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How Not to Write a Cease-and-Desist Letter
In our overly litigious society it seems that many companies are all too happy to fire off a cease-and-desist letter if they see something they don't like. Many times these letters end up online just causing further embarrassment for the company. One such company has decided to try scaring their targets out of this response by including a copyright notice for their cease-and-desist letter. Public Citizen has fielded one of these dumb letters and has invited them to try to assert their cease-and-desist copyright (which isn't even registered).
No, but if someone writes a letter to me personally, I expect I own it.
At the very least communications between parties are owned jointly by both parties, and one should not be able to force [or even ask] the other to hold it in confidence unless first agreed to by both parties.
Nothing to say here... move along
Yes. It's amazing how good a response you can get by asking nicely and not being a dick about something.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I find this bit the most amusing:
As if, somehow, only looking for positive information about something is the best way to come to an "informed" decision. If anything, I'm looking specifically for negative information when I am trying to make an informed decision before buying something.
1. You do not need to register a copyright in the US to enforce it.
2. You DO need to register it before pursuing legal action in the US AND damages are limited to actual damages, not statutory damages. Legal fees expended in defending the copyright are also ineligible to be claimed in this case.
There are about 50 posts in this thread already going back and forth on this point and it's really clouding up what is a good discussion.
That is a distinction that doesn't make any sense, since you can register and sue at the same time, registration becomes a part of a lawsuit, not something you have to wait around for before filing your suit.
You can register and sue to have have the unlicensed distribution ceased. You can't sue for damages you think already incurred. Copyright and patents last for a finite amount of time and you are only afforded protection from the date it starts (when you register) to the date it expires. Any infringement before and after are not liable for cost of damages.
Also, I believe there is a time limit. In the case of patents, I think this is two years. If you do not patent an invention within two years of its conception, you no longer qualify for the patent. The law has been extended lately to automatically provide a small set of protection to anything published (including stuff on the internet, which isn't considered public domain).
Save the lessons for the one-on-one they insist upon.
:)
Also, discussing hard numbers is a great way to terrify your wife into thinking you might actually do it
hawk
If damages are limited to actual damages, how could the RIAA get $220,000 out of this Thomas woman for 24 songs? Does the judge or jury or whatever actually believe that damages were indeed $220,000?
Ok, here's an example:
You have a lease contract form that was purchased at a office supply store. That contract form is copyrighted by its publisher.
You and your tenant fill it out.
Now, are you not allowed to copy the filled out, executed contract so that you and your tenant each has a copy?
If you and the tenant enter a legal dispute, are you both forbidden from copying this document (which is a derivative work, your writing on a copyrighted form) and giving the copies to your lawyers or the court?
I do not think you will ever see a judgment that declares legal correspondence to be constrained by copyright to the degree that it actually forbids a party to the correspondence from sharing that correspondence. To assert this is to abridge a party's rights, which could have fatal consequences in a lawsuit situation.
The last thing you want to do as plaintiff in a lawsuit, is give a judge a reason to believe you have been unfair to the defendant with respect to his right to mount a defense to your claims. The reason you shouldn't pull a stunt like this "copyrighted letter" is simply that you don't want to give the defendant any place to stand where he can suggest you acted in bad faith. Even in a solid position, bad faith actions can cost your case.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The "fair use" doctrine is not very well defined it is constantly being reevaluated by judges.
The envelope of what the fair use doctrine allows, however, is extremely narrow. The gray area is real, but it's around a much smaller part of the range of possibilities than you're implying... it certainly does not allow for unrestricted redistribution of a nontrivial copyrighted work.
It can be argued that source code is the "expression" of the idea, and a compiled program is merely a synopsis or crux of the idea, a separate work.
There is no creative work involved in creating a compiled program from the source code, therefore it's not a separate work. Hell, even if there was, it would still be a derived work, like a cover of a song. You would have to throw out too much existing law and reverse too many precedents, as well as find a judge who is unaware of the effect that such a decision would make on the software industry, that such an argument can not possibly be carried through in anything like the current legal environment.
The GPL may not be able to exceed the rights granted under copyright law.
The GPL is not an attempt to exceed those rights, so that point is moot.
I'm sorry that I accused you of being confused. It was the kindest interpretation I could cast on your argument, but since you insist I withdraw the accusation.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it