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.

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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

[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.

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!

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.

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