. All gossip must be submitted under form RI-9339. Failure to comply will result in mortal termination. Thank you. Hitler. err... disregard that name. Hitler is not alive. I did not just say I was alive. Failure to comply with erasing this from memory will result in termination.

Re:Article Text

[jacobsm]

Since I now live in the Tampa Florida area and have learned about the history of the city this fits in rather well with this topic.

About 100 years ago Tampa had a huge cigar industry. The cigar workers would hire a person to sit and read the newspaper aloud to them as they worked.

Think of all the money the newspaper publishers could have received if they sued from the Cuban cigar workers back then.

It just boggles my mind.

Re:Article Text

[sumdumass]

There isn't a mod for poetic justice or situational irony. Funny was the next best thing. Give 'em a break or give more mod options.

Re:Article Text

[click2005]

Don't worry, I know the GP's identity. I'm phoning the SIIA as I type to get my $6,000 reward.

Damn the number is ./ed

Re:Article Text

[JimDaGeek]

On /. there is no such thing as a true "anonymous" post. This "anonymous" guy/girl that posted has actually left an IP address. If the address was not from some public source, than that IP could be traced back to the poster. :-)

Thank you for playing the, "I wish I could have free speech in America" game. You will be sued shortly!

Re:Article Text

[Frymaster]

On /. there is no such thing as a true "anonymous" post.

how about with:
the cloak
tor

Re:Article Text

[Chase Husky]

This is a rather sudden change of heart, when compared to the "IP addresses can't be used as undeniable proof of copyright infringement" antics if the RIAA is involved.

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

If the address was not from some public source, than that IP could be traced back to the poster.

Really? The RIAA haters don't seem to think that traffic that sources at an IP address under your control, that is assigned to the device of the registered customer of a service provider, is legally connected to you.

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just "Moderator Bias"; just post it as Anonymous Coward to avoid the SlashDot Bad Karma. (Don't fight it, is not worth the trouble.)

Re:Article Text

[azvoodoo]

Why stop at articles. Every Monday during football season there are millions of copyright breakers. These are the people discussing the weekends footballs games around the water cooler.

According to the blurb during the game " ... ANY dissemination of this broadcast without prior approval ... is strictly forbidden ... " (sic)

Re:Article Text

[rpbird]

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. Charging for the copies doesn't matter. Way back around 1980, a professor of mine was doing something similar with articles from science magazines. He created a reader for one of his classes and distributed it to his students. We had to pick it up at the university's copy center. He got into trouble with the copyright holders. You have to get permission to reprint articles. This is only a little work, and, depending on the articles, only a little money (though a few copyright owners will try to screw you by jacking up the price - solution, leave that article out).

Re:Article Text

[mikael]

They still do that in Cuba - the cigar makers get read newspapers, books and poetry. If they like the item they tap their knives on the table. Although, since Cube is already under embargo, I doubt if there is anything the RIAA can do about that, let alon the illegal satellite/cable TV setups just so the womenfolk can watch Latin-American soap operas.

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Satellite TV's war on pirates blocks Cuba's secret viewers

Re:Article Text

[jeffhall]

The lawyers have closed most of the West's profitable factories with two decades of personal injury claims, so now they are targeting their next lucrative market - copyright infringement. If infringement cases progress at their current rate, in two decades time anyone will face the risk of prosecution for publishing anything, because for example a lawyers client once strung the same two words together in a postcard or the same group of pixels could be found on a photograph taken 15 years ago by a lawyers auntie on holiday. The pendulum of justice has swung too far in favour of the major corporations who employ growing armies of copyright attornies to milk every last cent out of anyone publishing anything.

Re:Article Text

[multisync]

I don't really care about Slashdot Karma, or moderation for that matter. I browse comments at a low threshold, and generally drill down to read every comment in threads that interest me.

I don't think the initial moderation was "moderator bias," I think the mod was simply clueless. (S)he didn't get the joke.

Re:Article Text

[baboo_jackal]

So, then if I turn Anonymous Coward in, do I get $6,000, too?

Re:Article Text

[fishbowl]

"You cannot reproduce copyrighted material in its entirety and distribute it to hundreds of people. Charging for the copies doesn't matter."

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.

Re:Article Text

[Tierzero]

Is any organization exempt from this...the FBI, the CIA, local police agencies... because surely much of their investigative work is based on collective review of all kinds of copyright protected publications. And school teachers/professors who repro pieces for students? And if not, is intended use the issue then? If non commercial you're safe? Or is it volume/number of copies rather than use. Less than 5, fair use, more than five, unpermitted? I guess the onus is on the corporation/organization to figure it out. Like there isn't enough to do already. http://www.tierzero.com/

Re:Article Text

[zippthorne]

The pendulum of justice has swung too far in favor of the lawyers. And for some reason, it never swings back.

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

[ajs]

... 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.

Re:Article Text

[dosquatch]

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 use, is that a violation?

What if, instead of dead trees and a photocopier, it's an online article and I distribute the link in email?</mode>

Really, though, what's the gripe? Isn't the whole point of writing an article that people read it?

Re:Article Text

[FreakWent]

If the argument has legs, it 'stands up'; in court, to scrutiny, or what have you. An argument with legs is either logically valid or at least convincing to an audience.

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, the idea is not preposterous.

The best I can give you is that "The idea that criminal charges due to copyright infringement is only possible if it is done for financial gain, or if the copyright work is commercially traded is misinformed".

I hope this clarifies the matter.

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Spartacus!

Re:Article Text

[SCHecklerX]

neighbor's wifi, open proxies, anonymizing proxies, libraries....

Re:Article Text

[AnyoneEB]

He only said they could get sued, not that the group suing them would win. ;)

Re:Article Text

[cpt kangarooski]

You can even make a single photocopy for your own personal use.

No, there is no 'personal use' exception. You could argue that making such a copy would be a fair use, but there's no guarantee of that.

Re:Article Text

[cpt kangarooski]

The pendulum of justice has swung too far in favor of the lawyers. And for some reason, it never swings back.

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.

Re:Article Text

[infaustus]

I was under the impression that most tor exit node IPs were b& from slashdot...

Re:Article Text

[McFadden]

What kind of moron mods such an obvious "joke" funny?

Dunno, but clearly not the same kind of person who wastes their own, and everyone else's time, moaning about a joke on Slashdot.

Re:Article Text

[dosquatch]

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 count): Your instructor is limited under copyright law to make one copy for his personal use and to place one copy on library reserve. [...] Every student is allowed under copyright law to make one copy of a magazine article for personal use.

Like I said, quick Google search, but I've seen this elsewhere. I have no desire to dig through the actual statutes to cite chapter and verse where this comes from in the Act, but I trust it's there.

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree to some extent. Legally, that IP first needs to be connected to you. Not too hard to do. However, the burden for the ugly media companies is that they have to prove to some extent (preponderance of the evidence, etc) that it was actually YOU that committed copyright infringement. Not that easy is it. Most of the "wins" for the RIAA have been because people have settled out of court because they felt threatened and didn't think they could afford to "win".

I think a lot of people forget that they don't get sued for downloading copyrighted material but uploading. Most P2P software has a user upload and download. This is why I don't use P2P, at all. I use Usenet. I do not upload at all. I just download. Some people can say it is the "same" but it is not the same legally. To my knowledge no P2P user has ever been sued by the RIAA for downloading ONLY. They have all been sued for copyright infringement which entails illegal distribution or in other words uploading.

So to fight back, everyone should just quit using P2P and each pay a few bucks a month for a good Usenet service like Newsdemon or GigaNews. Uploading to these services is much more safe than doing it on P2P and downloading is almost worry free. Last I checked there is not copyright law against downloading only.

Maybe if the RIAA and MPAA got rid of the Digital Restriction Management crap and sold content that was affordable with no Digital Restriction Management, more people would be willing to pay a fair price for media content that belonged to them for personal use. As long as someone tries to restrict what I can do with content I purchase, I will not personally purchase the content through "legal" channels. I got burned when I bought a few seasons of "The Office" from iTunes and now it is locked down. I went on Usenet and got the same episodes at better quality with no Digital Restriction Management and was able to burn them to a DVD. I couldn't do that with the locked down versions from iTunes.

Blind Mac Zealots, please spare us your speech. My whole home network consists of three new Intel based Macs. I just don't want to have to buy a limited functionality MacTV for $300 just to watch stuff I already paid for. Downloading the stuff I already bought from iTunes off of Usenet and burning to DVD was easier and far less expensive and gave me a lot more options.

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG teh NY public library is in big trubbl3.

Re:Article Text

[cpt kangarooski]

I have no desire to dig through the actual statutes to cite chapter and verse where this comes from in the Act, but I trust it's there.

I'd be interested to know where they're getting this from, actually. It could very well be a fair use, though you'd have to argue it anew each and every time, since fair use depends on the circumstances. And in some limited situations, a school library could copy a work. And there could be some sort of license that the school has negotiated with a clearinghouse, or some other body with the right to sublicense, but this wouldn't be true for every single work. Otherwise, I think that this is more wishful thinking than accurate guidelines.

A lawfully made copy can certainly be put in a library and used by patrons of the library. Making additional copies is the tricky part. If you're interested in reading about what libraries and their patrons can and cannot do (for the most part), the sections you'd be interested in would be 17 USC 107 through 109. If it's an educational institution, 110 may also be relevant (but not for xeroxing articles).

Re:Article Text

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Really, though, what's the gripe? Isn't the whole point of writing an article that people read it?

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.

Re:Article Text

[BalanceOfJudgement]

paragraph 8 (by my count): Your instructor is limited under copyright law to make one copy for his personal use and to place one copy on library reserve. [...] Every student is allowed under copyright law to make one copy of a magazine article for personal use. [northern.edu]

Like I said, quick Google search, but I've seen this elsewhere. I have no desire to dig through the actual statutes to cite chapter and verse where this comes from in the Act, but I trust it's there.

17 U.S.C. 107 states that under fair use, multiple copies can be made for educational purposes. It does not address the means, suggesting the means are irrelevant (that is, it doesn't matter if the professor transcribes them by hand or uses the University's copy service).

Re:Article Text

[dosquatch]

Huzzah! Thank you, sir.

Re:Article Text

[fishbowl]

>If the argument has legs, it 'stands up';

I misused the idiom, I guess. I meant, it "has feet" -- it travels, it leaves footprints. It's a fallacy that is widely accepted as fact.

>I hope this clarifies the matter.

Not really, because I still need a good way to explain, so that people will understand, that the creator of something like an open source software product, or a song that's freely distributed, something "free" in that nature, where someone has infringed its copyright, suffers damages, and should be entitled to equivalent relief, as, say, that claimed by Disney with respect to an unlicensed DVD of Snow White...

Just because Disney is a giant corporation, and the product is commercially distributed, should have NO bearing on the equal protection of rights reserved under copyright, compared with an individual who retains the copyright on a minor work that is distributed noncommercially.

Equal rights regardless if you are a private person or a stakeholder in a multi-trillion-dollar corporation.

Re:Article Text

[Brickwall]

I think the mod was simply clueless. (S)he didn't get the joke.

You must be new here.

Re:Article Text

[cpt kangarooski]

The problem is that not all educational uses are fair uses. You have to look at the circumstances underlying each individual use, and judge them on a case by case basis. You really can't make accurate blanket statements as to what is and is not a fair use.

So while I'm sure that it often is a fair use to make a copy of an article for the members of the class to read in the library, it isn't necessarily so. Likewise, while it may often be that a student making a copy of an article he was assigned to read is a fair use, it isn't always the case that it will be.

(Also fair use doesn't care about the number of copies made, so long as it remains fair; there's nothing in there about one copy always being fair and more copies being unfair, etc. Really, it's just something to consider when looking at the fourth factor.)

Re:Article Text

[rhinokitty]

Analyst firm Knowledge Networks has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a complaint that it distributed news articles to its employees without permission of the copyright owners, a trade group announced Thursday.
Free IT resource

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 violatijng 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

[rts008]

Yes, you got it in one try!

It's all 'Hurray for me and Screw you' as far as Intellectual Property is concerned anymore.

Look at the Intellectual Property for the song "Happy Birthday" if you have doubts.

Take back the Web...IP=Internet Protocol, intellectual property is a misnomer and not applicable.

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

On /. there is no such thing as a true "anonymous" post. This "anonymous" guy/girl that posted has actually left an IP address. If the address was not from some public source, than that IP could be traced back to the poster. :-)

To steal a clique from FARK O RLY!
Find me...
I am sitting in my car hijacking some one's wireless.

Re:Article Text

[zippthorne]

The problem is that Lawyering doesn't follow normal economic rules. Increasing the supply of lawyers does not have a depressing effect on the price of a lawyer's time: the more lawyers there are, the more suits, and the greater the need to retain your own.

They're kind of like nuclear weapons in that respect: each individual nuclear weapon purchased is a rational decision, but you only really need nuclear weapons because others might have 'em. And if you actually use them against someone, you both lose.

Re:Article Text

[Chatsubo]

> Thank you for playing the, "I wish I could have free speech in America" game.

Which is now followed by the "Not everyone is from America" game.

Re:Article Text

[zero_offset]

"Participating in social process" probably wasn't the highlight of the publications' business plans, and it damned sure isn't the reason Joe Bob's Used RVs bought that full-page spread on page 7. The only perspective lost by copyright holders relates to outrageous expirations and draconian controls. It's people like you who have lost perspective by concluding that you are somehow entitled to something for nothing.

Besides, there wasn't anything related to a "social process" about this. It was a company's marketing department disseminating industry articles to their staff. It was pretty clearly a business activity -- you may rest assured that evil businessmen are being punished, even if they're not the ones who committed the unpardonable sin of attempting to profit from their labors.

Re:Article Text

[JimDaGeek]

Then you don't need to worry about me finding you, but cops driving by and seeing you. It is illegal to use someones network with out permissions, regardless of the network being open with no encryption.

Is it worth the risk to illegally use someones network just to post on /.?

Re:Article Text

[Lumpy]

Ahh but I posted though a open proxy, Nyahh nyahh. you cant catche me unless I mess up and not click the Post Anonymously check box.

and I would never forget to do that!

Re:Article Text

[BalanceOfJudgement]

The problem is that not all educational uses are fair uses. You have to look at the circumstances underlying each individual use, and judge them on a case by case basis. You really can't make accurate blanket statements as to what is and is not a fair use.

Out of curiousity - What would be an example of educational use that doesn't qualify as fair use?

Re:Article Text

[BalanceOfJudgement]

It's people like you who have lost perspective by concluding that you are somehow entitled to something for nothing.

No, it's people like YOU who have forgotten that the works produced and given to the public are the property of the public. Once you make it available for public consumption, it belongs to the public, in the most literal sense of the word. Copyright is designed to allow them to benefit from that work for a limited time in order to encourage them to then create more works - which is why long copyright terms are nonsensical.

The key word is 'allow'. In exchange for the value given to society by the work, the creator is allowed to derive personal profit from it. We don't get it for nothing until the copyright expires.

That is the meaning and purpose of copyright as the founders laid it down in the Constitution. People like you would do well to remember that.

Besides, there wasn't anything related to a "social process" about this. It was a company's marketing department disseminating industry articles to their staff. It was pretty clearly a business activity

Straw man. I'm not arguing that the company's marketing department was involved in a social process, I'm arguing the people creating those industry articles are. What people are doing with them is irrelevant to the purpose of copyright.

even if they're not the ones who committed the unpardonable sin of attempting to profit from their labors.

Childish.

Re:Article Text

[zero_offset]

Where is there any indication those publications were "given to the public"?

Addressing what people do with a particular work is precisely the point of copyright.

now that I've told my office

[yagu]

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:

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."

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:

Knowledge Networks, based in Menlo Park, California, 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.

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!

Re:now that I've told my office

[FlatLine84]

It's all because the ads accompanying the news articles aren't being viewed by everyone reading the article. Someone wants their money, nothing new here....

Re:now that I've told my office

[flitty]

Mmm, i love the smell of desperation on slashdot in the afternoon.

Re:now that I've told my office

[HTH NE1]

I can't help but wonder what these antagonists think... do they want as few people reading their material as possible? They just want complete and total tracking over who reads the articles so they can measure their worth in ad dollars. Much like music, except they pretend that it is so the artists can be compensated for every person who hears the music.

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.

Re:now that I've told my office

[SatanicPuppy]

Actually, no.

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

[SatanicPuppy]

This isn't about reading anything. It's unauthorized copying and distribution of a copyrighted work. You can argue fair use if you send someone a copy of an MP3, but you can't argue fair use if you burn a copy of the CD for everyone you know, and that goes a million times more if it's a company doing it as part of their corporate policy. That's just horseshit.

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.

Re:now that I've told my office

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Okay, there's no reason to be zealous to the point of making the world unworkable, but what's wrong with asking people to see the ads that support the work. If you don't, the reporter doesn't get paid and the news dries up. I think there are real problems with the major media, but I have to say that I trust them more than the bloggers and the nuts on Slashdot. (Now the serious posters like me are a different story. :-) If only I could tell the difference in advance.)

Re:now that I've told my office

[HTH NE1]

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 provider's concern.

Re:now that I've told my office

[DekeTheGeek]

I suppose that would be the same with pop-up blockers and pop-up ads. The content provider doesn't care that you see them; just that you've been there.

Re:now that I've told my office

[sootman]

Money quote:

" [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." [emphasis added]

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, I don't know what is.

Re:now that I've told my office

[ThosLives]

...but what's wrong with asking people to see the ads that support the work. If you don't, the reporter doesn't get paid and the news dries up.

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" aspect of the demand is important. Pretending that there is demand for something when people aren't willing to pay means the demand is actually very low, because you can't say there is or is not demand for something that is free.

Some things that people think are "free" aren't. Take, for instance, clean air. It's not really free, because people are willing to sacrifice something to get clean air.

If "news" or "music" is really in demand, than people will sacrifice something to get it. Since there is a large portion of the population not willing to sacrifice money to get those things, the demand isn't really there. It's more like people are saying "hey cool this thing fell in my lap, I'm going to use it." It's like a gift rather than something they pay for.

(I do realize that even with music, etc. in today's market people are actually "paying" for downloads for which they do not pay money: 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 music / software / movie / whatever. Throw that one on the currencies exchange market - and be enlightened!)

Re:now that I've told my office

[StikyPad]

Now that I've distributed this article to my office peers, I suppose I'm now open to legal scrutiny. WTH?

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!

Re:now that I've told my office

[pembo13]

I've read your post, and understand your logic, seeing your points. However I feel no sympathy for either side in this case, nor does it do any to increase my faith in the US copyright system.

Re:now that I've told my office

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for your posts - I read just the first few paragraphs of the article and knew that the threads here would be filled with anti-copyright zombies, as you said. Good work.

No, I'm not new here.

Re:now that I've told my office

[Actually, I do RTFA]

They just want complete and total tracking over who reads the articles so they can measure their worth in ad dollars. Much like music, except they pretend that it is so the artists can be compensated for every person who hears the music. 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.

Knowing how many people view their content seems like a reasonable goal for a content creator. Whether for bragging rights, the ability to get interviews/demos, or even, the third hated level of ads, it seems like the main reason that people create freely available web content is so that other people will see it, and they will know that other people are seeing it.

And for what it's worth, as long as the tracking isn't personally identifiable, I'd rather the ads support pages I like keeping them up and running and letting other sites die from a (relative) lack of popularity.

Re:now that I've told my office

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I'm sure there are some cynical folks in the ad sales department. If they're anywhere, they're hanging out there. But I think that any business wants to make sure that its customers are well-served. And that means that the ad buyers are getting some value from displaying their message. It's the only way to build a long term success.

Re:now that I've told my office

[HTH NE1]

And what if these packets were distributed electronically by an e-mail that embedded the web-sourced stories inside framesets or iframes? And what if the employees read them behind a proxy server that cached the remote articles?

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 secured original for every copy (i.e. fair-use copying for archival purpose)? 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?

Re:now that I've told my office

[radish]

The advertiser's actual return on investment has never been the content provider's concern.

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" - it's to measure not only how many eyeballs see the ad (how many copies of the magazine was sold) but what proportion of those people become customers. It's much easier to track this stuff online, and you can be sure that the advertisers are concerned not only with page impressions but with click-throughs and resultant transactions. In fact, IIRC, Google AdWords only pays out for clickthroughs, not impressions.

Re:now that I've told my office

[Tim Fischer]

How is this different then putting my copy of the magazine in the men's room so that all the guys can read it? What about the copies on the waiting room tables in doctors/dentists/etc. offices? Should we make everyone who reads something while taking a dump pay for the mag? This is getting increasingly ridiculous...

Re:now that I've told my office

[radish]

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.g. to prevent ads being cached).

Would it have been legal if they bought enough physical newspapers with the stories in them and clipped them for each packet?

Yes. Just as it's legal to buy 100 copies of a CD and give it away to 100 friends.

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)?

Somewhat grey area. Probably not OK because although they bought all the papers, they also made copies, and AFAIK fair use doesn't really apply here, it's not actually a backup copy it's just a copy.

I know you're trying to point out how absurd all this is, but really it's not. There's a very easy solution to this, and it's to approach the publisher and pay them to license the content. Usually that'll be a lot cheaper than buying thousands of copies and it will make sure that everyone's happy and the author continues to get paid.

Re:now that I've told my office

[FLEB]

The problem is that you can't sort the marginally interested from the opportunists who may have paid, when there's a choice between free and paid. To say that there's only lukewarm demand, and that's what's driving piracy over purchase, overlooks the fact that it's still competing, even in the market of people that may have paid, with the same content sans price.

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 music / software / movie / whatever.

A rare, and true, point. The question is whether one has the grounds to call foul when their number comes up.

Re:now that I've told my office

[Irish_Samurai]

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 - when to the letter of the law it isn't.

Now, you could also legitimately argue that the number of copies bought does lend itself to the spirit of the law, in which case you purchased each original with the purpose of covering your ass on only copying one original X times (X = numbers of originals). This was done to save redundant labor for (ironically) making copies of each original.

As for resetting them in the Gutenburg press, illegal.

Re:now that I've told my office

[HTH NE1]

The advertiser's actual return on investment has never been the content provider's concern. Of course it has. If, as an advertiser, I get better ROI from one publication than another, guess where my dollars are going?

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 interest in not knowing exactly how ineffective their ads are. Well, everyone except the company paying the advertising executive to construct an effective ad.

If I were a content provider with advertisers, I'd be wary of those who use codes to track ROI. Such advertisers are too flighty. And as a consumer, I don't like them either. Reminds me too much of spam with unique strings of garbage attached to the URLs (especially on embedded img tags) to verify your e-mail address as valid.

Meanwhile I doubt they care very much let alone record when I visit Best Buy and tell an employee, "By the way, I really appreciated your company's sponsorship of last night's episode of Doctor Who on The Sci-Fi Channel."

(*) Is that any more bizarre than seeing ads for the same model of Sawzall sponsoring CSI: Miami that the husband used to dismember his wife's corpse in the episode's story?

Re:now that I've told my office

[MushMouth]

One copy, this is covered by the same law that covers the reselling of used books/cds/software. Its very different.

Re:now that I've told my office

[SatanicPuppy]

That has nothing to do with it...It's like saying watching tv or listening to the radio is a violation of copyright! Copyright doesn't have anything to do with your right to listen/watch/read a copyrighted work...It only has to do with COPYing it.

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 works. It's one copy. You can make a copy for personal use under fair use.

You can NOT make copies for other people. It's a semi-grey area with file sharing because the law was written for physical things, but it is in no way a grey area with making physical copies. Period. If you make and distribute hard copies without paying to do so, it is a crystal clear violation of copyright law with tons of legal precedent behind it.

Re:now that I've told my office

[HTH NE1]

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 prosecution afterwards. Maybe even an authenticated seal to be placed on the glass with the copy tracking the number of authenticated copies, with an embedded LCD with the remaining copy count displayed. Every page with an RFID tag tracking the provenance of the information on each generation of copy.

Re:now that I've told my office

[Irish_Samurai]

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 transaction against the cost of a the required number of actions needed

financial transaction(margin of transaction):: cost per action(actions required to secure financial transaction)

There's your ROI. And in E-commerce its easily trackable. If a transaction occurred as a residual effect of an ad, even better. If the ratio of money in to money gained is favorable - the company is happy.

If I were a content provider with advertisers, I'd be wary of those who use codes to track ROI. Such advertisers are too flighty. And as a consumer, I don't like them either. Reminds me too much of spam with unique strings of garbage attached to the URLs (especially on embedded img tags) to verify your e-mail address as valid. You don't need that. All you need is a unique key to target on the backend. Referral logs work too. You wouldn't even know until it was too late.

As for too flighty? What are you talking about? Advertisers who track ROI are the ones you want. If it works, they stay. The incompetent ones are flighty - changing plans to see if something might work.

Re:now that I've told my office

[Eravau]

That's why print adverts often have the "call and quote code ABCX1" - it's to measure not only how many eyeballs see the ad (how many copies of the magazine was sold) but what proportion of those people become customers

There are even more transparent means of tracking as well besides quoting codes. There are companies whose entire business is tracking calls linked to an ad. This is done by setting up phone numbers that are published on only one ad. The phone number terminates at the customer's main line just like any other incoming call. But at the end of each month, they can see how many calls came in on that number and calculate what the ROI was on the ad on which that number appeared. If they have these tracked numbers set up on several ads in different publications, web sites, yellow page directories, TV ads, etc...then they can compare which advertising strategy is working best for them and invest their advertising dollars appropriately.

Re:now that I've told my office

[Irish_Samurai]

Dude, I get that you're really, really, really anti copyright. OK. But ranting about hypothetical situations that are completely nonsensical in their origin is not going to help the cause.

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 their right, not a mandate forcing them to. If a creator of a work wants to copyright it and then allow anyone on the planet to do what they want with it willy nilly, thats their right as it stands now. Such a structure as you describe would do more to destroy copyrights than all of us becoming rampant pirates by forcing an action, that as it stands now, is completely optional to exercise.

True, if you don't protect your copyright, then you don't get to keep it. But if you let everyone copy your work anyway, you probably didn't want the copyright in the first place. Or you can create a general free use distribution license for everyone and keep your useless copyright intact.

If you want to fight it, you need to understand it a little better. If you understand it just fine, please approach it in a manner that lays some credibility to your argument.

Re:now that I've told my office

[rastoboy29]

What do you think someone is going to get out of free distribution in this case?

See, this is your problem. You think that someone has to "get" something and they have a "right" to get it. Speaking of horseshit. Nobody owes you jack squat just because you create a copyrighted work.

Re:now that I've told my office

[dosquatch]

where they heard of your product still leaves as a guess how many aren't reporting, or how many are lying.

Nevermind the poorly thought out attempts. Like giving a list that does not include how I found you, and without an "other" box. And then making a choice there mandatory, so I have to lie just to register my product.

Or companies, like cisco (for instance, true story) asking where I heard about them. Fuck me, I don't know. Where did you first learn about McDonald's? At some point, your name is ubiquitous knowledge to your target customers, and this question becomes pointeless. Please stop asking.

Re:now that I've told my office

[HTH NE1]

But ranting about hypothetical situations that are completely nonsensical in their origin is not going to help the cause.

Also, your thought that its amazing that copiers don't require a thumbprint or some such shit is ridiculous. So my example extrapolation to the ridiculous didn't strike you as humorous in any way? Maybe I should have tagged it HHOS: it was not to be taken too lightly or too seriously.

I'm not anti-copyright. I just think it needs to be more flexible, more reasonable, and more in tune to the will of living people than the it is with the dead and their immortal corporations.

Re:now that I've told my office

[karmatic]

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?

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

Re:now that I've told my office

[RexRhino]

One copy, this is covered by the same law that covers the reselling of used books/cds/software. Its very different.

Except with any digital file a copy MUST be made in order to be shared.

A copy does not need to be made of a magazine to lend you a copy. I just hand you a magazine and you read it. But if I want to lend you a pdf I have purchased, I must copy it to your machine, and then delete it from my machine.

At some point we have to admit that new technologies have moved beyond old printing-press era concepts like "copyright".

Re:now that I've told my office

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Man my mod points just expired or you'd get some. That was one of the clearest, most reasonable posts I have seen on the problems with copyright as it is currently practiced, without resorting to accusations and prostrations about how bad corporations are.

Re:now that I've told my office

[SatanicPuppy]

Actually, they do, if you buy into the notion of copyright at all. That's the whole point.

It's very easy for people who create nothing of value to scorn the protections of copyright. I may think copyright runs too long, and is widely abused, but I don't begrudge someone the right to make a living off of their creative labors.

It's very fashionable to blame the RIAA and blame the MPAA, and I think that's fair, because I think they pervert the whole purpose of copyrights. But in this case, you're talking about writers who make very little money and, assuming that someone hasn't screwed them out of their rights already, along comes you and does it because you think no one owes them for using their work.

Re:now that I've told my office

[dana340]

copyright has it's problems, i agree, but there's one more which is missing.. try to get a copyright on something.. it's not so easy for the average Joe... Then there's service marks a and trade marks.. just disasters waiting to happen... and it seems that the only ones willing to help you in dealing with the government are Lawyers... yup, there goes your profit!

Re:now that I've told my office

[rob.wolfe]

copyright has it's problems, i agree, but there's one more which is missing.. try to get a copyright on something.. it's not so easy for the average Joe...

Well this is just plain wrong... in most countries that follow the Berne Convention the default assumption in law is that something (this is true in the US since 1990 or so .. i could google but i am lazy this morning) is copyrighted unless it is explicitly stated not to be. However to make explicit that you are claiming copyright over your words/images/whatever all you need is a notice like "copyright 2007 by Rob Wolfe".

Now really, how hard is that?

Re:now that I've told my office

[dana340]

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.

you can easily say that your stuff is protected under copyright until someone says you're using it unfairly. (ie, always changing the date on the same static item, so yes, it can be hard.

Re:now that I've told my office

[Discoflamingo13]

Indeed! Imagine what would happen if he PVR-ed a football game with only implied oral consent of the NFL, and not express written consent?

Re:now that I've told my office

[rastoboy29]

Actually, I make the distinction between "copyright" and "right to make money".  Just because you have the right to copy, doesn't mean you have the right to make money from it.  To me, it's a subtle distinction.

Not that I seriously disagree with you.

Re:now that I've told my office

[rastoboy29]

oh, and I DO create lots of copyrightable things, hopefully of value.  See my sig.

Dilbert photocopies

[Maximum Prophet]

The previous company I worked for, which laid me off, routinely had "Dilbert" comic strip photocopies on people's doors. Can I turn them in and get six grand?

Re:Dilbert photocopies

[morgan_greywolf]

The previous company I worked for, which laid me off, routinely had "Dilbert" comic strip photocopies on people's doors. Can I turn them in and get six grand?
--
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings) That's even funnier when you take into account your .sig.

At various companies I've worked for, including some Detroit car company that starts with F, photocopies of automotive industry-related articles were often passed around at meetings. Where's my six grand?

Oh wait, Maximum Prophet, don't sue me!!!

Re:Dilbert photocopies

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

You are no Wally, Maximum Prophet. If you were, you will post Dilbert strips in your own office and rat on your employer to collect that six grand. If the employer tries to collect that money from you, you would dodge it by saying the company had no explicit policy prohibiting it.

Re:Dilbert photocopies

[SatanicPuppy]

No. Did the company make copies and distribute them to all employees?

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.

Re:Dilbert photocopies

[Angus McNitt]

Depends on the details. We don't know how they were redistributed and if the authors name and publication were retained. If they remained, then I would think you could site fair use, same a citing a full work piece. If you removed them, then all fair use bets are off. From the lack of information in the article, my guess is that it is a scare piece.

I wouldn't go as far as saying it is equivalent to distributing pirated CD at work, however it does serious question fair use limitations. At what point can you no longer cite or quote a work or article without paying? Is it by length or idea? Does the medium matter? And so on.

Re:Dilbert photocopies

[mabhatter654]

I think this is already beat to death, even 15 years ago in college we had to buy packets of copied magazine articles for class. They've been beating up schools for teachers passing out news clips to students for years. This is the same thing only at a company.

Re:Dilbert photocopies

[Twanfox]

Take a look at it a different way. If the company in question, Knowledge Networks, had bought and purchased one set of encyclopedias, or one set of magazines, they could probably make use of those works with the limited copies they had for citation and research. HOWEVER, the first time you 'photocopy' or 'replicate' any of those works, you have just violated copyright, the right granted that allows the creator to determine how, if at all, his or her creation is to be replicated and distributed. They have every legal right to go after you, even if it is distribution internally, since you effectively have more copies of the work (in full) than you bought.

The example above can be easily applied to online articles, press releases, etc, regardless of whether or not previous author information was preserved. If the aforementioned items, articles, etc were from a 'fee based' site, the same applies. That 'fee' can either be up front (subscription) or ad-based. By making a copy and redistributing it, you are violating copyright if no such allowances are permitted by the author.

Removing the author's information and citing it as your own, that is called plagiarism.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is a normal person supposed to pay a $300k fine? Do you lose your house and car if you're fined? I'd almost rather go to jail.

Re:Huh?

[Joe The Dragon]

they just take it out of your pay.

Re:Huh?

[Spuds]

I don't know about you, but if I went to jail for any length of time, I'd lose my house and car anyways because I wouldn't have the money to pay for them. Even if they were paid off, I'd have property taxes to pay and I'd have no money coming in to pay them with. So no, jail would not be better.

Re:Huh?

[MontyApollo]

A normal person would not have been fined that much. It was a corporation using the copyrighted material in the process of conducting business. I'm not sure they were even fined or if this is just a number they agreed to pay.

They could have just sent links to the original articles and saved all the hassle.

Bogus!

[He Who Waits]

My company circulates material like this on a regular basis. This is to totally bogus -- wait, six grand you say?

Not A New Principle

[Anonymous Coward]

This is old news, of a sort, in the scientific community. More than a decade ago it was settled that corporate libraries couldn't blithely photocopy and distribute copyrighted journal articles they'd purchased one copy of. Part of the decision was based on the fact that it is was already quite easy then for a large library to turn over fees for single reprints--that was part of business model of copyright holders.

This seems to more obviously infringing in some ways, so I'm not surprised it's also a copyright violation. Routine, organized corporate redistribution of content--roughly the equivalent of getting one subscription to a newspaper and photocopying it for all your employees.

Re:Not A New Principle

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I work, with about 150 other people, the company subscribes to a newspaper and we have two copies delivered to our door daily, whereupon they are put in the lunchroom for everyone to read.

Are we violating copyright?

Actually, that seems the least of our problems. Biggest problem is people who take sections into the bathroom and leave them there, depriving others of causing the newspaper's loss of 50 cents per copy (or 12 cents, since only one or two sections of two copies of a newspaper go missing every day).

Re:Not A New Principle

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're not in trouble letting multiple people read a single copy. Sharing a single printed work is always fine. Just as a corporate library that keeps a single copy of journals and lets people check them out is fine. There is no right to a "per-read" fee.

There is generally a right to charge a "per-copy" fee. That's the whole idea of copyright, heck, that's pretty much what the word means in plain English. The company in the article, like the corporate library in my example, didn't want to pay for more copies, so they were self-publishing additional copies ad desired. That situation, like almost every other analogy offered on slashdot, is fundamentally different than the normal examples of sharing permitted under fair use.

Wow! This is really interesting news!

[monkeyboythom]

I made sure to copy all of my coworkers with this...

Re:Wow! This is really interesting news!

[trolltalk.com]

Just send them the link to google news or whatever ... they've got deeper pockets than you or me ...

Disgruntled employees...gets 'em every time.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

If they go RIAA with this

[transporter_ii]

If they go RIAA over news articles, things are going to get real ugly, real quick. Even though I disagree with the RIAA's tactics, I can at least see their line of reasoning. If people start getting sued for cutting and pasting text...when they weren't even making the text public, the crap is going to hit the fan.

Then again, maybe this is will be the wakeup call that everyone needs to see that things are working right.

Transporter_ii

Share News Story With Coworkers? That's A Paddlin'

[Real World Stuff]

When will it stop?

Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[Doc Ruby]

All content is copyrighted whenever it's published. Everyone carries mobile phones with mics, and soon cameras will be universal. By then, speech and image recognition will be accurate enough for copyright holders to claim infringement whenever they have any evidence, however unreliable, to make the claim.

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 Congress shall have power [...]
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

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.

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[Cyno]

That's right, even comments are Copyright (C) 2007 by their respective owners. So by copying a slashdot forum's text into your web browser's buffer and refusing to delete it immediately you are violating the copyright of hundreds or thousands of individuals who could all sue you for $300,000 for each violation. I sure hope they win.

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[Doc Ruby]

Only officially registered copyrights (at the Library of Congress Copyright Office) can claim damages.

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[loucura!]

Only officially registered copyrights can claim punitive damages.

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[Doc Ruby]

I'm glad you're doing the hard work of spreading my ideas for free. Carry on.

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[RobBebop]

It secures for unlimited times to parties other than authors, like publishers and agencies, exclusive rights.

This is brilliently stated. The problem is the publishers! But it takes two to tango and so there is an indirect problem with authors who deal with publishers who claim exclusive rights!

But authors who refuse to deal with publishers have other problems: collecting revenue and distribution their work. Control of distribution in the face of collecting revenue is a lesser problem... but this article basically says that publishers no longer have control over their distributions, so we can concentrate of the central issues of revenue and distribution.

After putting some thought into these two problems, there is one solution I that I have put forward which is the method that I intend to use to publish my own work. The solution is actually a compromise of control that is called Open Publication.

===

Did anybody else think that this article was a parody of RIAA and MPAA? When I googled for "SIIA" I was shocked to find a professional looking site, styled after the RIAA-litigation-happy-lawyer-story-page.

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[Anonymous Coward]

It secures for unlimited times ....

You have it wrong. In passing the Bastard Bono Gift of Public Resources to Walt Disney Act, the cynical bastards read the Constitution and sat there with their bare faces hanging out and said, "But lifetime of author plus seventy years is a limit, is it not?"

They might as well have said, "But four million years is a limit, is it not? You are then free to copy all you want."

The biggest problem with current lawmaking is that any interpretation, no matter how twisted, is given equal weight with the intent of the original law. A notable example is the decision that taking private property to turn over to a private corporation for development constitutes a taking "for the public good", just because "the public" will realize higher tax revenues from the development.

Similarly, they might consider coming into your house and ripping out your toilet for sale at auction, with the proceeds going into the public coffers. After all, an extra five bucks in the general fund is worth more than what the government realizes from your own selfish, non-profit-making, non-taxable use of said crapper.

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[Doc Ruby]

Copyright renewal beyond the hugely "generous" time that is merely the "first chance to default" makes the time unlimited. If it were limited, then even the Mickey Mouse span would also come with a "no renewals" clause.

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[westlake]

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.

The early American writer struggled to get into print. It was cheaper to pirate from the English or the French.

The seventeenth century colonial writer was a cleric like Cotton Mather. The eighteenth century American writer a landed aristocrat like Jefferson or a middle-class merchant like Franklin.

The defining quality well into the nineteenth century will be that he will have an independent source of income. He could - if it came down to it - afford go the vanity press route and self-publish.

He will not be working class. He will not be inclined in any way to rock the boat. He will be living in Boston. Perhaps a gentleman-scholar like Parkman -- and, more or less, the living embodiment of the social and political elite.

If this seems to you crabbed and incestuous, than perhaps you will understand why I am not in sympathy with the Geek's obsession with his unlimited right to copy rather than his unlimited freedom to create.

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[Doc Ruby]

No I don't understand, because what you just said was fairly incomprehensible, even just following your inconsistent tenses.

But mainly because American publishing was built on piracy, including founders (and great writers) like Franklin.

Or rather because no one, not the Constitution or myself, has advocated unlimited right to copy. To the contrary, I explicitly supported the Constitution's protection of the privilege of exclusivity (fraudulently called copyright) for limited times only.

Unlimited freedom to create would include unlimited freedom to copy, as copying is part of creation. As Picasso said, "all artists borrow - great artists steal". All the greatest art is just updated folk art. Without using and adapting prior art, no one can create anything, or even learn to create anything purely original, when that does happen (exceedingly rarely).

The First Amendment's protection of freedom of expression is not perfectly unlimited, like any practical freedom in the material world. But the compromise that copyright represents is a balance. Originally not so arbitrary, as its 17 years marks the transition of "pop" content into "folk" content as the original population becomes the "folks" of the next generation. We've blown that balance. The new one is not, as you claim in your strawman, "unlimited copying", but rather just times short enough to reflect the current economic tradeoffs.

Maybe 17 years is still enough for all content. Probably software should be copyright somewhere around 3-5 years. Possibly movies should be 5-10, if not 17. Books are probably good at 17. Newspapers and magazines probably should be copyright exclusive for weeks or months at most. Compiled stats and "pure databases" that are just samples of the real world (or of virtual worlds) probably something like 15 minutes, maybe hours or days. But nothing should last longer than 17 years. After that, it's just arbitrary grabbing value at the expense of freedom. Even while the value is then mostly created by its audience perpetuating its popularity.

That is what freedom would look like in the 21st Century. Entirely consistent with its vision from the late 18th.

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[loucura!]

You said that only registered copyrights could claim damages - that's not the same as what I said. If you infringe on my copyright, I can still sue for damages even if I haven't registered with the copyright office.

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[Doc Ruby]

True. And I have no claim to your derivative work, either.

At least you can't sue me for it :).

Re:Ain't Just Whistlin' (C) Dixie

[loucura!]

A statement of fact cannot be copyrighted. Although, I guess an inaccurate fact might be. ;)

Evil, and More Restrictive than Paper.

[twitter]

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.

Re:Evil, and More Restrictive than Paper.

[Anonymous Coward]

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. If there is a difference, it's that pulling this sort of nonsense with paper would be so ridiculous that fewer people would try it.

Corporations pay people to collect information from news articles, journals, private services, and so on. The people they pay are professionals with degrees and knowledge of industry practices, including what can be re-distributed freely and what can't be.

In this case, it's not even a grey area. Salaried employees had, as a job function, daily redistribution of collections of copyrighted works, in their entirety, for the purpose of helping the corporation making a profit. This is not "fair use" by any stretch, but they decided they'd rather not pay the copyright holders for doing any of this--even though it's not only clear that you "should" (legally speaking), but that the core responsibility of an information professional is to ensure employees have legal access to information they need, when they need it. There isn't some secret about whether this is OK--companies pay large sums to keep this information stream flowing. It's part of the cost of doing business, and for some information providers their only income stream. Either the people making these daily packets this were utterly incompetent, or some higher up told them do it when he saw the budget request, because he thought they would get away with it.

The idea that this is the legal equivalent of sharing a newspaper is ridiculous. It's the legal equivalent of making multiple copies of a newspaper, every day, and passing it around the office. That hasn't been legal in corporate libraries ever, AFAIK; certainly not in the 20 years I've been working.

It also has nothing to do with sharing a news story with a coworker, despite the headline. Look up "fair use" (a justifiably popular concept on slashdot) and run down the criteria that determine it--the two examples are different.

I'm hardly a big fan of our current copyright system, but this example is pretty much a no brainer--either all copyright is meaningless and unenforceable, or this was just a blatant violation by people who knew better.

Re:Evil, and More Restrictive than Paper.

[dufachi]

Damn. And here I've been trying to get two sites that have ripped off the content from one of my websites to remove my content to no avail for two years; and companies are suing each other over photocopies. I want $300,000, too!

Re:Evil, and More Restrictive than Paper.

[HTH NE1]

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 edition of the paper available for people to walk in and read without paying.

Re:Evil, and More Restrictive than Paper.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that we are moving to a fascist government and a corporate economy, expect more restriction of information, and elimination of the Public Domain.

Re:Evil, and More Restrictive than Paper.

[jcgf]

You know what's funny is that the site link you give has no content, just an image directory with 2 images. I know you meant different sites, but it's still funny cause it kinda looks like they actually stole your content (ie deprived you of it)

Re:Evil, and More Restrictive than Paper.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I think you meant "worth less". It still costs money to run computers, get 'net access, etc.

You heard it here, folks. Information is now worth less to copy now that it's so easy to do so.

Pun fully intended

Sensationalist Headline

[Some guy named Chris]

This settlement is not about sharing a news story with a coworker. This is about a company building internal procedures around photocopying news articles, putting together a news packet, and distributing these packets around as form of employee education.

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.

Re:Sensationalist Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

They also are in the business of analyzing news and selling that analysis. Yet another reason this isn't the same as posting a copy of an article on a cube wall.

Re:Sensationalist Headline

[MontyApollo]

Even further than that, the company in question is basically a company that sells information (their analysis of other information) and would probably be very quick to complain if thier product was being distributed beyond paying customers.

Re:Sensationalist Headline

[The Angry Mick]

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 behaviors are now questionable, at best, and possibly illegal at worst.

I do not think this is a good thing - it's too much like crushing the free exchange of ideas.

Re:Sensationalist Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone but the copyright fascists mind when someone makes a single photocopy. But when a company builds their own newspaper out of photocopied material and then distributes it to hundreds of people, that seems wrong to me. Where's the line? 10 people? 20 people? To me, it's around 8-10. I can see how others put the line higher. What about other readers?

Re:Sensationalist Headline

[pravuil]

IANAL. Even then, there shouldn't be anything wrong with that. They do it in schools, universities and not to mention meetings at the office. Little packets of information to inform have a little thing called a bibliography. Now if they applied for and ISBN number for the packets then it might be a different story.

The problem with this though is that they are a commercial business and not a nonprofit organization. That isn't stated inside the article. It's implied without any thought into what the decision really meant. It's bad reporting because he doesn't cite the reason why the company lost the case. He doesn't bring up the specific law or precedence used to create the decision. If there is sensationalism on the part of the poster there is good reason. And yes, I did RTFA.

Re:Sensationalist Headline

[CompleatGentleman]

They do it in schools, universities Schools and universities usually have one or both of i) certain exceptions in the copyright law (depending on jurisdiction) or ii) licensing agreements with copyright boards.

Re:Sensationalist Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I work, someone puts together a company newsletter every month. Lists birthdays, anniversaries, word of the month, notice of lunch-with-coworker awards, etc. Occasionally, they will zerox a newspaper article, retype a section of a magazine article, other otherwise redistribute works that fall under copyright.

Is that a violation, or does it fall under fair use? Does it matter if we have 10, 100, 1000 or more employees (copies)? Are we literally republishing the content even tho it's only on a zerox machine who's copies are sent to the empolyees of one company?

Re:Sensationalist Headline

[mysidia]

I don't think anyone but the copyright fascists mind when someone makes a single photocopy. But when a company builds their own newspaper out of photocopied material and then distributes it to hundreds of people, that seems wrong to me. Where's the line? 10 people? 20 people? To me, it's around 8-10. I can see how others put the line higher. What about other readers?

Just because the "copyright fascists" or someone else "MINDS" doesn't mean their copyright outweighs 1st amendment which protects rights of free expression held by both individuals and corporations.

Company sharing material like that are in the business of analyzing the news, this is different from distributing a newspaper. They aren't distributing squat, unless copies of the paper are leaving the building, and they permit that.

The copies may well be for internal use and employees can be required to return the copy. It sure seems like this falls right down the alley of fair use.

The nature of the use is that it is private, internal use for education/criticism/research purposes, that the use doesn't dilute the commercial value of the work in the marketplace, that the use permits free expression of ideas to occur.

That the business conducts commercial activities and this benefits their business may not matter. Commercial enterprises have fair use rights too.

Unless they are infringing upon the work by selling infringing work (or publicly releasing infringing work) for commercial gain or otherwise. Which is not the issue.

Re:Sensationalist Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

professors are not allowed to photocopy large chunks of publications for distribution to their students, despite these copies being 'wholly internal' to the university.

like someone else said - if you're distributing information to a thousand employees, you should be paying for more than one magazine subscription.

Re:Sensationalist Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

No one's first amendment of anything guarantees you the right to distribute _someone else's_ speech without limit.

it just occurred to me that..

[mofag]

.. and this is slightly off-topic but wouldn't this kind of silly lawsuit where it is settled out of court would be a wonderful way to transfer money from one company to another without paying any taxes (surely if you're receiving damages then they would not be taxed as you would have (arguably) already suffered a (n albeit intangible) loss of similar or greater value which should more than offset the tax burden of the settlement. I am not an accountant but.... :)

Re:it just occurred to me that..

[DannyO152]

Not an accountant either, but here's a rule of thumb: if it's an expense to one party it's income to the other.

Re:it just occurred to me that..

[mofag]

Yes I understand that which is why I talked about the loss part. In most countries you pay taxes on your net income. Now if you are receiving damages then you presumably have suffered an equal or greater loss which would mean that as the aggregate of those two transactions, your net income would be zero or negative and so not subject to tax. Nick

Re:it just occurred to me that..

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the 'loss' in this case can not accurately be calculated in dollars.

Using your model, the publishing companies behind the RIAA who claim they are losing bazillions of dollars per day because of "piracy" could write this "loss" off thier taxes. Plus any money they collect from civil suits would not be taxable.

Re:it just occurred to me that..

[Relic of the Future]

Obligitory response:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. --Thomas Jefferson

Not all games are zero-sum.

Re:it just occurred to me that..

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that fines cannot be deducted, so the payer
would pay income taxes on the fine, and the payee
might also need to treat the settlement as income.
Double taxation, maybe.

Re:it just occurred to me that..

[mofag]

I know what I'm saying is ignorant speculation (at best) but I also know you wouldn't want me to let that stop me :) My point above is that the payment of damages turns the prior loss (the speculative, intangible "can not accurately be calculated in dollars" loss) into a tangible amount. My reasoning to the taxman would go "no one would pay more in damages than the damage they had caused" otherwise why settle out of court (rhetorical question - please don't answer). Hence my prior loss was AT LEAST equal to the amount that I received in damages". Hey, why am I trying to argue this with you lot. I should be quitting my job, packing my things and heading for the big smoke and the most disreputable company I can find so that I can start using this devious little chunk of fat to rake in the big bucks 8) -seeya!

Re:it just occurred to me that..

[DannyO152]

It's days later, so the following may be worthless.

Let's say you give me $1000 to deliver something. I fail. You sue. You get $1000 for compensation. Here's what happened: you deducted the original $1000 paid to me as a business expense. You show the $1000 received to make you whole as income. Net effect, 0 income. (By the way, I showed the first $1000 as income and show the paid out claim as expense, net effect to me $0 income). Now I think this is what you're saying, but I hope you see that net wash is because the settlement offset an earlier expense.

Let's just imagine that the damage and settlement happened in different tax periods, I hope you see that, unless the taxation rate changed (oh... those governments) it's a net wash. If the tax rate goes up, then you'll pay more taxes in the second period than what you saved in the first period.

Let's look at another scenario, call it punitive damages, where you get money from me in excess of your out of pocket costs in order to make me see the error of my ways. You charge me with making your copyrighted Get Rich By Tax Schemes for Less Abled books available on a p2p network and I have cost you a billion dollars in lost sales. You take me to court. The court, says yes... give or take some decimal places and orders me to pay you $1000 in damages. $1000 in income to you and $1000 expense to me. Unrealized sales are not an expense, unless the loss of the sale requires adjustment to a receivable. There was no receivable to adjust in this little vignette, so it's all income and all taxable.

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[account_deleted]

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Problem with COPYING not LINKING??

[Radon360]

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.

Re:Problem with COPYING not LINKING??

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere in there is a joke about the (L)GPL... Unfortunately I am not clever enough to find it :(

Keywords

[Zekasu]

Never before have I seen more accurate tags for a /. article pertainent to a lawsuit. "money, copyrights, greed"

forward to your friends!

[amigabill]

I haven't read the article, but I've forwarded it to my friends!

Typically inaccurate headline

[Mr. Underbridge]

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?

xxxA acronym club

[j00r0m4nc3r]

RIAA, MPAA, SIIA. What is it with these guys and the 4-letter acronyms?

Re:xxxA acronym club

[Stanistani]

Stinkin' NASA...

Re:xxxA acronym club

[Anonymous Coward]

TLAs just aren't evil enough.

Re:So don't photocopy articles...

[hraefn]

Aren't there already some very simple means to avoid copyright violations?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:So don't photocopy articles...

[sherpajohn]

Same applies to online financial reports and such. One banking client I supported had a user who was always asking us how to "copy" a page into Word - when asked why - she would always say "I want to include it in a report I am writing!" We would try to explain that was tantamount to photocopying articles from magazines and including that in a report, but she never quite seemed to grasp the fact that just cause it was on her screen did not mean she could not do whatever she wanted with it. DOH!

I wouldn't mind ... except

[Archangel Michael]

When Articles are written .... Next Page ... in a format .... Next Page .... where a single article ..... Next Page .... appears spread across ..... Next Page .... several pages with .... Next Page .... more ads than .... Next Page .... content on each .... Next Page .... page. .... Next Page .... or a horribly .... Next Page .... formated for ..... Next Page .... printer version. .... Next Page

Not so anonymous...

[2names]

It will be easy to find out who snitched...just look for the person with the brand new 60" LCD TV.

My Solution:

[noc007]

Just e-mail the link to the article. They even get their advertising space too.

Personally I don't like it when someone copies and pastes the article and e-mails it to me; usually it's just crap. Also, the formatting gets all whacked and sometimes they don't include all the pages. Everybody wins when sending the link; they get their advertising space and the recipient can determine right off if it's crap.

Re:So don't photocopy articles...

[daigu]

Most of the time you only need a few copies, for a team or whatever. You then go to Factiva, Nexis or Dialog and purchase a contract - covers most news - and you are good. You can get and share articles for up to...10-20 people. Shoot, it is even possible to get enterprise wide contracts for these services.

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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[account_deleted]

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You're missing the point

[paladinwannabe2]

The sensationalist headlines aren't because kdawson is stupid. What receives more comments- an article titled "Company Busted for Wide-Scale Copyright Infringement" or "Share a News Story With Coworkers, Pay a Fine"? More comments= more readers= means more ads viewed= more money. Only losers who care more about facts than emotional response want accurate titles.

Re:You're missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

More comments= more readers= means more pages viewed= more money

Fixed. The /. userbase would probably be amongst the highest - proportionally - collection of adblocking web addicts known to man.

Sane Copyright Reform

[Blue Stone]

It's interesting, I think, that telling stories isn't copyrightable - verbal regurgitation of a story - but when you put it in a 'tangible' form, it becomes copyrightable.

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 makes next to no goddamn difference.

We write now, as we used to talk; we disseminate our communication as much electronically as physically (at the water cooler or whatever); we e-mail stories and clippings to that wider electronic social sphere - and it's no more difficult - in fact easier - than opening our meatholes and flapping our lips.

Our communications have changed; our means and modes of social interaction. Laws covering our communications have not kept pace (and have in fact retrogressed).

We do not need to abolish copyright to achive this, we need sane copyright reform that ACCEPTS and EMBRACES and works with our new means of mass-instant-digital-remix-sample-communication without seeking to penalise us for using it; that doesn't seek to punish us for using one of the greatest and most useful technolocial and social developments.

We need Sane Copyright Reform.

-Blue Stone.

Re:Sane Copyright Reform

[Doc Ruby]

The entire matter relates to copying. We still respect the difference between copying and interpreting content. That distinction needs to be leveraged to undermine the overreach of copyright. For example, the Harry Fox Agency claims its copyright on sheet music lets it stop people from publishing their interpretations of music they've heard in written instructions (such as tablature format or standard musical notation).

The entire control revolves around who has the right to copy. The definition of "copy" needs to be revised to accommodate the legitimate recirculation of info that these days adds value to the original, even when it can sometimes compete with it. The technology, the economics, and the culture have changed to promote science and useful arts through less restricted copying.

It also needs to handle software better

[swillden]

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 copyright to software does not allow such sharing of ideas, not at any other than the very coarsest level. Not only that, by applying copyright protections to binaries, current application of the law enables infringement.

The authors of the constitution, of course, could never have envisioned an environment in which it was possible to both publish your work *and* keep it secret. How can an author of a book publish without revealing his sentence structure, word choice, characters, plot line, etc.? But with software, it's not only possible but common to publish your software in an opaque, binary-only form that makes it nearly impossible for anyone to read your work and understand the clever ideas you may have used.

Even worse, software that is published only in binary format need *never* see the light of day, not even when the copyright expires. No one will ever be able to use that code to build something else, even if it is in the public domain, because the source was never published. It's not even necessary to give your source to the Library of Congress when you register the copyright.

In my ideal world, I would grant copyright protection to software if and only if the source code were published. Executables would be covered as well, of course, but coverage could only be obtained by publishing the source so that recipients can study and learn from it. They can't copy it, of course, or even compile it (since that would be creation of a derived work), but they can learn from it and use the ideas all they like, promoting progress in the Art and Science of software development. As a side benefit any literal copying of source code without the copyright holder's permission would become much easier to identify and track. Those who have reason to keep their source code secret would not be eligible for copyright, but they could still rely on contract and trade secret law for protection.

It'll never happen, of course, but IMNSHO, that's how it *should* be.

Re:It also needs to handle software better

[Doc Ruby]

I agree. Patent and copyright protection are based on the requirement that all the details are disclosed. Encoded content should not get that protection. Only published human readable content - source code - can be so protected.

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 widely, without restriction ;).

Time to ban enforcement by trade groups

[HangingChad]

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.

Not a mater of legality, a mater of legal costs.

[RingDev]

KN looked at the situation, figured the would have to pay $500 an hour for legal over a court case that would likely drag on 6+ months. Have the lawyer(s) work only 40 hours a week for 6 months would have cost them over $500,000. They took the smart move, paid the settlement, and left the challenge for someone with more to lose.

This practice is nothing more than legal extortion.

-Rick

but where's the beef?

[akahige]

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 anything to do with the actual content of the article. 3) This is an out of court settlement, not a fine, and not a legal judgement against. KN obviously weighed their options under advise of counsel and determined that it would be quicker and cheaper in the long run to make this issue go away with a little cash and some "education classes" than to let it go to litigation. Going to court is usually the last place anyone wants to wind up, and $300k can disappear in a hurry when you're being billed out $400 / hr.

Re:So don't photocopy articles...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK you'd go to the Copyright Licensing Agency. This concept isn't news. The CLA was founded a quarter of a century ago.

InfoWorld? got a credible source.

[Filter]

Anyone got a link to a credible source?

I'm so telling

[greymond]

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. Sweet, I wish someone would do this at my work so I could tell on them.

Re:So don't photocopy articles...

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone can photocopy the news without permission, it becomes harder for the newspaper to recover its costs.

Instead of lecturing us on our moral responsibility to help random companies recover their costs, why not tell us why people in a business shouldn't be able to read news articles owned by that business?

Re:So don't photocopy articles...

[cliffski]

I'm glad you posted it, and glad you have been modded insightful. not everyone is taken in by the 'information should be free' bullshit that permeates slashdot. some of us appreciate that all content is produced by someone, and most of it is done by people trying to pay the bills, and that includes journalists.

Perhaps I'm missing something

[nevali]

I'm not sure how this could be illegal.

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.

Re:Perhaps I'm missing something

[SatanicPuppy]

It's still distribution. Employees are not the same legal entity as a corporation. That would be like saying, "A corporation buys one user-specific (rather than machine specific) software license, so they should be able to install it on every computer they own, and all their employees home computers." Or a corporation buying a copy of a movie, then making fair use copies for all it's employees, or blah blah blah.

Buying one copy gives you the right to that one copy. It in no way gives you the right to make unlimited copies to be given to people who have a legal relationship with you.

Re:Perhaps I'm missing something

[tenyearsgone]

Um...right, I'll tell the IT department we only need one copy of Windows.

Re:Perhaps I'm missing something

[nevali]

No no, nobody said anything about giving it out. It's still company property, yes? Held within the company? Nobody's (supposed to be) taking anything home. The company isn't giving its employees the copies, because that would be distribution. All of the copies are produced, owned and still held by the company.

Re:Perhaps I'm missing something

[SatanicPuppy]

So, for example, if I buy one copy of a programming book, I can legally make a copy for every employee as long as they don't take it out of the building?

That's some whacky coolaid you're drinking there.

Well, it serves them right...

[drakaan]

Cow-orkers aren't to be trusted, I mean the damage they do to livestock *alone* is just terrib...

oh..."co-workers"...nevermind.

Re:Well, it serves them right...

[Kittenman]

That's always bugged me too - who are these people who ork cows?

Re:Well, it serves them right...

[drakaan]

Must be an alternate universe week where nobody's ever read Dilbert (or at least *one* of us would have a +1 funny).

Cow-orkers are a solitary group. They began as lonely ranch-hands with far too little human contact. Through a closely guarded secret society, they passed down their traditions and methods of orking cows.

It's been said that on some nights, when the wind is just right and if you're very quiet, you can hear them orking to this very day...

$6,000 reward

[Skapare]

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.

I bet that was Anonymous Coward. He gets around.

Think again.

[twitter]

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 violation by people who knew better.

Both branches of your false choice are wrong. Laws made to encourage physical publication and distribution are closer to meaningless than you would like to admit. The people sharing news did not think what they were doing was wrong and they are correct. My excepting your blather is neither immoral nor illegal. You might have noticed that I except a lot of news and share it with people like you. I'm sure that there is nothing wrong with either my excepts nor Slashdot's publication of them. When organizations twist copyright law into extortion and control of ideas, they have turned it from it's original purpose to it's opposite. Copyright is supposed to enrich the public domain and spread knowledge, not restrict it.

Re:Think again.

[pthor1231]

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?

Simple, send him/her a link to the source of the article. Co-worker sees the article, original content provider gets their ad money.

Re:Think again.

[FLEB]

Excerpting and paraphrasing aren't a problem, as far as they are necessary to disseminate the facts. The law realizes that stifling the dissemination of facts is destructive to society, and that's why fair use exists. However, verbatim copying of a news article also duplicates value-added aspects of the work which are not essential to the information, or the subsequent societal benefit. These aspects being, namely, the work and expertise of the particular writer and the resulting specific description of them.

If the distributor wanted, they could make a "news round-up" consisting of cited and paraphrased (rewritten) summaries of interesting articles, but just duping them and sending them out-- especially in a mass-mail manner-- is over the line.

Re:Think again.

[twitter]

Simple, send him/her a link to the source of the article. Co-worker sees the article, original content provider gets their ad money.

Technically, the receiver still gets a copy and that's what copyright is supposed to be about. This is also still more restrictive than paper because I can give you my newspaper with everything in it.

Surely they thought of links and excerpts, but that wan not working for them. We can't tell without details which have been suppressed by the settlement.

A caching server will nuke the ads as will many browsers. Want to kill such obvious and bandwith saving devices? Do I have to cut the ads out when I make a file full of paper clippings to pass around? What's the difference between a file everyone has to read and an email?

Re:Think again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple, send him/her a link to the source of the article. Co-worker sees the article, original content provider gets their ad money.

Ohh bull.. NOONE cares about the big shot Ceo's getting their 'ad revenue' for their crack whores.. who then give it to mean & ugly niggroes!!

We have enough citizen reporters now, who will be glad to have their news stories copied and plastered everywhere..

Ahhnnd they are doing it with much more fervor than the wusses on the nightly alphabet channel news casts.

-- This is Halvy (obviously ;)

Re:Think again.

[pthor1231]

Yes, the receiver gets a copy, from the original copyright owner, who can legally provide copies to people. From TFA, it seems like what happened was the marketing department was routinely reproducing copyrighted articles as some sort of training tool, without contacting the copyright holder. Script/ad blockers on browsers aren't really analogous to this example, because thats one person's browser not rendering said ads when the material is obtained via the copyright holder, versus a mass reproduction of articles used for training purposes. Caching servers on the other hand, are a better match. IIRC, didn't google news get in trouble for reproducing ad-less copyrighted articles from a couple of news outlets? I would imagine thats closer to the same principle.

Uh Oh

[a_guy_in_a_van_down_]

I just showed a co-worker a newspaper article from my local town...i'm in deep trouble now ;-) Somtimes things just get out of hand. Where does it end?

Re:Uh Oh

[Bryan Ischo]

It probably ends with you actually reading the article and getting a clue about what this case was about, and why your sharing of a newspaper story with a co-worker is completely irrelevent.

Copyright applies to print also

[Anonymous Coward]

By this same logic, letting some one else read my newspaper is also illegal.

Where is the line drawn? I'd tell you all about the funny show I watched last night, but that would violate their copyrights.

Re:Copyright applies to print also

[rahvin112]

NO, that isn't the same logic. The same logic is you taking your newspaper and photocopying it and distributing those paper copies to 500 people while you retain the original copy. Had the company just passed the original paid for articles around they wouldn't have been in trouble. Photocopying and distributing the work WAS copyright infringement. This wasn't email (even though email would have also been a violation of copyright law), this was hard copy distributed to the employees of the company of articles they copied from publications.

Summing it up:

[rehtonAesoohC]

Old and Busted: RIAA

New Hotness: SIAA

We're doomed.

also offtopic, but related to your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever wonder why some businesses pay insane speaking engagement fees to politicians?

It's not a bribe/kickback if the politician is being compensated for their presence at an event.

or it could be...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that they (the company in question) are profiting off of the information they collect and re-distribute. And maybe, just maybe, that's what this is all about (dripping sarcasm).

http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/company/about.htm l

"...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"

Uh, one question, how many employees can actually use one physical copy of a newspaper a day?

Re:or it could be...

[HTH NE1]

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 much for his cable to watch one channel withing nothing on on his TV. Or see the RIAA charging people for "making available" music without proving actual sharing (and seeking to codify "making available" as a crime under new law).

Re:So don't photocopy articles...

[fishbowl]

>Don't photocopy articles for commercial purposes.

That position serves to diminish the value of damages of copyright infringement in noncommercial contexts.

That's Goooood Crazy

[AnotherHiggins]

300K for sharing a news article. A fucking NEWS article.

Re:That's Goooood Crazy

[shalla]

Not sharing. Copying someone's work and distributing it to hundreds of people in a commercial enterprise rather than going out and buying the copies they should have. Probably repeatedly as their general practice.

It's not like the company sent an email with a link to a publicly accessible news article for their employees to read or passed a newspaper around for them to take a turn reading the article--they physically just copied it and distributed it so each person could read and presumably keep it. That's pretty much the freaking definition of copyright infringement.

These are the people I want them to go after and leave alone Joe Schmoe who makes one photocopy of his grandma's 50th wedding anniversary announcement from the newspaper to send to his sister in Florida.

Liars And Thieves, I Say Throw The Book at Em

[Anonymous Coward]

My husband (an attorney) was the one who pointed out to me that I shouldn't be storing the PDF files of newspaper articles that I'd downloaded in my Gmail account. It hadn't occurred to me that this was a technical violation of the newspaper database's TOS. I was storing their information by a mechanical means or some gobbledygook like that. What DH is worried about is when I hit the NYT bestseller list, some wonk is going to sort through the rubble of my life with a fine-toothed comb, looking for some way to use my success as a means to teach other copyright infringers a big fat expensive lesson.

So the research data that I've downloaded is now burned to a DVD. If you want to catch me for saving your data, then you'll need a search warrant fuck head. I meant kind sir from the Department of Homeland Insecurity.

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[account_deleted]

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s/i/a/i

[belg4mit]

SIIA

Re:s/i/a/i

[rehtonAesoohC]

Haha, "s/i/a/i". And crap, I noticed my misspelling after I posted the comment. That'll teach me to preview first.

I. Wonder. Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a result of aggressive sniffer and collection programs, SIIA is no longer able to list the email addresses of its employees. However, you may send an e-mail to an SIIA department by using this e-mail form.

Re: acronyms and wordplay [semi-OT]

[Anonymous Coward]

read the fine article

Hrmph. Technically the F in RTFA and RTFM really stands for f*cking, but I guess I can let you get away with saying fine because it is basically an article about a company being fined. ;)

Intelligence Agencies Must Pay Too

[duplo1]

Unless I'm mistaken, intelligence agencies and related services often gather intelligence from various news services. I would be shocked if they weren't internally distributing copyrighted works for briefings, reports, etc. If so, they should pay up as well. Anybody from Langley or Ft. Meade able to confirm?

Re:Intelligence Agencies Must Pay Too

[freezingweasel]

Of course, if you're dealing with the associtated press, or a similar organization to gather info, you're probably in a legal agreement with them that specifically allows you to pass around the AP stories within your company to those who need them. Someone has to look at them to choose article X over Y and to format it to fit around the ads.

Re:Intelligence Agencies Must Pay Too

[pease1]

In years past, I was involved in two separate USG programs, one being from an intel agency, that filtered and re-distro'ed commercial (and overseas) news. They not only paid the sources a fee, but one of programs then resold the filtered news to the public. The fee for the public resale also included a re-distro fee. To make it more fun, the public resale fee was at a different rate then the internal distro. I knew a person who was involved in the settlement of the rights; she had all sorts of stories of small non-US news sources demanding vast sums for the distro of a small article.

This is why we need Wikinews

[greenreaper]

They've got a fair selection of stories - you can even write your own (which people may see as an advantage or a disadvantage), and it's free content. They even make a printable PDF edition.

I smell opportunity...

[Anonymous Coward]

sell knockoff reworded articles using cheap Indian workers.

This just in...

[Tmack]

Doctors and dentists around the nation are being sought by the SIIA for allegedly sharing and distributing magazines containing copyrighted articles to any and all people that visit their waiting areas. Each Doctor or Dentist will be fined $100000 per magazine found in their waiting area, and an additional fee per current client that has visited the establishment over the past 10 years to be determined by the total size of the Doctor's bank account. Anonymous Coward will be awarded $6000 per Doctor or Dentist successfully sued for tipping off the SIIA. The SIIA has hinted that this is just the beginning, and that veterinarians will be next, followed by Libraries and then your wife's weekly book club....

Reminds me of the short story from Stallman that was linked into another /. discussion not long ago...

Tm

Only 2% commission?

[EdBear69]

My company circulates material like this on a regular basis. This is to totally bogus -- wait, six grand you say?

I bet you could get more than $6k if you just approach your company directly. Offer them your silence for about $30k. They'll save 90% on the lawsuit would cost, and everybody wins.

Re:So don't photocopy articles...

[freezingweasel]

Isn't the information itself supposed to be uncopyright-able, but the article is? How much a year to hire an official new re-phraser / in-his-own-words'er to read the article, re-write it (probably summarized) and mass-mail it within the company?

This absolutely happens

[theoriginalturtle]

I work for a fairly large federal agency, and not only is this done, they actually have a designated staff of some size whose job it is all day to go through not only national print publications, but even regional or large local papers and magazines looking for articles about this agency. These are then collected and circulated among senior executives and used to brief officials before they go testify on the Hill and look stupid because they didn't see that some columnist in East Bufu, Ohio wrote an article critical of some regulation we instituted.

What's next...? Suing and billing companies where people pass around interesting URLs? Suing people when they print an article, take it home and show it to their wife or husband?

If SIIA thinks that every company will buy a subscription to every publication every person in that company might ever find of interest, they should be living in East Bufu, Ohio.

Or maybe they already are. In their minds.

Re:So don't photocopy articles...

[fishbowl]

>If you read the opinion, you will see that Commercial vs. Noncommercial use is a factor to consider during the fair use
>analysis - specifically Factor #1 "Nature and Purpose of the Use".

I have a real problem with this, on Equal Protection grounds.

RTFA? Unthinkable!

[despisethesun]

How was this modded insightful? Apparently neither the AC nor the mod RTFA. This case was about making copies of copyrighted articles and distributing them. Whether or not you consider that acceptable, it's not quite the same as allowing someone else to read a newspaper you bought. It's more like making a copy of that newspaper so that your friend doesn't need to buy his own.

Re:RTFA? Unthinkable!

[TheLink]

1) Everyone makes a copy when they read that newspaper. Some forget most of it quickly, but some remember more and for longer.

2) In the future it will be technically possible to safely give most people photographic/videographic memory (and allow them to communicate wirelessl The technology is already there, just not safe, convenient/acceptable or good enough to sell. People already use their camera phones to record pictures/videos/sounds of stuff for recall and communication. Monkeys and humans can already control devices with their thoughts using direct brain connections. The blind can already see in low res.

3) What people do now determines whether people in the future have to keep paying just to recall stuff or to memorize stuff, or whether it will be legally/politically possible to have such abilities in the first place (sorry you only qualify for brain augmentation if you are a certified retard or have Alzheimer's).

4) Think a bit longer term, think a bit more, and act now while you can do so for free.

"A penny for your thoughts? The **AA might say it's theirs and ask for more".

Oh my...

[alisson]

from the [FARK.com] dept. Fixed.

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[account_deleted]

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(unreported) profit - loss + compensation = jail

[Anonymous Coward]

if you say you received the compensation for some loss, then you have not reported (to irs) the original profit that you say you lost.

means you should be punished for not reporting the profit to irs.

Deluded much?

[LinuxWhore]

"Companies do not do this all the time,"

Uh. Yeah. I don't think I've worked for a single employer who hasn't done this. To honestly think otherwise is to simply mislead yourself. I think that most managers who reproduce these articles on the copy machine figure that it's a limited distribution that falls under some interpretation of fair-use. Regardless of the strict legality of it, it's most certainly a commonplace activity which isn't even given a second thought by most people.

Hell, the way I see it, I rarely read AP or UPI, or some other PHB newsprint if it weren't for these. I usually get my news from other sources. They should be thankful that my boss drops this on my desk for them. At least then they get the ad revenue without the cost of distribution (when the ads are left in place).

Missed your calling

[jeko]

Mandak,

You, and I say this with utmost awe and respect, are one scary bastard. Please, for the sake of the rest of us, never go to law school.

Society is going downhill

[Anonymous Coward]

I read a news article, and *gasp* actually want to say what I read to a friend of mine. Where should I send my first born son and my right hand to, in order to get an appropriate license?

Capitalism is not working. Greed is spreading, stupidity reigns, shit is hitting the fan. Farewell and thanks for all the fish :-(