Of Catty Rants and Copyrights

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A newspaper copies a rant from a girl's MySpace page and reprints it as a 'Letter to the Editor' without her permission. Could the girl sue for copyright violation? This question provoked much more disagreement among legal experts than I expected." Read on for the details.
In 2005, a college student published a rant on her hometown on her MySpace page, beginning with, "The older I get, the more I realize how much I despise Coalinga." Her former high school principal found the rant while browsing her MySpace page (what?), and forwarded it to the town newspaper, which published the "rant" without the girl's permission, signed with her full name, as a letter to the editor (what?). The resulting fallout included death threats against the family and the closure of the 20-year-old business owned by the girl's father. Four years later, a judge ruled that the girl could not sue for "public disclosure of private facts" because the MySpace post was not private. But what about a copyright claim?

Normally the "damages" for unauthorized copying of a MySpace post would be so close to zero, that a moral victory in court is all you could get. But if her father's business lost so much money that it had to close, could the family sue for those losses resulting from the copyright infringement?

It is perhaps indicative of the mathematician/programmer mindset, that after reading about a school principal downloading a rant form a former student's MySpace page and arranging with a friend to "out" her in the town newspaper, the first thing that popped into my head was: "copyright infringement." But copyright law has a nice binary, one-or-zero, they-did-it-or-they-didn't quality that resonates with left-brainers. As several lawyers said to me while I was asking them questions for this story, the girl would probably have a better claim for "intentional infliction of emotional distress" and for "false light publicity" — but those rights of action are more nebulous concepts in law, and the trial outcome would depend more on the judge's personal opinions and on the history of similar rulings in the state. Copyright law is, at least in theory, standardized in federal law and laid out in black and white, so that even non-lawyers have a chance of understanding it. But I still wanted to ask some lawyers for their opinions.

This started for me as an investigation of copyright law as it applied to these situations. (I personally know a few people whose content has been reused on other people's websites or e-mail lists with varying degrees of legality, and I'd like to be better informed about what to tell them.) But it ended up becoming a case study in how to interpret conflicting opinions from different lawyers.

There were some notions that I had completely wrong about copyright law, and the lawyers that I queried pointed those out unanimously. On the other hand, there are some questions where the legal community is divided on the correct answer, and you might pick one answer and a lawyer with the opposite point of view would tell you you were "wrong," when a different lawyer might tell you that you were "right." Whenever lawyers tell me something, and especially if they tell me that I should listen to them because they're a lawyer and I'm not, I always ask the same thing: If I were to ask this question of 10 different lawyers, would at least 8 out of them of them agree? If the answer is No, then — while each lawyer is still be entitled to their opinion, it is just an opinion, not a settled fact within the profession. In fact, I wouldn't even trust the results if I asked 10 lawyers who were all in the same room; my general impression is that when I ask lawyers a question who are in the room together, they agree more frequently than if I ask them a similar question separately, perhaps consciously or subconsciously out of a desire to make it look as if the "expert consensus" is stronger than it really is. The fairest test would be to ask 10 lawyers separately and compare their answers.

So, I posted a notice to Peter Shankman's Help A Reporter Out service, asking for legal experts to comment on the copyright issue. HARO is a nifty way to get your name in print once in a while if you're an expert on any subject; you can sign up for the mailing list as a "source," and then reporters send queries to HARO that are redistributed to the mailing list asking for experts on a particular subject. (The very first day after I signed up last September, I got featured as a "web filtering expert" in an article in an adult industry trade magazine, whereupon I'm sure my mother sent the link to all of her friends right away.) But I was interested in using it in a different way from most reporters. Usually, reporters posting a query are looking for multiple expert opinions that they can synthesize into a consensus answer for their story. I was posting my query to find out whether any consensus even existed.

The questions I put to the HARO list were: Could the girl bring a lawsuit against the paper for violating her copyright? Is it something she could even do in Small claims court to save time and money? And as for damages, I knew that in cases of copyright violations for works not registered with the Copyright Office, plaintiffs were usually limited to actual damages. But could she claim the losses to her family's business as "actual damages," since the harm was caused as a result of the copyright violation?

Before reading any further, you might want to consider how you would answer these questions. Then you can see whether your answers agree with those given by the experts.

Pencils down. First, the things that all lawyers agreed I got completely wrong:

• Virtually every lawyer who responded said that you could only bring copyright claims in federal court. This advice passed the 8-out-of-10 test, as well it might, since this rule is laid out in the U.S. Code.
• Second, to bring a copyright claim at all, you first have to register your work with the Copyright Office by mailing it to them with a $35 fee. (There was some inconsistency in the answers here, but the consensus seems to be: You own the copyright on something as soon as you create it, but you can't file a copyright lawsuit until after you've registered your work. However, once you've registered, you can then go back and sue for copyright violations that took place before the registration date. If you register more than 90 days after the date of first publication, you can only sue for actual damages — your monetary losses, or the infringer's ill-gotten gains — for violations that took place before you registered the work. But if you register within 90 days of first publication, you can sue for statutory damages and attorney's fees, even for violations that took place before you registered.)
• Third: Suppose the court did find that the girl's copyright was violated. Can the harm to her father's business be counted under actual damages? Well, first there is the issue of whether she can consider these as damages at all, since they were to her father's business, not to her. As I put it to Paul MacArthur, Professor of Journalism and Public Relations at Utica College: If X violates the rights of Y but the bulk of the harm is done to Z, can Y sue, even though they weren't the main victim? Professor MacArthur, said: "Generally, no. But, perhaps, because it impacts her family's income, she can claim a loss."
  
  But the real difference is that harm indirectly resulting from the copyright infringement is not legally the same as actual damages, and here's where the different experts agreed. Said one legal expert who asked not to be identified by name:

  "In the fact pattern for this case, you have to know that the damage to the family is considered 'consequential' or 'indirect' damages - not actual damages. In a copyright suit, actual damages are the financial losses incurred as a result of lost profit from your work."

  Joshua King, an attorney with Avvo.com, a site that provides attorney ratings and other services to help consumers navigate the legal profession, agreed: "Even if a court were to consider the father's lost business, those damages would be considered consequential damages." Three other lawyers who responded all said essentially the same thing.

So those were the points where the lawyers agreed. But what about a fair use defense? From years of reading Copyright FAQs, you probably know that the fair use doctrine allows third parties to use portions of a copyrighted work without the copyright owner's permission under some circumstances. As Mike Plumleigh, an intellectual property lawyer in California summarized it for me, the four factors that determine whether a use qualifies as fair use are:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Although, whenever I read a law or legal text earnestly claiming that such-and-such depends on this other list of factors, it seems ironic that the list is intended to "clarify" the meaning of the law, when the list items are often just as open to ambiguous interpretation as the original item they were intended to clarify. The acid test of whether a rule has been "clarified" is how much experts agree on how to interpret the rule in a given situation; if experts can't agree to interpret it, then it's no more "clear" than it was before.

That seemed to be the case in this instance, where I got a lot of conflicting answers from the attorneys who responded. Joshua King said: "The newspaper may well have a fair use defense even though they published the whole thing." Mike Plumleigh agreed with the likelihood of the "fair use" defense and gave a longer explanation (referring to his numbered list above):

"Not to go into detail of how a court might rule on the analysis, but here's my quick take:

• Under (1), the use could be found to be for criticism, comment and (by the paper) news reporting (and the cases also consider 1st amendment factors under this one)
• Under (2) and (4) the original work was not intended for commercial purposes, had little apparent market value, and is more a short statement of fact/opinion rather than having significant creative or other "authorship" elements.
• Under (3), all of the "work" seems to have been reproduced, but this factor would likely be outweighed by the others.

I haven't seen the published letter or the original journal post, so my analysis above might be somewhat different if what was copied was a longer essay about life in Coalinga or similar. Nonetheless, the market value/effect would still be an issue, and the criticism/commentary purposes could still tip in favor of fair use."

Venkat Balasubramani, a Seattle copyright attorney, cast a vote-with-caveats for the fair use defense as well:

Fair use is always tough to predict and fact-intensive. On the one hand, there's little commercial value in the letter. Also, the fact that she published the letter in MySpace may itself be newsworthy and the newspaper is entitled to publish at least portions of the letter. Overall, her copyright claims are weak, damages minimal, and the newspaper's fair use arguments fairly strong. (Caveat again the fair-use is fact-intensive.)

In the other corner, Phil Marcus, a negotiation and intellectual property lawyer in Baltimore, commented, "I do not think 'fair use' includes using a person's words to get them run out of town." Professor MacArthur said, "There is no way what the paper's use of the student's writings qualifies as fair use." I asked if the other factors wouldn't weigh in favor of the newspaper, since there was no apparently commercial market for the essay, but Professor MacArthur disagreed:

"The nature of the copyrighted work as a temporarily published work that the girl choose to pull off of her MySpace page. She has the right to remove her writings from her MySpace page and no one has the right to continue to distribute those writings in their entirety without her consent. So, number 2 is her favor (really, issue number two looks more at non-published vs. published, with non-published being afforded more protection).

In terms of number 4, the claim could be made the that there is an impact on the market. These are her personal writings. Perhaps, in the future, she wants to put them on her own web site and make a profit via Google's AdSense or via a pay for content web site. The newspaper, by publishing her writings, may have lessened her ability to charge for this piece/monetize it. I'm not saying she is going to do this, but this issue is something for a judge/jury to decide."

Stephen Roe, an attorney with Lathrop Clark in Virginia, was even-handed but leaning against fair use:

"Were she to sue for copyright infringement, I think the court would be faced with a difficult decision. Were I defending the newspaper and principal, I would certainly assert fair use, in that the purpose was for news reporting and comment and criticism. However, they would appear to have a problem, in that the girl's letter was not submitted BY HER as a letter to the editor, and thus was falsely attributed to her as a letter to the editor... A court may be willing to find that the principal and the paper were NOT within the fair use safe harbor, especially if she could establish ill intent. Were I hearing the case, I would be very sympathetic to her situation, especially given the relationship between the principal and the editor and the apparent mis-attribution."

So, three votes on either side. I myself would probably argue on the side of the fair use defense against a pure copyright violation, because the girl was not selling her work, and the principal was trying to convey the fact of the girl's dislike for Coalinga (which is inappropriate conduct for a high school principal, but not against the law).

I think the lesson here is that even though many Internet copyright controversies depend on what is protected under "fair use," that is much less clearly defined than one might hope. If someone blatantly lifts content from your home page and posts it on their own website for commercial gain, that's a copyright violation, but what if they only post excerpts for the purpose of "commenting" on it? What if you posted something snarky on your blog, and later took it down, but someone else archived a copy on their blog in order to show the world what a dick they thought you were? You may not know offhand whether these actions are protected under "fair use," but it would be nice to think that the answer exists, and that a lawyer could steer you towards it. No such luck in some situations.

Or, perhaps the more general lesson is that when seeking advice from lawyers, it's worth getting multiple opinions. Sometimes if a lawyer tells you, "I'm sure that I'm right about this, because I'm a lawyer," they really are right, as in several of the points above where they set me straight. But not always. And the way to find out is to ask four or five different lawyers and see what they say. I'm a member of a cheap legal insurance plan ($20/month) that entitles to me to call "in-network" lawyers for a few minutes of advice each on a given legal question. The provider probably thinks of this as a cheapo option for people who can't afford real legal consultations, but I think that 10 minutes of advice from 6 different lawyers, is enormously more valuable than one hour of advice from one lawyer, because then you can categorize their advice into things they agree on (which are likely to reflect "the law") and things they don't agree on (which are likely to be just their opinions).

If more legal debaters recognized this distinction, perhaps many bitter legal disputes outside the courtroom could be resolved by agreeing to disagree. Prior to a court ruling, "the law" is just defined as the consensus among legal experts on how to interpret a statute. So if experts are divided on a given question, then by definition there is no consensus and hence no "law," so what are they arguing about?

Comments

Whatever the legal question

[elrous0]

This was unquestionably an EXTREME violation of journalistic ethics by the newspaper in question. At the very least, they should be publicly denounced by every other newspaper in the area and the staff involved should be booted out of any professional organizations they're affiliated with. I'm not sure if there is any journalistic equivalent of a "Razzie," but if they're is, this should earn them one.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Philip K Dickhead]

Whatever the question, I hate Coalinga, too. I lived for 20 years on the Monterey peninsula, and was once stranded in King City for 7 hours. Believe me. The 7 hours seemed longer!

Coalinga makes King City look like Chicago.

I'm of the convinced opinion that after you move inland 5 miles from the coast, you can cede all of California to Nevada and Arizona.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

"Journalistic Ethics" Does that exist anymore? The Fourth Estate in this country has been on a collision course with irrelevance for 15 years now. They care not a wit about ethics and right or wrong in their search for a controversy to sell papers/magazines/ad revenue. It's a Hard Copy world even in hometown newspapers. It's no wonder why they are all going out of business...

Re:Whatever the legal question

[NotBornYesterday]

Not to mention a lapse on the part of the former principal. Although this would not seem to be a case of plagiarism per se, since he does not appear to be taking credit for someone else's work, his grasp of honesty and intellectual property rights should be advanced enough to prevent him from doing this. Legally bound or not, I think he was ethically bound not to republish without consent, and it shows enormously poor judgment for someone in his position. If the piece was inflammatory enough to result in death threats and the closure of a family business, he must have had some idea of how it would be received before he sent it in.

I'm not clear on whether the newspaper was complicit in publishing something they knew to be copyrighted. Did the principal send it in with a note that said 'Hey, I found this on the internet, thought you might like to publish it.', or did he simply send it in as if it came from her directly?

Re:Whatever the legal question

[JamesBarger]

Agreed. This is something every respectable journalism school teaches students not to do in practice. A journalist is betraying his profession when he intentionally sets out to "get" someone or hurt their reputation without a true news angle or some compelling reason to convey the information -- especially when the victim is not a public figure. Printing a quote or small excerpt from the original piece within a larger commentary or news story might be acceptable, but publishing the work, in its entirety, as if it had been submitted to the editor by the author, when it was not, is absolutely against good professional practice. That kind of unethical action -- if that's what happened -- is also a good hint that a basis for a lawsuit may linger within the facts (e.g. a common law tort action, such as intentional infliction of emotional distress), although determining that would require more information and analysis by a qualified lawyer.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can violate copyrights of an artist or a software company, what do you care about some kid's myspace account?

Re:Whatever the legal question

[DarrenBaker]

That's the best damned idea I've heard in a very, very long time. A local station's evening 'news' broadcast in my area (A-Channel News Barrie) is one of the worst offenders - just abhorrent. I don't catch it very often, but when I do, I find something more to loathe about it, usually it involves a reporter hired more for their aesthetic appeal than their journalistic aptitude.

Last week, there was a police shooting of a man who was allegedly threatening the officers. The reporter said (I'm paraphrasing, but it was close), "Police have not yet released the name of the deceased. Neighbours say his name is... " and then revealed the man's name. I hope no uninformed relatives were watching.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[JoeMerchant]

I don't believe it was a lapse on the part of the former principal, I believe it was a flagrant action with malicious intent. If she had decent representation before her first lawsuit, it might have gone differently for her:

As several lawyers said to me while I was asking them questions for this story, the girl would probably have a better claim for "intentional infliction of emotional distress" and for "false light publicity"

Re:Whatever the legal question

[dcollins117]

I had never heard of the place until now. From the context

"The older I get, the more I realize how much I despise Coalinga."

I figured it was a new slang term the kids use when referring to oral sex.

I stand corrected.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[j1mmy]

The editorial page is a free-for-all -- journalistic ethics don't apply. The editors don't do any verification of the identity of people sending in letters because 99.9999% of people send in their own letters. The newspaper did nothing wrong here. The malicious action rests entirely with the principal.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

But she can't want to leave! She'd miss the "Annual Horned Toad Derby"!

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the principal's email, if anyone wants to tell him what you think:

Roger Campbell rcampbell@chusd.k12.ca.us

Better yet, tell his boss:
http://www.chusd.k12.ca.us/chusd/District%20Information/Board%20of%20Trustees/Ramon%20J.%20Zubiri,%20President/

For good measure, here's the contact info for the paper's editor:

Jackie Kaczmarek - Sentinel Managing Editor
(559)-583-2403 jkaczmarek@HanfordSentinel.com

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Kierthos]

Wrong. At the very least, the paper has the ethical responsibility of verifying that the person who wrote the letter to the editor sent it in. I cannot recall the last newspaper I have seen that did not include the notice that all letters to the editor must include some form of contact information. Ostensibly, this is so they can verify the writer's identity before publisher an inflammatory letter.

Obviously, this paper failed to do that.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[tsm_sf]

I don't believe it was a lapse on the part of the former principal, I believe it was a flagrant action with malicious intent.

Not to mention creepy as hell. Good going, Roger Campbell of Coalinga High. Now everyone knows you stalk teenage girls.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Chyeld]

Reading elsewhere, the girl pulled the post from MySpace a few days after posting it, found out the principal had already passed it along to the editor, and asked them not to publish it. At that point, the publisher said they wouldn't, and then turned around and did it anyway.

But on the other hand, the editor in question was fired over the incident. Not much else the paper could have done at that point, one of the things about being an editor is that you don't have many people looking over your shoulder to see what you are doing.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Bent Mind]

Perhaps I'm missing something here, very likely as I've only had one cup of coffee this morning.

My understanding from the above is that the newspaper received and published a Letter to the Editor that was signed. I've had several Letters to the Editor published with my name. I've never had the editor contact me to verify my identity. It seems to me that it was the Principle who submitted the letter, and signed the girl's name, that is in the wrong. The brief certainly seems to back this up.

The issue presented by this appeal is whether an author who posts an article on myspace.com can state a cause of action for invasion of privacy and/or intentional infliction of emotional distress against a person who submits that article to a newspaper for republication. The trial court concluded not and sustained the demurrer to appellants' complaint without leave to amend.

Ahh, reading further:

The day after Cynthia removed the Ode from her online journal, appellants learned that Campbell [the Principle] had submitted the Ode to the local newspaper, the Coalinga Record, by giving the Ode to his friend, Pamela Pond. Pond was the editor of the Coalinga Record.

So, maybe the newspaper isn't so innocent.

As to the matter of copyright, I see this case did not address it:

Whether the publication of the Ode infringed on any federal copyright protection the Ode may have had (17 U.S.C. ï½ 101 et seq.) is not before this court and we express no opinion on that issue.

I also do not see a copy of the letter. Fair use might come into play if the purpose of publication was criticism.

IANAL, the above is just my take on what I've read. To add to my opinion, now that the girl and her family are safely moved away from that community, I do hope she has republished her Ode. The reaction of the townspeople to the rants of a high school girl are ample proof that Coalinga is not a desirable place to live.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[nine-times]

Well also, whatever the legal question, it doesn't seem to me like the real problem here is the publication of her writing. Her rant against the town was already public, and I only have so much sympathy for people who post things on sites like MySpace and then get upset when those posts "become public".

Does she technically have a case for copyright infringement? I don't know, but I don't feel like copyright was designed to keep people from publicizing already public writings.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, here on slashdot, thepiratebay are HEROES and Jammie Thomas is INNOCENT

Make your fucking minds up. Is copyright 'the evil' or not?

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Chyeld]

Not presented in the summary, but still relevant, is the fact that the editor in question knew both that the letter was not submitted by it's author (because the editor and the principal were pals) and knew that the actual author did not want the letter printed (because the girl contacted the editor once she learned it had been passed along and requested they not print it).

As such, regardless of whether I agree or not with your statements, they are moot. This was a deliberate act by the editor and not a simple mistake.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[interkin3tic]

It is telling that enough of the townspeople were offended by it that they boycotted her father's business out of business. I couldn't find the full thing, but unless she gave away the town's secret recipe for the world's best apple pie, or revealed that the town enjoyed ritualistic killing and eating of vagrants, I can't fathom what would get under reasonable people's skin that much.

Conclusion: Coaligna is indeed a town full of assholes.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Chyeld]

Don't hate on the paper, the editor in question was already fired a while back.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Chyeld]

Yes she posted it to the 'internets' and six days later pulled it. She went to the effort of tracking down the editor of the newspaper in question and asked they NOT publish it, to which they responsed they wouldn't. And then they turned around and did it anyway.

I also have a limited amount of sympathy for people who do stupid shit in public, but I also zero love for assholes who know someone is regretting what they said, and go out of their way not just to publish it but to do so all the while telling the person that they won't.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

This was unquestionably an EXTREME violation of journalistic ethics

I don't understand. Why would you use those words together like that.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[VJ42]

I don't believe it was a lapse on the part of the former principal, I believe it was a flagrant action with malicious intent. Not to mention creepy as hell. Good going, Roger Campbell of Coalinga High. Now everyone knows you stalk teenage girls.

Some info about the creepy old man: http://www.coalinga-huron.org/chs/administrators.html You can find both his picture and his email address from that site.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[JoeMerchant]

Good going, Roger Campbell of Coalinga High. Now everyone knows you stalk teenage girls.

Sadly, that does not make him rare within his profession.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[nine-times]

I'm not trying to claim that others involved in the story are blameless. The principal sending the letter pretending to be someone else seems particularly crappy. The newspapers actions don't seem very professional. And people in a town going out of their way to punish a family because one of their teenage children expressed annoyance with the town seems downright insane.

Still, I wish people would learn the lesson: don't post things on the Internet if you don't want people to know about it. Or at least post anonymously or use an alias.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[eltonito]

The PBS article below expands on the details of the case. Prior to publishing her "letter to the editor" the paper was fully aware that it was a post from Myspace, not a true letter to the editor. In fact, the editor was the person who added her name to the letter, not the principal as stated in the /. piece. The author was made aware that her now deleted rant would be published as a letter to the editor. The author was assured by the paper that the "letter" would not run, but then they ran it anyway.

I think this is a prime "what not to do" example of journalistic ethics.

Media Shift @ PBS

Re:Whatever the legal question

[bsane]

I haven't gone searching for the girls original essay, but one thing stands out- the town she blasted as being despicable pretty much proved her right.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[interkin3tic]

Sorry for the double post, just thought of an important exception: "Coaligna residents are so dumb my father urinates in all the beers he sells at his bar and they don't even know it."

Re:Whatever the legal question

[ImprovOmega]

That's what really boggles me about this. I mean, I could see getting pissed at the girl in question, but under what warped and twisted view of reality does that equate to being pissed at the father and boycotting his business? Maybe his kid is just a screw-up, it's not something he can necessarily control. Mob justice at its stupidest.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Chyeld]

Never lived in a small town, have you? Where it's still possible to refer to someone as "one of the Salem Samples" or "one of the Doss daughters", it's entirely possible for the actions of 'one bad seed'(or conversely of 'one noble hero') to cast a shadow over the entire family.

Move into one of these towns and you will suddenly realize the level of blissful ignorance most suburban and urban folk live in when it comes to how heavily public opinion can impact your life.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[tinkerghost]

I don't know, but I don't feel like copyright was designed to keep people from publicizing already public writings.

They didn't publicize her writing. They did not create a news article saying "Hey this bimbo hates us & go look at it here." They published - as in created and distributed 1 copy for each newspaper printed - her work in its entirety as though it had been fully authorized by submitting it to the "Letters to the Editor" section of the paper.

Point blank, she should win a copyright lawsuit. Fair use is not a valid defense to printing a work in it's entirety with no comments or critique of the contents. On the other hand, about all she's eligible to win is legal fees and "We're sorry & won't do it again".

As for the lawyer who said:

Under (1), the use could be found to be for criticism, comment and (by the paper) news reporting (and the cases also consider 1st amendment factors under this one)

I think he was drunk when he answered.

• criticism

  They didn't do any critiquing of the work. They just published it.

• Comment

  They didn't use it as a comment on an issue or other work. They just published it.

• News reporting

  There was no attempt to report this as news - not even to say "Hey, this bitch wrote {blah} on her myspace page, let's lynch her". It was presented as an unsolicited letter to the editor.

• First amendment

  Get real. The first amendment certainly grants the paper the right to publish a rebuttal to the rant and to report on the rant. As part of a larger story discussing it, they might even be able to publish the entire work as presented on myspace. It doesn't give a paper the right to publish other peoples works in their entirety outside the framework of an actual report on the work. If it does, I am so going to start a paper & publish best selling books and movie scripts in my entertainment section - I'll save a fortune on that whole pesky licensing thing.

If the paper had addressed the rant as an actual newsworthy item and handled it as such, they could have claimed fair use. They didn't. They took a work and fabricated the semblance of permission by routing it through their "Letters to the Editor" section. They made commercial use of someone else's work by deliberately misleading their readers as to the origins of the material if not the author.

I think that a case for fraud could be made - the newspaper attempted to obtain goods or services (readers) through false pretenses (claiming a work published elsewhere as a letter to their editor).

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Nekomusume]

I was thinking the same thing.

Last I heard, teens growing up in small towns often hate living there. They usually either grow out of it, or move out of the town when they get old enough.

Destroying her father's business, however, crosses the line into monstrous over-reaction. I have no idea what she wrote, but I have no choice but to assume that her hatred is very well founded.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[leamanc]

Reading around about this, it seems the principal forwarded to it his friend, who happened to be an editor at the paper. The editor took it upon herself to run the piece, without influence from the principal. So the principal is not that guilty; he just forwarded on a piece of interest to a friend. The editor was fired after the incident.

It sucks what happened to these folks, but I think all the justice that can be done, has already been done.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[arekusu_ou]

How is it a lapse in judgement? He accomplished what he intended, emotional, financial, and physical distress to the girl and her family by extension. Only thing lacking was a suicide or actual murder. If I was petty, vindictive, and amoral, I could only wish my plots went so well.

All in all though, whether he misrepresentated himself when he presented the piece to the newspaper or the newspaper published something in someone elses name, knowing she did not submit it, is the question.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

Conclusion: Coaligna is indeed a town full of assholes.

You are close, but that is not where you perform coaligna. But I'm sure she would enjoy that, too.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[innocent_white_lamb]

The editors don't do any verification of the identity of people sending in letters
 
Any time I've written a letter-to-the-editor, I always get a phone call from the paper to verify that I sent it before they do anything with it.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[innocent_white_lamb]

I've had several Letters to the Editor published with my name. I've never had the editor contact me to verify my identity.
 
That must be peculiar to certain papers. Any letter-to-the-editor that I've ever written gets me a phone call from the paper to verify that I'm the one who sent it.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[aamcf]

Copyright is like most other laws. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[interkin3tic]

No one was saying "This is unique to this one small town."

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

realize the level of blissful ignorance most suburban and urban folk live in when it comes to how heavily public opinion can impact your life.

Or how small-minded and petty country folk are...

Re:Whatever the legal question

[drsmithy]

I mean, I could see getting pissed at the girl in question, but under what warped and twisted view of reality does that equate to being pissed at the father and boycotting his business?

"The apple rarely falls far from the tree."

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly!!! If the principal sent it to the newspaper as if it came from her, the newspaper was simply publishing a letter that they received. It would be unreasonable for a newspaper to have to get permission to print every letter to the editor they print.

If that was the case, she could sue the principal for libel be cause he wrote the letter which falsely implied that she wanted her opinions published in the newspaper.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[BenSchuarmer]

Wouldn't that be libel?

By publishing the letter, the newspaper made the false claim that she wanted her opinion printed in the paper.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[armitage787]

lol, i grew up in coalinga, there arent any other newspapers.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[darthwader]

But on the other hand, the editor in question was fired over the incident. Not much else the paper could have done at that point [...]

There's lots more the newspaper could have done (and, for all I know, they may have done some of this as well):

• a front-page "we screwed up" headline and an article explaining exactly what they did, and why it was immoral and unethical.
• a human-interest story about how this mob mentality destroyed this business.
• a clear criticism of how the towns people behaved.
• financial assistance for the family.

Just quietly firing the person who causes embarrassment for the company is frequently all a company will do, but it's never all the company can do.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Repossessed]

Mine never have. Hell, I've never even given them my phone number (and had a few published despite it).

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

There is at least one legal avenue to consider.

This was not a letter to the editor by the girl who actually wrote the article. So if the person who sent it added the signature or represented it as a letter TO the EDITOR when it wasn't, you could probably go after them for libel or something along those lines.

Now if the letter had come from the person, who simply referenced the online commentary, it would be different.

A good lawyer should be able to come up with the right means of pursuing damages.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Not presented in the summary, but still relevant, is the fact that the editor in question knew both that the letter was not submitted by it's author (because the editor and the principal were pals) and knew that the actual author did not want the letter printed (because the girl contacted the editor once she learned it had been passed along and requested they not print it).

As such, regardless of whether I agree or not with your statements, they are moot. This was a deliberate act by the editor and not a simple mistake.

So?, newspapers been always been used to advance the personal agendas of the people running them.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Bourbonium]

Not true at all. Every Letter to the Editor I have had published was preceded by a phone call from the newspaper confirming that I was the author. At least in the four or five local papers in my area (San Francisco), the editorial pages are quite clear that this is their policy. They do not publish anonymous letters or letters ghost-written by someone under a false name. They clearly indicate that you must include your full (real) name and a phone number where you can be reached for confirmation. If you send in an LTE and they don't call you, it probably means they don't intend to publish your letter; if they do call you, then you can be pretty sure they're going to publish the letter (but they sometimes apologize for editing it down to meet space limitations). A good letter will fall within their standard lengths (no more than 300-500 words) so if you can say what you want to say in that space, they are more likely to publish it. If your letter exceeds the standard length, but they feel they want to publish it in full, they may call you and ask if they can publish the letter as an editorial opinion column, rather than an LTE. I've been happy to oblige them, and even added more text to fill a column requirement (usually a paragraph I earlier edited out for length).

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Bourbonium]

Apologies for a double-post, but my earlier reply was to an Anonymous Coward, who probably will not see this messages.

Your statement is not true at all. A newspaper has an obligation to know who is contributing its content, even on the editorial page. Every Letter to the Editor I have had published was preceded by a phone call from the newspaper confirming that I was the author. At least in the four or five local papers in my area (San Francisco), the editorial pages are quite clear that this is their policy. They do not publish anonymous letters or letters ghost-written by someone under a false name. They clearly indicate that you must include your full (real) name and a phone number where you can be reached for confirmation. If you send in an LTE and they don't call you, it probably means they don't intend to publish your letter; if they do call you, then you can be pretty sure they're going to publish the letter (but they sometimes apologize for editing it down to meet space limitations). A good letter will fall within their standard lengths (no more than 300-500 words) so if you can say what you want to say in that space, they are more likely to publish it. If your letter exceeds the standard length, but they feel they want to publish it in full, they may call you and ask if they can publish the letter as an editorial opinion column, rather than an LTE. I've been happy to oblige them, and even added more text to fill a column requirement (usually a paragraph I earlier edited out for length).

Re:Whatever the legal question

[RealGrouchy]

You know, normally I'd be morally opposed to publishing such a person's contact info to unleash the /. mob on them, but in this case that's exactly what he did to the girl.

- RG>

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Atario]

Conclusion: Coaligna is indeed a town full of assholes.

Being from a small (but not that small) town in California's Central Valley, I just want to say: I coulda tole ya that fer free.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[eschasi]

Perhaps folks should read this article: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/04/coalinga-newspaper-not-liable-for-running-myspace-rant112.html Among other things, it says

College student Cynthia Moreno posted the "Ode to Coalinga," her hometown, in her MySpace journal. The "Ode" was extremely critical of Coalinga and its inhabitants. Apparently Moreno thought better of having posted it, and she deleted it six days later. But not before the principal of the local high school, Roger Campbell, gave the Ode to his friend Pamela Pond, the editor of the local newspaper, the Coalinga Record. Pond published the Ode as a letter to the editor . . . What's more -- this part of the story is related only in Moreno's brief to the court and not in the opinion -- Moreno learned that Campbell had given the Ode to Pond before it was actually published, and she contacted Pond to ask her not to print it. According to Moreno, Pond said she would not publish it, but then changed her mind and did so.

And it's not like there hasn't been fallout:

According to one online source, Moreno and her family are not the only ones who suffered consequences from the publication of the Ode. Pond was dismissed from the newspaper.

Other good information in the article. Not that anyone will read it....

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

Roger Campbell

600 N Princeton Ave
Coalinga, CA 93210-1640

Possible Phone #
  (559) 935-2491

Re:Whatever the legal question

[VJ42]

You know, normally I'd be morally opposed to publishing such a person's contact info to unleash the /. mob on them,

Indeed, there's a reason I didn't just post his email address directly to my /. comment. People will still have to make some effort to be idiots

The whole lot only took me a 10 second google to find anyway, the real morons will have already trolled\spammed the guy.

Re:Whatever the legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI The newspaper is no longer in business. Though it had been in print for over 100 years, starting in 1904, it suffered the fate of many other newspapers. It was very popular and influential in this small community. While there seemed to be a lack of quality reporting in how the material was presented, I believe that over the years the paper had served the local community well giving local people what they want local news. I was sad to see them go.

More articles on the court rulings in this case can be found at:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/07/BARP16TVVN.DTL&hw=lawsuit&sn=005&sc=799
and
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/09/myspace_legally_public/print.html

The suit against the newspaper itself was quickly dismissed and was not the reason the paper went out of business.

Re:IANAL

[Anonymous Coward]

All works are automatically granted copyright protection regardless of if you put a copyright label.

The wrong issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have thought the real issue wouldn't be copyright violation, but more of misrepresentation? The letter was represented as a letter to the editor from the girl, when it was not....

Re:The wrong issue

[Stumbles]

My thoughts exactly, and it is the Principle that should get hammered. Not only did this Principle make false representations, he also stole her identity by representing himself as her. At the very least this Principle should be sued on those grounds, and regardless of that outcome he should be fired.

Re:The wrong issue

[Anonymous Coward]

True. And what kind of redneck a-holes live in this town. Death threats... Running the family out of town... Over, their barely out of her teens daughters essay on why she hates the town. Like she is the first adolescent to feel this way. Didn't they just prove her right? What happened to being an adult and laughing off the antics of children rather than responding in a more childish manner oneself.

Re:The wrong issue

[iamhigh]

Why should he be fired? She graduated long ago, he is no longer responsible for her. What he did may be wrong, maybe even against the law, but why would you fire him? His job seems to have little to do with the case; would you ask for his job if he was a manager at McDonalds and she was a former employee?

Re:The wrong issue

[Stumbles]

Apparently you missed or do not understand the phrases "making false representations", and "stealing a persons identity". People have gotten fired for a lot less. I think his actions qualify for more than a lot less.

Re:The wrong issue

[evilkasper]

It's a matter of ethics, something you expect someone in his position to have a modicum of.

Re:The wrong issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? You think the proper behavior for the High School principal is browsing former students MySpace pages and if he decides he doesn't like the content conspiring to "Out Them". Really? Is this the kind of person you want in charge of your child's education? The entire series of events is unclear but if he forwarded the post as her to the newspaper at minimum he fraudulently misrepresented himself and probably forged her identification. Since this was mailed that would constitute Federal Wire Fruad...

Re:The wrong issue

[NotBornYesterday]

Dear Coalinga,

Thanks for proving my rant accurate beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Sincerely,
- The 20something girl

PS: You still suck.

Re:The wrong issue

[Andy Somnifac]

Are you implying that you would suggest a different outcome if the student was still attending the school he is the principal of? If so, why does it matter? Is not this ethical breach the same in either case?

Re:The wrong issue

[AceCaseOR]

Also, this is, to a certain extent, a betrayal of the trust of current students at the high school, it sends a message that, even if you leave town, we know where your family lives, and if you do anything that, by the moral standards of that community is untoward (even if the rest of the world doesn't find it unethical - like saying you don't like your home town and you're glad you left), your family can and will be punished for it, outside the law, by the community.

Thus is the tyranny of small towns. I really wish the girl and her family had appealed, because I suspect if the case had reacheda court that wasn't as "tainted" by the region, she might have gotten an actual fair hearing.

Re:The wrong issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Stole her identity? Come on - check the drama at the door.

Re:The wrong issue

[iamhigh]

Apparently you can read a lot better than I. I didn't see either of those accusations in the actual summary; perhaps you think they happened, or have a better source, but it was never implied that he was the one that faked her identity (it could have been the paper). He may have simply sent the link or text.

And you still didn't really answer. What does his job/trade/profession have to do with this case? Why should anybody's job be affected by a copy/paste that may have had no ill will attached at all? We really need more details to make these calls.

Re:The wrong issue

[MillionthMonkey]

and it is the Principle that should get hammered

The principAL should get hammered principALly as a matter of principLE.

Re:The wrong issue

[maxume]

Did he do those things? If the message he sent the editor said, in preface to the copy of the rant 'look what so and so said on her blag', then he didn't make a false representation or impersonate anybody.

(I only looked at the linked decision briefly and it didn't really seem to relate the details of how the rant passed from principal to editor)

Re:The wrong issue

[Anonymous Coward]

What does his job/trade/profession have to do with this case?

His utter lack of respect for boundaries when dealing with a minor.

Re:The wrong issue

[iamhigh]

It certainly would change it. After she graduated these two no longer had the relationship of Teacher/Admin to Student. They were just like any other two citizens in the community.
As an aside, I knew of a teacher that sent a students work to a publishing house without her knowledge. It was published and the student was greatful. I guess it is the outcome that really matters.

Re:The wrong issue

[RingDev]

Agreed. I would look at this like less of a Copy Right issue and more of a digital trespass issue. Although, I think the digital side would be much easier to prove if you could get a conviction for copy right violation. While the newspaper has pretty solid grounds for their publishing, I'd be hard pressed to believe that the Principal could make the same arguments successfully.

-Rick

Re:The wrong issue

[dzfoo]

And which principle is that? Is it the principle of fair use? Or is it the principle of proper attribution and representation of the girl's rant?

And how, then, do you sue or "hammer" a purely philosophical principle?

          -dZ.

Re:The wrong issue

[bill_kress]

>>What does his job/trade/profession have to do with this case?
>His utter lack of respect for boundaries when dealing with a minor.
That was possibly the best point in this entire discussion.

Re:The wrong issue

[digerata]

Am I the only one who read the rant title as "The older I get, the more I realize how much I despise Cunnilingus"

Re:The wrong issue

[iamhigh]

Until you realize that she wasn't a minor! DOH!

Re:The wrong issue

[Lumpy]

I agree, the best solution is to simply have people kick the crap out of him and leave him in a place and put him in a situation that will screw up his public life forever, Like tied to a bed in a local brothel wearing bondage stuff and a couple of shaved collies, take photos and call the cops that there is a guy in there with a gun. they come and arrest him, he get's exactly what he deserves.

but dont fire the guy, that's just wrong.

Re:The wrong issue

[jvkjvk]

Because we generally hold teachers, doctors, policemen, etc. to higher degrees of ethical standards than everyone else. And there are good reasons for that.

By letting us know that he is a scumbag, we as a society are then forced into action to remove him from the position of trust he has been placed in.

That's why.

Regards.

Re:The wrong issue

[joebagodonuts]

"tyranny of small towns". I like that. Any group of people, any society, has certain unwritten expectations and rules. Deviations are punished (at least if they are viewed as a threat).

This was viewed as a threat, and treated accordingly.

I've noticed that the privacy question was ruled on, but the emotional question will go before a jury. So it's not over.

Re:The wrong issue

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has worked with vulnerable adults and children I had to be vetted and background checked in order to be allowed to do my job.

Surely a Principal would have to have similar clearance and he's demonstrated he isn't a fit person to work with children and therefore his clearance should be revoked and then be dismissed from his job.

Re:The wrong issue

[Kuroji]

Take 'minor' and replace with 'former student', and ask yourself whether this is the sort of behavior you want to see exhibited. Whether you really want to see someone in charge of the school who is clearly vengeful and holding grudges years after the student is no longer a part of the school.

Re:The wrong issue

[iamhigh]

Slashdot, where in one story the group harangues the though of stopping the ability to link to copyrighted material and in the next cuts down a man for sharing information posted to the internet. He may have just sent a link to her blog. I have yet to see that the principal did anything more than take a publicly available text and pass it onto someone else he knows. No where have I found any indication that he did it with any intention of running these people out of town. Please prove that before we hang the guy. If anything the editor should be the one you go after. She was contacted by the girl and asked not to publish the letter. She did anyways and was fired for it.

Re:The wrong issue

[iamhigh]

Apparently you missed or do not understand the phrases "making false representations", and "stealing a persons identity". People have gotten fired for a lot less. I think his actions qualify for more than a lot less.

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/04/coalinga-newspaper-not-liable-for-running-myspace-rant112.html
From that link:

Moreno learned that Campbell had given the Ode to Pond before it was actually published, and she contacted Pond to ask her not to print it. According to Moreno, Pond said she would not publish it, but then changed her mind and did so.

The principal did not misrepresent or steal anyone's identity. He simply forwarded the info to the editor. Any chance you want to reconsider now?

Re:The wrong issue

[Solandri]

Really? You think the proper behavior for the High School principal is browsing former students MySpace pages and if he decides he doesn't like the content conspiring to "Out Them". Really? Is this the kind of person you want in charge of your child's education?

I know the idea of an authority figure persecuting a former subordinate really riles up your sense of indignation, but you're making a "think of the children" argument. At a fundamental level, this is a case of an employee doing stuff on the web in (I presume) his free time which does not pertain in any way to his work. I haven't seen anyone claiming that he pretended to be the girl when submitting the rant to the newspaper, and the fact that the newspaper's editor was fired over this would seem to indicate the mis-attribution was the editor's fault. So it would appear the principal did nothing legally wrong.

In these cases, I would argue that one's legal online activities outside of your work hours should have no bearing on your employment. To argue otherwise would be accepting several employment practices I find dubious. e.g. employment contracts where the employer claims to own everything you create while employed even though they're only paying you for 8 hours/day, 5 days/week. Do I think what he did was despicable? Of course! But she was no longer a student, and thus not a subordinate, so there was no conflict with his position as a school employee.

Now that the story has become public, he is subject to the same whims of the public that the girl fell victim to. PTA members may question his mental fitness as head of the school, which could lead him to being fired. But that would be a firing due to pressure by the public. Not because what he did was a violation of his duties as a school employee.

Re:The wrong issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say that in my experience, its rather the opposite.

Re:The wrong issue

[Avenger546]

Did he do those things? If the message he sent the editor said, in preface to the copy of the rant 'look what so and so said on her blag', then he didn't make a false representation or impersonate anybody.

The gist seems to be that the principal talked to a friend who worked at the paper and said "why don't you post this as a letter to the editor?" The friend published it, but rather than saying "I got this from the principal", the letter to the editor was "signed" with the girl's name, as if she had submitted it herself.

It may not have been the principal's suggestion; it may have been the editor's idea, or some combination of the two, but to readers of the paper, the letter appeared to be submitted by the girl, not the principal. The girl then sued because the principal and his friend at the paper conspired to post something that makes the girl look bad and incited violence against her family.

Unfortunately, the court disagreed.

Have there been any further legal proceedings regarding this case?

Re:The wrong issue

[Avenger546]

From this article, it appears that it was Pond who took it upon herself to publish the rant as a "letter to the editor", appearing to be signed by the original author. (As an aside, since Moreno asked Pond not to publish it, and Pond did so against Moreno's wishes, that reinforces my belief that Moreno's claim of copyright infringement should hold water.) However, the original post was more vague as to who made the decision to attribute the letter to the original author.

Pond *was* fired for her actions. So if you read this (as I originally did) with the belief that Campbell participated in the decision to represent the letter as a submission from Moreno, it stands to reason that Campbell should be fired as well.

Re:The wrong issue

[iamhigh]

So if you read this (as I originally did) with the belief that Campbell participated in the decision to represent the letter as a submission from Moreno, it stands to reason that Campbell should be fired as well.

So if we read it your way, huh? But we don't know that's how it happened. Also, even if it did, this is clearly unethical on the part of the editor, but I am not so sure that passing info to a newspaper constitutes abhorrently unethical behavior. His job has nothing to do with conforming to journalistic ethics, which seems to be where the problems lies (and it was ultimately the editors decision to, and how to publish, not the principal). I clearly understand why the editor was fired; I see no reason why the principal is considered for termination.

Re:The wrong issue

[ChefInnocent]

Thank you for once again showing how retarded our spelling system (or lack thereof) is. And yes, I am aware of the silly spelling reformation thing by Mark Twain which demonstrates how ridiculous that could be too.

Re:The wrong issue

[turbidostato]

"What does his job/trade/profession have to do with this case? Why should anybody's job be affected by a copy/paste that may have had no ill will attached at all? We really need more details to make these calls."

The principal showed a complete lack of ethics and understandment. Working as a school principal requieres a high ethics and understandment standard since it makes for an authority role on minors. Therefor people showing lack of ethics and understandment cannot be appointed as school principals.

QED.

Re:The wrong issue

[turbidostato]

"Slashdot, where in one story the group harangues the though of stopping the ability to link to copyrighted material and in the next cuts down a man for sharing information posted to the internet."

Apples to oranges. I bet no one supports here suplanting authorship nor allowing misleading facts.

I for one have no problem on the copyright stanza for that girl's rant to be published on a newspaper. After all, if it's public, it's public. But I do see a problem when a person sends a letter pretending to be somebody else the one that sends it and/or pretending that its purported intention was to be published as a letter to the editor when it was not.

Re:The wrong issue

[turbidostato]

"At a fundamental level, this is a case of an employee doing stuff on the web in (I presume) his free time which does not pertain in any way to his work."

But it is. Do you think he would have payed attention to that rant were not because she was an ex-student? And even it was the case, once he knew she was an ex-student he should have stopped on the spot to avoid responsibility collusion.

"So it would appear the principal did nothing legally wrong. "

Except, of course, opening his mouth a bit too much, as the bare mininum.

"I would argue that one's legal online activities outside of your work hours should have no bearing on your employment."

Unless, of course, they relate to your employment.

" Do I think what he did was despicable? Of course!"

Do you think what he did was despicable in a way directly related to the abilities and expectations related to a school principal's job? Of course too! and that's *exactly* the point. It's not only that disregarding circunstances that man showed a lack of common sense which might have been pardonable (it could have been a school mate, for instance; still stupid but much less relevant), but that that's man job is being school principal on the school that girl went to.

Re:The wrong issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just "former student", he was also a "Physicians Assistant" prior to being the assistant principal. Just the type of person not to let a kid alone after he's done assaulting her, and making sure she knows he'll know if she talks.

Re:The wrong issue

[iamhigh]

First, let me congratulate you on some wonderfully circular logic.

Yes, he would have paid attention to anyone from that town. There can't be that many of them on myspace.
Opening your mouth too much isn't against the law. /.ers should know this.
Now, you state that it should not affect employment unless it relates to your employment. SHE HAD ALREADY GRADUATED!!!! To say that the principal must stop doing anything when it involves an ex-student (and I assume their parents, sibling and good friends too, right?), would be to say that in a town of this size, he can't talk to, say anything about, bring up discussions about, purchase anything from, or do any business with anyone in that town! If he has had any length of tenure at all, he probably has a "business" relationship with the entire town.
I see nothing that he did that would render him any less capable of performing duties as a principal. In fact, I would say he taught the student body quite a lesson with this whole debacle.

Re:The wrong issue

[MoFoQ]

yea, that's what came to my mind first: misrepresentation and libel.

Re:The wrong issue

[wiredlogic]

Don't forget the hamsters and duct tape. A good Gere job never fails to tarnish one's rep.

Re:The wrong issue

[phantomfive]

Such things only happen when what you say is extremely bad, extremely hidden (at least to the people who think they've hidden it), and extremely true.

Re:The wrong issue

[brkello]

So when you spell it wrong, our spelling system is "retarded". How do you feel when other people don't know the difference between loose and lose. Yeah, some of our spelling is strange, but just learn and spell it right next time. Here, I will help you remember...my pal is the principal.

Re:The wrong issue

[bogjobber]

As principal of a public school, he is a public figure. As such his actions outside the hours of employment can very justifiably be considered in appraising his job. What he did was probably illegal, and at the very least showed a poor grasp of ethics. I believe that is an important thing to consider, and the school board would be justified in firing him over the matter.

Re:The wrong issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow it reminds me of North Korea, not sure why - O now I remember they kill your family if your not politically correct.
Premise:
North Korea holds your family hostage
North Korea is a Communist country without any civil (or other) rights
Coalinga also holds your family hostage

Conclusion:
Coalinga is a Communist infested small village in middle of f... nowhere.

Re:The wrong issue

[ChefInnocent]

I'm not the one who misspelled principal. The retarded bit for our spelling system is that we have homophones. Loose and Lose are not really homophones, but indeed it does show another aspect of the problems with our written language.

Re:The wrong issue

[omnichad]

I don't understand why this is about copyright. Identity theft and fraud are much worse crimes, aren't they?

Re:The wrong issue

[turbidostato]

"Opening your mouth too much isn't against the law. /.ers should know this."

Who told about law? Not me. Opening your mounth too much maybe is not illegal but it is non-compatible with being school principal.

"SHE HAD ALREADY GRADUATED!!!"

HE STILL WAS SCHOOL PRINCIPAL!!!

"I see nothing that he did that would render him any less capable of performing duties as a principal."

Luckily you won't be choosing principal for my son's school anytime soon.

Tell her to file a suit

[NotBornYesterday]

in this judge's court. while you're at it, ask him again if the newspapers are the ones who need protection.

Re:Tell her to file a suit

[langelgjm]

Well, since Posner is an appeals court judge, she'd first have to file suit in his circuit, which may or may not even be possible. Then her case would have to be appealed up to his level.

Re:Tell her to file a suit

[NotBornYesterday]

Good point. I missed that.

Re:IANAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright is automatically granted upon creation of any work , in this case writing. Declaring copyright isn't even necessary anymore.

Re:IANAL

[NotBornYesterday]

IANAL either, but yesterday it was asserted that there is implicit copyright to any published material.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

TL;DR

[vivaoporto]

Can anyone summarize the summary?

Re:TL;DR

[__aaclcg7560]

Websites stealing from newspapers, not news. Newspaper stealing from little girl's Myspace page, hot news.

Re:TL;DR

[Sponge Bath]

Creepy high school principal roots around former female student's MySpace page.
Hick town turns vengeful against family of student.

Re:TL;DR

[shabble]

Student posts flame about hometown on MySpace, subsequently removes it.

Ex-princicple saw it while it was up, posted it to local rag with her name and address attached.

She gets threats, her father has to close his business.

Laywers, when asked identical questions, disagree on certain aspects of copyright and agree on others when using copyright as a possible way of getting money out of the local rag.

Re:TL;DR

[Greyfox]

In a nutshell he's saying Copyright law needs further clarification.

Some years ago someone I was reading mentioned that you should always put an explicit copyright notice on your resume if you put it on the internet. Apparently unethical recruiting agencies will troll the internet for resumes and submit them to all their clients. This is a problem if you're trying to apply to a company your resume has been sent to, as company rules usually forbid directly hiring anyone who has already been submitted through an agency. I have found this to be excellent advice and have noticed that since I started doing this, agencies are very careful to get my permission prior to sending my resume to a client. Perhaps a copyright notice on the post in question would have prevented this from happening.

Re:TL;DR

[Joe Snipe]

Great, now we're back to TL;DR!

Re:TL;DR

[MozeeToby]

I love jokes that are as insightful as they are funny. I'm surprised no one has pointed it out yet, but I was always told the rule was "don't post anything to a website you wouldn't mind showing up in the local paper". Seems appropriate in this case.

This is a tricky situation to me; while the newspaper obviously has some pretty extreme ethics problems, it's hard for me to argue that they don't have the right to report on what she said. But then, they passed off what she had said as a letter to the editor, which it most surely is not. I would understand their behavior better if they had published it as an editorial, even if they reproduced it in it's entirety. Basically, I feel that claiming it as a letter to the editor makes it seem like the girl went out of her way to insult the people of the town, posting it somewhere else would have gone a long way towards making it clear that it was just a random Internet rant.

I would think that suing for harassment would be a better way to go if she were really interested in pursuing it. Also, question for the armchair lawyers out there, can you sue someone for libel for taking your own words out of context? Not sure if it would apply here, but to me taking an informal My Space rant and passing it off as a formal letter to the editor should qualify.

Re:TL;DR

[jvkjvk]

This is a tricky situation to me; while the newspaper obviously has some pretty extreme ethics problems, it's hard for me to argue that they don't have the right to report on what she said.

Is "report on what she wrote" the same thing as "reprint what she wrote"?

That seems to be the crux of the copyright issue in this case.

I would understand their behavior better if they had published it as an editorial, even if they reproduced it in it's entirety.

And still, it would be wrong. You cannot distribute someone else's copyrighted work without their permission. You cannot reprint someone else's words even as an "editorial" without their permission.

I'm sure that every newspaper editor will feel the same way - just try reprinting one of their editorials and see how far you get.

Otherwise, I'm going to start "reporting" or "editoralizing" on first-run movies by having the whole movie online.

Regards.

Re:TL;DR

[cdrguru]

I would think a far bigger problem would be some helpful soul finding your resume and submitting it to the company where you are now working. Putting a resume out on the Internet today is a license for anyone to abuse it in any way possible. And the possibilities are endless.

Re:TL;DR

[Jafafa Hots]

When I have written letters to the editor of my local paper, they have called me and verified that I did indeed write it and that I give permission for them to print it.

Sounds like this girl is right - town full of assholes. Asshole principal, asshole newspaper editor, asshole citizenry.

Re:TL;DR

[DRJlaw]

Reporter seems surprised that there is a diversity in the accuracy/quality of legal opinions. The reporter then waxes philosophical about the nature of law based on the lack of consensus from lawyers.

I'm an attorney in the U.S. This is a "common law" perspective. If the U.S. were a civil law jurisdiction, only the dispute resolution part would apply... probably.

If there have been hundreds of cases like yours, you can give your client an 'accurate' assessment of the law, an estimated likelihood of success, and your job is essentially to present the facts as persuasively as possible in order to achieve that success. Sometimes you'll be on the side that's more or less right, sometimes you really can't tell, and sometimes you're on the side that's more or less wrong but your client wants to fight it out. In this situation, you're primarily an advisor in a dispute resolution process and you must, mostly, follow your client's wishes.

If there have only been a few, or no, cases like yours, you must give your client an estimate of the law, and your job is to craft arguments for why the law should work that way, or in a more preferred way, in addition to your advisory role. 'Accuracy' only exists in hindsight, because the law (an interpretation settled by precedent) does not exist yet. The trial judge makes it, or the appellate judge remakes it, or the highest justices in the state/country make it, as they attempt to apply the preexisting precepts to the new situation.

In this instance, the 'accuracy' problem does not relate to a question concerning law: whether consequential damages are available under a copyright infringement claim (as opposed to tort claims for false light and the like). The reporter pretty much got a "no," with the tort claims being a better way to get those sorts of damages. I agree, and I might turn out to be wrong (I may already be wrong -- I'm not willing to research the issue at the moment).

The 'accuracy' problem instead relates to an interpretation of facts: will the decider (likely a jury) like my side better than the other side concerning fair use. The reporter suggests that there's no accuracy after distilling it down to a yes/no, when in reality there's there's a probably yes, two maybe yesses, a maybe no, and two probably nos (one might be a definite no, but the reporter only quotes one sentence of what was likely a longer answer). And the range of opinion on these comments is the same: some say she brought it on herself, and the treatment of the family sucks but that's the town's fault, others say the principal and editor were out of line and deserve the pike. The "average" is virtually a coin toss, and almost everyone is hedging.

So, should accuracy here be measured against a hypothetical jury, a statistical jury, an actual jury, or something else? The hypothetical jury is the one the lawyer imagines off the cuff, the statistical jury is the one the lawyer deals with when researching damages or hiring a jury consultant (tough if there aren't a lot of other cases like yours), and the actual jury is what you'll get regardless of what you thought the former two were. Only the actual jury awards the money. Pick 6-12 people, lock them in a room until they agree (if you haven't been on a jury, you're not qualified to say how things should work in the room), and *voila*. Did you guess it? Were you accurate? If you redid it 10 times, was this result unlikely? Should that count against accuracy?

I think that the reporter is seeking far more certainty than he has any right to expect. He's not asking about what the law is, he's asking about what the decision will be. His experts have tried to accommodate that, but the reality is a group of lay people will be taught the same four factors that you've read, told the story, and then make up their own minds. What factor is more important, what factor is less, and what story resonates more with their sense of fairness is on occasion estimable, but certainly not knowable.

Re:TL;DR

[Anonymous Coward]

Dancing no longer allowed within town limits.

Re:TL;DR

[Pollardito]

And still, it would be wrong. You cannot distribute someone else's copyrighted work without their permission. You cannot reprint someone else's words even as an "editorial" without their permission.

It seems like newspapers are primarily in the business of printing quotes from various people, and I imagine that about half of those are gathered without the permission of the speakers (they verify that the quote is accurate, not that the speaker wants them to print it). Do you think that the newspaper has to go to a politician and ask him for permission everytime they want to print or reprint some silly statement that they made that they realize immediately afterwards they shouldn't have said? Don't you think that they'd love to be able to say "I know I said that, but no you can't print it"?

What they did was ethically wrong, that much is clear. But since they didn't claim credit for her work or rob her of material gain from the work, what does this have to do with copyright?

Re:TL;DR

[PsychoSlashDot]

Creepy high school principal roots around former female student's MySpace page.
Hick town turns vengeful against family of student.

She's a former female? Is this sort of like that SORBS guy^H^Hal?

Re:TL;DR

[moortak]

Copyright requires a fixed medium. A politician's words are anything but that.

What about MySpace TOS?

[heritage727]

The first question that occurred to me is whether she even has rights to the piece. If MySpace has one of those all-your-rights-are-belong-to-us TOS, she might not be in a position to bring a copyright claim at all.

Re:What about MySpace TOS?

[maxume]

6. Proprietary Rights in Content on MySpace.com.

1. MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose. By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content solely on and through the MySpace Services.

from:

http://www1.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.terms

So it sounds like she probably retains the copyright.

Re:What about MySpace TOS?

[ericrost]

I had the same thought, but surprisingly no. I think its mainly because MySpace is for shitty local bands to publicize music. That would be wholly incompatible with a non-Web2.0 friendly ToS.

http://www1.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.terms

Re:What about MySpace TOS?

[Z_A_Commando]

I agree. However, the article says that this happened in 2005. Does anyone have any idea what the MySpace TOS said back then? Doubtful they were much different, but they could be. Just look at Facebook.

Re:What about MySpace TOS?

[maxume]

No need to speculate:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050106060250/http://www.myspace.com/misc/terms.html

(More at:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.myspace.com/misc/terms.html)

The pertinent section seems to be as follows:

c. By posting Content on any public area of MySpace.com, you automatically grant as well as represent and warrant that you have the right to grant to MySpace.com, an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute such information and content to MySpace.com and that MySpace.com has the right to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

So a little more generous to MySpace, but the important parts are that it is non-exclusive (so she retains rights) and that MySpace can grant a license (but I doubt the newspaper obtained one from them). The changes later in the year seem to take away stuff about derivative works, so if it happened after that, even less of a chance of the newspaper having permission.

Re:What about MySpace TOS?

[Insanity Defense]

The first question that occurred to me is whether she even has rights to the piece. If MySpace has one of those all-your-rights-are-belong-to-us TOS, she might not be in a position to bring a copyright claim at all.

Obligatory IANAL.

My understanding is that copyright has to be explicitly transferred in the U.S. by a document meeting certain standards. I doubt that an online TOS that varies over time would serve as such a document.

Re:What about MySpace TOS?

[__aasqbs9791]

And that brings up a point I had about this section:

"The nature of the copyrighted work as a temporarily published work that the girl choose to pull off of her MySpace page. She has the right to remove her writings from her MySpace page and no one has the right to continue to distribute those writings in their entirety without her consent. So, number 2 is her favor (really, issue number two looks more at non-published vs. published, with non-published being afforded more protection)."

If that were true, wouldn't archive.org be guilty of truly massive copyright infringement? That's one of the reasons I disagreed with this small section, anyways. Though I liked the general idea of the article, even if it is a "duh" sort of topic. Who is surprised that a bunch of people who like to (and get paid to) debate the meaning of words in a technical way disagree on a topic?

Re:What about MySpace TOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

This section from the TOS should be all the ammo you need (emphasis added):

4. The MySpace Services contain Content of Users and other MySpace.com licensors. Except for Content posted by you, you may not copy, modify, translate, publish, broadcast, transmit, distribute, perform, display, or sell any Content appearing on or through the MySpace. Services.

Re:What about MySpace TOS?

[codex24]

By ["posting"] any Content on or through the MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com a limited license to use, [...] and distribute such Content solely on and through the MySpace Services.

(above emphasis is mine) While the young lady retains her copyright to the content, it would seem that the newspaper may have violated MySpace's exclusive license to "use" that content. She might have a much more effective defense by siccing MySpace's layers on the paper than in attempting to defend her ownership rights to material she published.

Re:What about MySpace TOS?

[maxume]

There is nothing that makes the license granted to MySpace exclusive. The "solely on and through MySpace Services" is a limitation that is placed on MySpace, not on the creators use of content that is posted to MySpace.

As is pointed out in another reply, the TOS were different in 2005 than they are now, but as I pointed out in my response to that reply, not in a way that effects who has rights to the content (except MySpace may have had rights to use the work in a derivative work if it was posted in the first half of 2005). So MySpace probably doesn't have any sort of claim here.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Baseball bat, newspaper editor, knee.........problem solved.

Re:No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Baseball bat, principal, head.........problem solved.

FTFY

Re:No problem

[wordsnyc]

I would suggest:

1) Web page explaining what happened and collecting donations to hire a private investigator.

2) Put Principal & his editor-buddy under a microscope.

3) Post results.

Re:IANAL

[CowboyBob500]

In the UK I have automatic copyright over everything and anything I write. I don't have to register anything, it doesn't matter if its public or private. There is no fair use law here so they couldn't use that excuse either. If anyone did this in the UK, they would have their asses sued off and they would lose. It's much more black and white here I think. And a good thing that is too from the looks of things.

Legal Insurance

[kabloom]

Could you share more information about this cheapo legal insurance plan, or others like it?

Re:Legal Insurance

[Lumpy]

I know that the internet is incredibly difficult to use, but there is this incredibly complex and secret thing called a "search engine" the most popular one is called "google" and it can give you what you are looking for.

It is insanely difficult to use, I gathered several PHd's together and they found what you are looking for. It cost me millions but I love to help the helpless...

http://tinyurl.com/n8499y -- here is what you need. No need to thank me, it's my secret super power.

Now I'm off to help a Nebraska woman not insert her curling iron into an orifice.

Is simple

[TheDarkMaster]

if (you == RIAA) {
throw COPY_VIOLATION;
} else {
throw NOBODY_CARES;
}

Re:Is simple

[ScentCone]

if (you == RIAA) {
throw COPY_VIOLATION;
} else {
throw NOBODY_CARES;

Not really. If you are in the business of being a recording studio, the copyrighted material that you and the artists with which you work produce has a very real, commercial value to it. If you RTFA/S you'll see that some of the legal vagueness on this one surrounds the fact that her MySpace rant wasn't published in any sort of commercial context. It's just her, ranting. That doesn't have anything to do with whether or not she owns the copyright, but it has a lot to do with what's at stake when someone infringes on those copyrights. So, people who don't feel like meeting the price an artist is asking for the work they're selling, and simply rip it off, instead, are - correctly - the targets of a different sort of attention, legally. They're ripping someone off to avoid having to pay what the seller is asking. The MySpace rant wasn't for sale, and she doesn't earn her income through publishing her writings. That's an important consideration in arriving at a sense of what's at stake in the infringement.

The real issue is whether or not the newspaper knew they were misrepresenting the provenance of the "letter." The school principal sounds like a first rate asshat. Being buddies with the newspaper editor, it sounds unlikely that the "letter" made it into the Dear Editors area without it being well understood that it was a hatchet job. So, principal and editor are sleazy jerks. Fair enough, and this does strike me as a case of infringment, and other things besides. But the damages from the infringment aren't in the form of chipping away at what the rant author does for a living. And that's what's different, in this case, compared to a million kids buying themselves another Grande Iced Skim Half-Caffe Lattecino with the few bucks they saved by systematically ripping off the music of their favorite artists instead of paying a couple of bucks for it.

Re:Is simple

[saddino]

if (you == BALLMER)
throw CHAIR;

Re:Is simple

[DriedClexler]

If you RTFA/S you'll see that some of the legal vagueness on this one surrounds the fact that her MySpace rant wasn't published in any sort of commercial context. It's just her, ranting. That doesn't have anything to do with whether or not she owns the copyright, but it has a lot to do with what's at stake when someone infringes on those copyrights. So, people who don't feel like meeting the price an artist is asking for the work they're selling, and simply rip it off, instead, are - correctly - the targets of a different sort of attention, legally. They're ripping someone off to avoid having to pay what the seller is asking. The MySpace rant wasn't for sale, and she doesn't earn her income through publishing her writings. That's an important consideration in arriving at a sense of what's at stake in the infringement.

Well, obviously the newspaper considered the MySpace rant to have commercial value, since they added it to a commercial product that they did sell. The girl did not want them to publish it (and had legal rights to stop them), while the newspaper, as part of a business, did want to publish it. This establishes commercial value of her work.

But I guess she isn't an "official" artist, so it doesn't count.

Re:Is simple

[ScentCone]

The girl did not want them to publish it (and had legal rights to stop them), while the newspaper, as part of a business, did want to publish it.

No, they did this without her knowledge. They didn't say, "We're planning on taking your rant, and running it as a pretend letter to the editor that we'll say you wrote to us, and we're just telling about that little bit of fraud on our part in case you want to hire a lawyer or anything." If anything, they grabbed it and falsely ran it a a letter to the editor specifically so that they wouldn't have to whittle it down into a fair-use excerpt and provide some sort of proper, actual-journalism context so that readers of the paper could understand how it came to be printed. Her wishes had nothing to do with it. Her principal found it online (while trolling her MySpace page, which is fascinating all by itself), and then when to his friend the newspaper editor and arranged to have her MySpace post run as if it were a letter that the girl had sent to the paper.

Can you not see the difference, here?

Slashdot Trolling New Lows +1, True

[Anonymous Coward]

With Myspace news. What's next, a discussion about the
the future of Michael Jackson's estate?

The comments on ALL of your stories is hitting new lows.

Good luck in Chapter 7.

Yours In Communism,
Kilgore Trout

Is that so?

[Stumbles]

Now if I understand what this guy was told by the lawyers is correct, and let me summarize my understanding based on what we have been told in the article. You create something and you automatically own the copyright, BUT you don't really own them until you plop down 35 bucks? Hmm. Well then. That sounds like to me that every newspaper, magazine, booklet, etc, etc for every article they publish they have to cough up 35 bucks for each and every one? That doesn't hardly sound right to me.

Re:Is that so?

[maxume]

Most newspapers and magazines are engaged in the business of generating newspapers and magazines, not litigation. They just need to pay the fee when they decide to pursue a copyright claim, like you and I.

Re:Is that so?

[Ares]

newspapers and magazines register under the principle of group registration and the fee for the group is 70 bucks.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

How often do lawyers really say...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm sure that I'm right about this, because I'm a lawyer?"

Any decent lawyer knows that unsettled areas of the law are, by definition, unsettled. Cases can end up in court because the facts are in dispute, but they can also end up in court because the law is not clear with regards to the situation.

The most common answer you get from a lawyer are the words: "it depends." An undisclosed fact, a pertinent case not considered, or the whims of a judge and jury can all affect how a case would play out if tried.

A lawyer saying "I'm right, because I'm a lawyer" would be like a programmer saying "this program is bug free, because I'm a programmer." It just doesn't (or at least shouldn't) happen that often.

Re:How often do lawyers really say...

[tgd]

A lawyer saying "I'm right, because I'm a lawyer" would be like a programmer saying "this program is bug free, because I'm a programmer." It just doesn't (or at least shouldn't) happen that often.

What? I've used that line twice already today... (and ironically, just as I was about to hit send I got a build break alert pop up... nevermind!)

Re:How often do lawyers really say...

[Jafafa Hots]

"programmer saying "this program is bug free, because I'm a programmer." It just doesn't (or at least shouldn't) happen that often"

Well in this case I disagree - it doesn't but SHOULD happen more often.

What's wrong with this town?

[residieu]

Some kid writes a letter with the standard "this town sucks" theme, and people boycott her parent's business? What's wrong with these people? I bet half the teenagers and college-aged kids in that town agree that Coalinga sucks. Just like all the kids in every other small town think their home town sucks. Give them a few years after they move out of town and they'll realize the city sucks too.

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[frank_adrian314159]

Actually, I think that the people of Coalinga have, by their actions, proved incontrovertibly that Coalinga sucks.

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give them a few years after they move out of town and they'll realize the city sucks too.

Then they move to another city, and decide the new city sucks too. Repeat ad nauseum until one day they realize in a face-palm moment that the only common thing among all those cities that sucked was -- them! Sad...

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[JoeMerchant]

The whole problem is the forum in which the rant was "posted." Letters to the editor reach a particular segment of society, far different from the segment that typically kvetches on MySpace, seeing those opinions in black and white on their breakfast table apparently moved some codgers to action, yeah they're misguided idiots, but this isn't the first or last time a crusade has been/will be launched over ridiculous inflation of casual statements.

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[wjousts]

What's wrong with these people? I bet half the teenagers and college-aged kids in that town agree that Coalinga sucks.

Not only that, but now half of everybody on the internet thinks Coalinga is a backwards shit-hole. Nice work Coalinga!

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[RomulusNR]

It's every small town and suburb in America, that's what's wrong with it. Insular, conservative, hyper-proud, self-important, sluggish, anti-growth, closed-minded, conceited, and delusional.

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[cortesoft]

Coalinga is a shithole... literally... it is in California on I-5 between northern california and southern california.. and it is completely filled with cows..and smells like shit.. whenever I see the sign for Coalinga i know to roll up my windows and turn the AC on inside only.

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[fermion]

It is a town, of people. People are not rational. Even we are people. Do we hang out with people that dislike us. Do we shop at stores that are not advertising to our norms. I am hones enough to admit that there are stores I do not frequent simply because they are not my 'type of stores'.

The real issue is that everything that is published on the internet is considered fair game. It was a only a few stories back where we were getting in an uproar because a reasonable judge said, maybe summarizing an article with a link might be a violation of copyright. Would the newspaper have been in the clear if they had summarized the post with a link to the full post, even if the same damage was caused? What if the newspaper made a material error in the summary? The linking issue is the same. Many people who post what is essentially public content want to control where that material is published or linked from.

This is another expensive lesson that one should be careful what one posts to the internet in a personally identifiable manner. The lawsuit here is not relevant. Even if the newspaper was sued, it is unlikely that the lawsuit would bring any significant money. It was unethical for the newspaper to publish a letter not sent by the original author, although it is unclear that they did not know it was not sent by the original author. Kids sometimes do unwise things, and it sometimes have disastrous effects on the family. Adults should help kids minimize these mistakes, but some kids are hard headed. The appropriate person to bear the burden of the kid's mistake is the parents, not the bystanders.

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[russotto]

The real issue is that everything that is published on the internet is considered fair game. It was a only a few stories back where we were getting in an uproar because a reasonable judge said, maybe summarizing an article with a link might be a violation of copyright. Would the newspaper have been in the clear if they had summarized the post with a link to the full post, even if the same damage was caused?

Posner wasn't reasonable when he came up with that idea. And yes, IMO, if the newspaper had simply summarized the post with a link to the myspace page, they'd have been in the clear. Not just on copyright violation (which probably happened, but the damages for copyright violation aren't set up for this kind of thing), but on the various other possible claims people have brought up. There's an enormous difference between an article "Resident's Daughter Disses Town on Myspace" and "Dear Editor, Town Sucks, signed, Resident's Daughter".

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[sponglish]

Interesting summation! Considering that every megalopolis starts out as a small town, obviously there's a sliding scale in which your insular, conservative, self-important, close-minded, conceited, and delusional small town stops being insular and becomes liberal and self-loathing. The close-minded, conceited, and delusional aspects don't change.

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[mathx314]

Well. At least we're not jumping to conclusions.

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[RealGrouchy]

The whole problem is the forum in which the rant was "posted."

Not so. She published it online, and Slashdotters know there's no such thing as 'un-publishing' something online. The fact that she did so, even though she removed it from her MySpace, happened, and you can't dispute that.

It would have been perfectly acceptable, IMO, for the newspaper to print a news story (not a letter to the editor) saying that she said these things, and printing some or all of the post. That would even get them a stronger "fair use" defense since it's criticism/commentary.

Compare this to the Michael Richards example. He can't un-call people the n-word, no matter how much apologizing he may have done, and the fact that he said it in a comedy club doesn't mean it isn't relevant to people who weren't there.

The only things wrong here were that the newspaper misrepresented the girl (by falsely publishing it as a letter to the paper), and that the publisher doesn't review his paper before releasing them (ours did when I was on the board of my university's student paper).

- RG>

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[Lunzo]

this isn't the first or last time a crusade has been/will be launched over ridiculous inflation of casual statements.

I believe it was when Saladin's rant about how he hates Rome that got printed without his permission in "Civic Vatican Suckium" that launched the 1st Crusade.

Re:What's wrong with this town?

[JoeMerchant]

There is still a difference between attending a meeting where everyone wears sheets on their heads and saying the 'N' word and attending a MLK rally and shouting it on a bull-horn. Even if someone at the sheet-head meeting videotapes you and replays it at the MLK rally with your name as a caption, the impact is different, especially if you have not given permission for the re-broadcast - which is where copyright was attempted to be inserted in this issue.

Unfortunately, copyright is a simple concept that is simply broken, it needs to be more complex to attain the goals it was set out to accomplish hundreds of years ago. Mostly, society needs to get over the idea that anyone can write a novel like Stephen King and have $1 per copy made deposited into their bank account until they die - it doesn't happen like that today, never did, and never will, but that's the concept that people are holding dearly to.

Identity theft?

[MiniMike]

Maybe she would have some luck trying to tack on a charge of identity theft, for the principal submitting the 'editorial' using her name? It seems increasingly easy to throw that type of charge at someone these days. Or maybe some type of fraud? If the statute of limitations hasn't run out. Of course, IANAL. I hope at the least the school board reviewed the actions of the principal.

Re:Identity theft?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Maybe she would have some luck trying to tack on a charge of identity theft, for the principal submitting the 'editorial' using her name? It seems increasingly easy to throw that type of charge at someone these days.
Or maybe some type of fraud? If the statute of limitations hasn't run out. Of course, IANAL. I hope at the least the school board reviewed the actions of the principal.

Can a person be tried twice for the same physical act, when the two trials are for violations of different laws?

Re:Identity theft?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Yes.

See the Rodney King verdicts for an example.

Re:IANAL

[Anonymous Coward]

She does have a copyright to her own words. From the editorial:
----
There was some inconsistency in the answers here, but the consensus seems to be: You own the copyright on something as soon as you create it, but you can't file a copyright lawsuit until after you've registered your work.
----

So the issue would not be that she doesn't have a copyright, but that she didn't register her copyright and that may limit the damages she can claim.

(Of course the whole point of this article is that everything is "may", "might" and "could be".)

Re:IANAL

[JamesBarger]

It appears the consensus is that the girl's original work was protected by copyright. As explained above, one can still win a claim of copyright violation without registering the work prior to the violation. The act of registration is not required in order to establish or create the copyright. Rather, the copyright inheres in the work when it is created. (Of course, it's worth remembering that while this reporter is writing mainly about copyright violations, there may be other causes of action that would make for a stronger case, if the girl chooses to pursue them.)

Easy Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an easy answer to this question:

If she's trying to retain you as an Attorney, then certainly she should be able to sue them.

If the newspaper's trying to retain you as an Attorney, then obviously she's way out of line and not covered by copyright on her material.

The newspaper did sell copies, yes?

[mr_mischief]

She is therefore, in my mind, entitled to the revenues generated -- some or all -- from the unlawful distribution of her work. It can't be lawful distribution, because it was a reprint of something already copied without permission by the person who submitted it to the paper, who was not reporting news or making commentary.

IANAL, but it seems fairly clear to me that damages include not compensating her for printing her work in whole (in order to sell papers) without her permission. I'd say she's owed something on those grounds.

Re:The newspaper did sell copies, yes?

[mounthood]

IANAL, but it seems fairly clear to me that damages include not compensating her for printing her work in whole (in order to sell papers) without her permission. I'd say she's owed something on those grounds.

If Google indexes the newspaper article and/or includes it in their "Google News" pages, the newspaper would definitely say that Google is making a profit and they owe the newspaper money for using "their" content. Of course, pointing out the hypocrisy of big media is just shooting fish in a barrel.

Re:The newspaper did sell copies, yes?

[mr_mischief]

Indexing it and linking to the newspaper's own site where the newspaper makes money on the ads is not the same as taking the whole article and putting it on Google's site with Google's ads. This newspaper published her whole work without her permission, and did not send her any revenue or any readers.

Re:The newspaper did sell copies, yes?

[jonaskoelker]

She is therefore, in my mind, entitled to the revenues generated -- some or all -- from the unlawful distribution of her work.

Which amounts to $80,000 per copy of the newspaper, right? ;-)

Re:The newspaper did sell copies, yes?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL..
You funny man you...

The *gross* revenue would be about $10000 with generous estimates. A newspaper (Coalinga Record) in a place like that hicktown would be lucky to sell 6000 papers at $0.50 per pop, and I have a hard time believing they would make 100% in ad revenue for the day.

Do you realize what kind of shitbag place we're talking about?

This is the paper's website:

http://www.coalingarecord.com/

Re:The newspaper did sell copies, yes?

[mr_mischief]

$10,000 goes a long way toward starting over if you've just lost your entire business. It at least pays the movers and a couple months worth of living expenses.

Re:Slashdot Trolling New Lows +1, True

[Antidamage]

The original Kilgore Trout can actually string a sentence together without failing like you did.

Hmm.

[apodyopsis]

more info

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202429677896

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/court-your-myspace-page-isnt-private.ars

And the court summary..

http://fsnews.findlaw.com/cases/ca/caapp4th/slip/2009/f054138.html

Interesting, I did not know of this. In the UK I think she would of had more success with the courts.

In any case it is common sense to watch what you post online. Once you click that mouse its gone, and you can never be sure that you can retract or recover.

Re:Hmm.

[uofitorn]

In any case it is common sense to watch what you post online.

I have a webcam pointed at my monitor just for this purpose.

Re:Hmm.

[joebagodonuts]

The definition of Common Sense changes, depending on your age. Teens do things all the time that adults find foolish.

Court Rules MySpace Posts Aren't Private

[Anonymous Coward]

Following a visit to her hometown of Coalinga California in 2005, Cynthia Moreno wrote "An ode to Coalinga," and posted it in her MySpace page. The Ode opened with "the older I get, the more I realize how much I despise Coalinga" and made a number of negative comments about Coalinga and its inhabitants. The entry was posted for six days before Moreno removed it but that was long enough for the principal of Coalinga High School to find the ode and forward it to Pamela Pond, editor of the Coalinga Record, who published it in the newspaper's letters section. Local reaction was swift. Moreno's parents say they received death threats, a gun shot was fired at their home and her father's 20-year-old business lost so much money that it was closed and the family moved out of town. Moreno and her family responded by suing for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Now a Fresno based appellate court says Moreno had no grounds for her claim of invasion of privacy even if she meant her thoughts for a limited audience. "Cynthia's affirmative act made her article available to any person with a computer and, thus, opened it to the public eye," wrote Justice Levy. However, the claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress was not dismissed and a jury will get to decide if the defendants' conduct was extreme and outrageous. In the meantime the editor who republished the essay has been fired and lawyer Eric Goldman, Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law, wonders "if the violent and ostracizing community response to Moreno's post didn't in fact validate some of her critiques."

Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

"One of Coalingaâ(TM)s longest traditions is the Annual Horned Toad Derby"

I'm with the girl. I hate Coalinga too, despite never having been there.

Re:Law is bullshit

[e9th]

It would help if people could agree on the postulates. The Constitution? What does the 2nd amendment really say? It depends on you point of view. The commerce clause? And so on.

Re:Law is bullshit

[fahrbot-bot]

I'm a computer-engineer-turned-patent-attorney.

I wonder how often this happens. I have a friend in CA who went the same route (is that you Dan?) though I hear he likes Grey Goose, not Absolut :-)

I too ANAL

[arizwebfoot]

Seems to be she would be barred from another law suit since she already litigated the issue. At the time of the initial litigation, you are supposed to bring all the issues at the same time, not piece meal.

However, this is a case for Super NYCL to weigh in.

Re:I too ANAL

[tinkerghost]

Seems to be she would be barred from another law suit since she already litigated the issue. At the time of the initial litigation, you are supposed to bring all the issues at the same time, not piece meal.

Copyright would go to Federal not Local jurisdiction. It's the same game the Feds get away with when a high profile local case gets lost & they pull out the "Civil Rights Violations" hammer.

Fundamentally censorship

[Pinckney]

The intent is basically censorship. The author wishes the material had never come to light, and wishes to punish the individuals who brought it to light. The proposed lawsuit for damages is basically an abuse of copyright law. Copyright is a limited monopoly granted to allow the author to benefit from the distribution of their work. It is not intended to allow them to suppress material.

Re:Fundamentally censorship

[mr_mischief]

Who is benefiting from the work? Isn't the newspaper selling copies of its papers? Don't you think this work of the girl's sold more copies? If the newspaper benefits from making copies of her work and has no rights to do so, then her copyright has been violated, hasn't it?

Re:Fundamentally censorship

[Insanity Defense]

It is not intended to allow them to suppress material.

So what happens when a copyright owner does not publish their work and does not allow anyone else to do so? Do they lose the copyright? It amounts to suppressing it if they won't either distribute it or allow distribution by others.

Re:IANAL

[TheCycoONE]

Does this mean you have to contact the author of every work you quote in an essay?

You do end up sharing some of those rights, though

[Animaether]

e.g. YouTube. Ever see the news take YouTube videos, or even those 'funny video' programs with YouTube videos throughout the things?

Ever wondered "hold on.. are they paying these youtube uploaders for the right to use them in their money-generating program?" ?

Well, read the TOS, and quit wondering. You grant YouTube (google) a non-exclusive right to redistribute as they see fit, and that includes deals with big organisations that deal with broadcast (TV) material.

There's probably no real copyright breach here... I agree with posters up above that the newspaper might have been in the wrong (I don't know the -whole- story; if the teacher sent it in, but quoted the post, it's still a letter to the editor.. although the original author did not write the letter an sich, etc.), but there's probably no recourse on account of 'copyright'.

Even if there were, though, aren't we supposed to yell something about information wanting to be free (as in speech AND beer) here?

Re:Law is bullshit

[goffster]

Law is a simply a different discipline that takes skills other than brute
force intellect. It takes creativity, reading comprehension, and lots
of legwork.

don't sue, bill

[doug]

She shouldn't bother suing because her myspace page is public. But the newspaper was able to fill its pages because of her work, and that means that they profited due to her actions. That says to me that she should bill them. I don't know how much reporters get paid per column inch, but that is what she should charge them. It won't be much, because reporters have to fill a lot of column inches to live well, but it is the best chance she has for getting something out of this.

Major power blocks in the US want people to pay for usage (think RIAA, MPAA, etc), and if that is the road we're going down, then every consumer who redistributes should pay. That newspaper redistributed her content, therefore she is entitled to payment. Anyone at the RIAA will swear to that on a stack of bibles.

- doug

Re:You get what you deserve

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit yourself. You don't have any idea why her dad's business failed... "it probably failed...et al" and this conjecture would come from where other than straight out your ass?

Shouldn't you be in some remedial summer school class about now?

Unfortunate

[lymond01]

This is people being mean. Most kids hate their small towns. Most people hate their small towns (until they reach a certain age, at which point they consider anyone younger than them "newcomers" and feel the town was better without them). To print a kid's rant in a newspaper is flat out spiteful, unprofessional, and certainly not very adult.

If a judge could rule in favor of the principal and newspaper being complete asses (which I firmly believe should be possible under the law, and if it's not, let's start a ballot proposition), he should do so, and have them publicly apologize in their own newspaper for being such.

What the hell with these people. I'm not even that old, but I'm wise enough to know that 95% of what a teenager says is emotion and not reason. Shrug it off, ESPECIALLY if it offends you, as that was likely the intent. They're teenagers!

Re:Unfortunate

[n30na]

As much as i'd like to make being an asshole illegal, something tells me it would backfire majorly. I mean, what if someone thinks i'm an asshole because i'm bisexual? Unless my impression of the average american's opinion is rather off, this would just end up getting misused in ideological crusades.

Re:Unfortunate

[lymond01]

True. Being an asshole is very subjective. I think most cases wouldn't make it in front of a jury (and shouldn't less the legality of being an asshole confuse people). I would say leave the asshole claims for judge-only presidings -- more of a People's Court venue rather than something where lawyers can double-speak.

Re:Unfortunate

[n30na]

That makes it a bit better, but the thought of maligned or corrupt judges is still scary.

Also, I wonder how you'd spell out 'asshole' in legalese.

Re:Unfortunate

[Anonymous Coward]

The judge agrees there is possibly a case against the Principal:

"Based on these allegations," Levy wrote, "we conclude that reasonable people may differ on whether Campbell's actions were extreme and outrageous. Accordingly, it is for a jury to make this determination."

Re:Unfortunate

[tnk1]

You're bisexual???

What an asshole!

Quick, call 911, before they are able to commit 1st degree Asshattery without a License!

Aren't newspapers dead???

[Anonymous Coward]

OK. Why are suddenly the rules different for newspapers. If he posted a link on the town web site, wouldn't the result have been the same?

Nevermind copyright...

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, but in addition to any criminal procedings over copyright, etc (libel? - lying about letter to editor) couldn't she also file a civil suit against the principal for the emotional distress and financial damages she and her family have incurred over his actions?

AFAIK the standard of proof for civil procedings is much lower than for criminal ones... She doesn't need to win a potentially complex copyright case for a judge to agree that she's anyways incurred damages through the deliberate actions of the principal.

Re:IANAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean you have to contact the author of every work you quote in an essay?

De minimis non curat lex.

the heart of most of the copyright problems

[drDugan]

given the nature of computers and the Internet, almost every action one takes makes a copy of digital content - making the "automatic copyright" at the heart of the current problems. copying is using, which makes all content created near useless without specific permission (fair use aside).

it seems to me, things would work a lot better if copyright had to be claimed, and it could be claimed by an easy and free method, digitally (eg submit a hash to a central registry, get a number, and post the number with the work) - and all other content was granted an automatic CC-BY or similar rights to the creator if they do nothing.

remain in place the system and penalties for infringement of claimed copyrights - but allow the rest of the world to create an open exchange of content and creative expression that encourages sharing and copying.

What other papers?

[Bryan Gividen]

The Wikipedia page for Coalinga, California (where I assume this is taking place) estimates the 2007 population at just over 18,000 people. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalinga,_California). It seems that the paper involved, the Hanford Sentinel, services all of King County (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_County,_California) which has a little over 150,000 people total. Granted, I am sure the LA Times or some other large circulation paper could condemn them, I doubt they cater to the same audience as those subscribing to a small-town oriented paper like the Sentinel.

Still, I agree with your point - people need to shun this circulation for its lack of journalistic integrity. Sadly, there aren't a lot of competitors (to my knowledge - someone have better knowledge?) to wag their finger at them.

Re:What other papers?

[unfasten]

...people need to shun this circulation for its lack of journalistic integrity.

Considering the response the girl and her family received from the town after the rant was posted, I don't think the people in Coalinga care. If anything, the paper was only reinforced in its decision since it caused such reactions.

The response of the residents reminds of the response in the myspace suicide fiasco and yet no one was even hurt in this instance. All she did was rant about how she hates the town.

It seems to me she was right to despise Coalinga.

Re:You get what you deserve

[LuvlyOvipositor]

Assume much?

For Profit Use

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about the arguement of the newspaper using it for Profit. Newspapers, TV stations, news organizations are for profit endeavors. They used her work for their profit.

I think she had every right to sue them for a share of those profits.

Re:For Profit Use

[Anonymous Coward]

The paper is guilty of criminal misrepresentation (actual crime) by claiming her work was a letter to the editor. Criminals are not allowed to profit from their crimes. So the paper should not be able to profit from their crime of theft/misrepresentation and she should be allowed to sue on that basis.

Re:IANAL

[Anonymous Coward]

No. There's exemptions for private study, incidental inclusion and for purpose of criticism or review (in the latter case, so long as the original work is cited).

Roger Campbell

[ProteusQ]

Would very much like to pay for a serious background check on this guy -- using public records, of course -- and see how he appreciates that info being posted on the net.

Re:Roger Campbell

[Trepidity]

You could a polite email to rcampbell@chusd.k12.ca.us indicating that you've heard things about his conduct as principal of Coalinga High School that you find concerning.

Re:IANAL

[NovaHorizon]

wow, I know reading the article is a sin.. but you didn't even read the summary..
 

Second, to bring a copyright claim at all, you first have to register your work with the Copyright Office by mailing it to them with a $35 fee. (There was some inconsistency in the answers here, but the consensus seems to be: You own the copyright on something as soon as you create it, but you can't file a copyright lawsuit until after you've registered your work. However, once you've registered, you can then go back and sue for copyright violations that took place before the registration date. If you register more than 90 days after the date of first publication, you can only sue for actual damages â" your monetary losses, or the infringer's ill-gotten gains â" for violations that took place before you registered the work. But if you register within 90 days of first publication, you can sue for statutory damages and attorney's fees, even for violations that took place before you registered.)

The real issue...

[azrider]

Her former high school principal found the rant while browsing her MySpace page (what?), and forwarded it to the town newspaper, which published the "rant" without the girl's permission, signed with her full name, as a letter to the editor (what?).

• It is not clear from the article whether or not her page was public.
• Even if it were public, without seeing the actual letter to the editor whether or not the principal wrote "I found this..." or whether the "letter to the editor" was portrayed as being submitted by the student.
• If the letter was submitted as the principal's opinion, then
  • He or she was wrong in identifying the student.
  • The paper was wrong in accepting the submission without obtaining consent from the student prior to publishing the content

In any case, there could be a good argument for damages (assuming a sympathetic jury), not from the abuse of copyright but from the assault on the family's privacy and business interests. However, this would be better if the suit came from the father (who lost his business) and/or the family as a whole (who suffered the consesquences), on the basis of slander (the MySpace entry portrayed the opinion of one as the sentiments of the entire group).

Re:The real issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was signed with her full name then surely the principal can be done for identity theft as he obviously copied her signature from somewhere.

Re:The real issue...

[tnk1]

I can see the point of misrepresentation, but in the end, she's a moron. I am certain that she probably did not want her post plastered on a billboard (or in the local newspaper), but she posted it on the Internet. It may never be seen... but when it *is* seen, you're not only fucked, but people will be telling stories about how fucked you are for years, possibly decades.

Of course, the principal is an asshole, and probably a pedophile as well (I just made that up), but he is less than 1/2 the problem here. Most of the problem is her, and her freaky former neighbors in that shit-ass town.

Ironically, it seems like she's right about her town, she only neglected to include herself in the fail.

Re:You do end up sharing some of those rights, tho

[mrchaotica]

Well, read the TOS, and quit wondering. You grant YouTube (google) a non-exclusive right to redistribute as they see fit, and that includes deals with big organisations that deal with broadcast (TV) material.

Yeah, but that's for YouTube, so it's irrelevant. The question is, what do you agree to in MySpace's TOS?

Besides, even if we did assume it was like YouTube's in that you grant YouTube (or analogously, MySpace) a right to redistribute, the redistribution in this case was done by a third party who never had that right anyway!

Troll

[Rasperin]

You know, this would be a fantastic way to troll someone.

Hopefully Not Too Redundant

[Bob9113]

In a rush, haven't read the full post or comments yet, but this is screaming in my head:

Normally the "damages" for unauthorized copying of a MySpace post would be so close to zero, that a moral victory in court is all you could get.

I don't think it's about "damages". Doesn't willful infringement for commercial gain carry extra penalties? Jammie got hit with $80k each for willful infringement not for commercial gain.

What am I missing?

Re:Hopefully Not Too Redundant

[radish]

My understanding from skimming the article is that damages can either be the money I lost because you copied my work, or the money you gained because you copied my work. In this case, it's hard to argue that the newspaper made much money from the act of copying (maybe they sold a few more papers?) and she certainly didn't actually lose anything - so the damages are low. In the RIAA case you mention, they claim that although the defendent didn't make any money from the infringment they lost $80k per song in missed royalties - hence high damages. As for the commercial aspect, my understanding (again, IANAL) is that the commercial intent aspect only really matters if you're trying to claim fair use as a defence.

Re:Hopefully Not Too Redundant

[DaveV1.0]

The paper did not commit willful infringement because it was deceived by the principal and friend.
Only the principal and his friend committed willful infringement, and that was not for commercial gain.

Re:Hopefully Not Too Redundant

[tinkerghost]

Only the principal and his friend committed willful infringement, and that was not for commercial gain.

The friend was the editor for the paper. That blurs the line between the paper & the friend. Had the friend been Bubbles in the mailroom, you might get away with that. As the editor, the friend was the newspapers agent & in a legal sense was the newspaper.

Who cares about copyright?

[Muros]

Should this teacher not be sued for identity theft?

Everything is protected...

[WebCowboy]

...but copyright is the wrong battle here I think.

But how can someone sue for a copyright violation when there was no copyright?

There is always a copyright. All works are protected by copyright law, including this very post and yours (yeah I quoted you...if you wanted you could sue me but your case for damages would be weak, but you still have that right).

You would've figured that out if you RTFA--and you didn't even need to follow a link to do it! But, this is /. and RTFA is just not done here unless you are weird I guess--especially if you are trying to be first post.

Anyways, there is a problem with using copyright as the legal weapon in this battle. Since you are too busy to RTFA, this is why:

1 the work is NON-registered. Without registering copyright in a timely manner you are limited to actual, direct monetary damages.
2 the "work" is a catty rant on myspace--little to no tangible worth to that being supply exceeds demand by a huge margin and nobody has to pay to see it.
3 do the math: 1 plus 2 equals you get nothing in court. Daddy lost his business? Sorry. not actual, direct damages to the creator. Denied.

A civil case based on "false light publication" is a better alternative I'd think, as briefly mentioned in the article. The principal acted in appalling fashion and should lose his job and be sued into oblivion. Sad how such an immature person of such weak moral character could be in a position of professional responsibility like that. Perhaps a symptom of low pay and inadequate respect for the job. The newspaper also did very shoddy work in publishing the letter without verifying the source. I mean...that seems like a very basic common sense thing to do. Intent was clearly malicious and meant to deceive. Strictly speaking if the principal should have prefaced the letter with something like "this is what one of my students thinks about this town" and as a professional kept the contributor anonymous...and disclosed that he/she was the contributor of the letter not the original author. Teachers always tell students to properly cite works not created by them...it is disgraceful that the principal would not set a proper example.

Additionally, criminal prosecution should be pursued against those making treats. Either this girl said something especially offensive or she is right about her town. People who would utter threats or work to destroy the livelihood of innocent family members not associated with the author's statements hardly deserve to be called human beings. But, I suppose the author herself might have been a nasty person herself...I can't make those judgements conclusively without knowing the whole story.

Re:Everything is protected...

[Anonymous Coward]

(yeah I quoted you...if you wanted you could sue me but your case for damages would be weak, but you still have that right).

Well, the OP might have the right to sue, but your use (and mine) is clearly fair use, and is widely practiced on this site, and across the internet. So it's beyond weak and into the non-existent.

Now if you took it off Slashdot, then that might be another matter.

And personally, I think the principal and the editor should be hanged in the street along with any of the people responsible for the threats. But then I think being an utter asshole like this should be a death penalty offense, as there's really no other deterrent available. Probably just me being a grouch though.

Re:Everything is protected...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why everyone, including the lawyers quoted in TFA, seems to take it for granted that this "catty rant" had negligible commercial value.
Clearly it DID have commercial value to the newspaper, or they wouldn't have published it. Even if that value was just filling a space on a page - that's a damn' difficult thing to do sometimes, on a small-time paper.
The paper could have paid for content to publish legally, but they chose instead to publish something for free, but without bothering to make sure they had the right to do so. They damn' well should have to pay on that basis - not only "what was its potential value to the rightful owner?", but also "what was its actual value to the violator?"

Re:Everything is protected...

[LandruBek]

There is always a copyright.

No, not for public domain works, such as anything deliberately placed into Public Domain, or anything old enough.

The problem is, the Berne Convention has conditioned everyone to believe that there is always a copyright. (sigh)

RTFA

[leuk_he]

The article points out however that to get "jamie thomas" kind of damages you will need registration. or else you can only go for actual damages (that are very hard too prove).

Re:RTFA

[__aasqbs9791]

Correction, you have to register within 90 days of publication to get those kind of damages. To sue at all you have to register.

Re:You get what you deserve

[Anonymous Coward]

You obivously haven't been to Coalinga, CA before, have you?

Home to Pleasant Valley State Penetiary, surrounded by hills and farmland of the Central Valley.

Also public information

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.coalingahighschool.org
750 Van Ness Avenue
Coalinga, CA 93210
Phone: (559) 935-7520
Fax: (559) 935-3571

Principal : Roger Campbell, rcampbell@chusd.k12.ca.us

Fraudulent.

[rickb928]

On the face of it, this is a fraudulent on the part of the paper:

- They published the item as if it were submitted by her, which it was not.

- They published the item as if they had permission to do so. It appears they did not.

- They published the item as if it were intended to be published in their paper. It seems not.

But copyright is so broken, she should sue for fraud along with much else, as some of the lawyers seem to suggest. Certainly she has a case for the paper exposing her to harm she did not intend to expose herself to.

Her parents will probably have to sue individually.

But more to the point, this paper has, in my opinion, violated enough journalistic ethics to have lost any hope of excusing their conduct. If I wrote a blog accessible by subscription only, and some editor got a copy of it from a friend, I would NOT expect them to publish it without my permission. First, by subscription only should mean I don't intend it to be 'public'. Second, it's not theirs, it's MINE.

Oh, wait, did the paper get permission from MySpace? Bet not. Whammy.

You can tell I'm not a lawyer. I'm interesting in what's right, not what's legal.

Re:Fraudulent.

[DaveV1.0]

The only problem with your reasoning is that it was submitted to the paper fraudulently by the principal and his friend.

Re:Law is bullshit

[TubeSteak]

I'm a computer-engineer-turned-patent-attorney.
My undergraduate degree was filled with (relatively) clearly-defined and immutable rules of logic and physics.
Law school was the polar opposite.

Making a computer "whole" is easy:
You design software to fail gracefully and restart in the face of unexpected input/output.
It isn't so simple doing the same thing with humans and laws.

I'm curious

[n30na]

Does anyone have a link to the original rant, and/or what this stuff about her family's business is about? It's a little confusing without the original context.

Re:IANAL

[BrokenHalo]

Does this mean you have to contact the author of every work you quote in an essay?

No, of course not. You cite his work in the normal way, thus giving credit where it's due. It is understood, of course, that you are not lifting whole texts, but quotation is normal practice.

Myspace

[kuzakdo]

Without reading the ToS, I assume that MySpace owns the Copyright on anything published on their site.

Re:Myspace

[urulokion]

No they don't. Otherwise they would not allow their users to erase and/or change content on their pages. Most well written ToS includes a limited grant of copyright permission from the users for their submitted content. Places like MySpace, Facebook or Yahoo have to publish and make multiple copies of the content, e.g. to push it out to their large user bases using a web farm and for plain old backups. Otherwise those companies would be guilt of copyright infringement on a massive scale.

Sometimes the grant of permissions go a bit further then they what they need to operate as a business (i.e. publicity or advertising). The privacy and consumer protection groups get up in arms if the ToS go too far, such as claiming to own the copyright of everything uploaded their servers.

The Principal was wrong, but she was stupid....

[wowbagger]

OK, what the Principal did was wrong - full stop.

And if the paper knew that the Principal was the one submitting the information and published it anyway, they were also wrong - full stop.

But for this girl to be surprised that her little screed got out, given that she posted it in an online form available to anybody who wants to see it shows she wasn't thinking.

I'm not afraid of having somebody walk up to me in real life and whip out a copy of this post - if I were, I wouldn't post it!

It would be a different thing were her posting somehow meaningfully private - had she written it in a personal email to somebody else, for example. However, you STILL should consider anything you send in an email public - once your recipient gets the email you have NO control over what they will do with it. But at least she could make the case that a confidence was breached.

Come on people - just because "Web 2.0" encourages you to share your every last little "thought", bodily function, or indiscretion doesn't mean it is a good idea.

Re:The Principal was wrong, but she was stupid....

[SCHecklerX]

Yeah, but there's a difference between just seeing it, and copying it and giving it to a newspaper for publication (for profit, even) without your permission.

Kinda like the .mod (or s3m or whatever) that was stolen by Nellie Furtado. Disgusting.

Re:The Principal was wrong, but she was stupid....

[roju]

But for this girl to be surprised that her little screed got out, given that she posted it in an online form available to anybody who wants to see it shows she wasn't thinking.

Maybe she was surprised that anyone from her hometown had heard of the internet?

Forget copyright:

[BrokenHalo]

A more scary aspect of this is the question of what a school principal is doing creeping through the MySpace accounts of his former students.

Re:Forget copyright:

[DutchUncle]

Why do you assume it's "creeping"? Faculty wants to encourage current students with interesting updates on recent graduates and how they're doing at college. If the page was public, it's PUBLIC to EVERYBODY - why would anyone expect that they can publish a rant for the rest of the world and *not* have the folks at home see it? If it was "friends only", and student chose to "friend" faculty for perfectly proper reasons - coach, college advisor, etc. - it's equally available.

Devil's advocate (just a possibility): maybe publicizing this was supposed to encourage current students to do better and get out to college, like Former Student, so they could expand their horizons like FS. OTOH maybe it's a classic flamewar; FS chose to write "Hometown sucks!" rather than "I've seen so much more in College / Big City than back in little Hometown!"

Slashdotters sometimes forget that everything they say applies to themselves too. If you want business and government information to be free, then anything YOU put online to display to the universe has to be equally free.

Re:IANAL

[1u3hr]

In the UK... There is no fair use law here

Bollocks. It may not be called "fair use" but it exists.

Fact sheet P-01: UK Copyright Law
8 Acts that are allowed
Fair dealing is a term used to describe acts which are permitted to a certain degree without infringing the work, these acts are:

• Private and research study purposes.
• Performance, copies or lending for educational purposes.
• Criticism and news reporting.
• Incidental inclusion.
• Copies and lending by librarians.
• Acts for the purposes of royal commissions, statutory enquiries, judicial proceedings and parliamentary purposes.
• Recording of broadcasts for the purposes of listening to or viewing at a more convenient time, this is known as time shifting".
• Producing a back up copy for personal use of a computer program.
• Playing sound recording for a non profit making organisation, club or society.

Re:Law is bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, one of my friend is a lawyer and this is how he describes it:

"A university degree in oral argumentation."

In short, lawyers are train to argue about anything from any angle. If you ask a question to 50 lawyers, you should get 50 different answers.

Damages? We don't need no stinkin' damages!

[TaleSpinner]

Hey, "infringement without financial gain", people. That's a half million dollars. And, I am assured, over and over and friggin' over again in an unskippable notice at the beginning of every fracking dvd ever burned, this infringement is "investigated by the FBI". The law isn't just for Sony and Disney. Let it work for the little guys.

Good article

[mounthood]

Really interesting and well explained.

The idea of using the cheap legal service is great. I never signed up at work, but I'm going to now.

Duh

[kenp2002]

Freedom of Speech doesn't not imply Freedom from Consequence.

A: Her Myspace page was publically browsable.
B: She disclosed the statement Publically.
C: He public statement ended up being reproduced in an equally publically accessable newspaper, even if under false circumstances.
D: Her father suffered the consequences of her actions.

This would be no different then if she was at the mall telling her friends "This Town Sucks" and youtubing herself. Then CNN gets ahold of the youtube video (regardless of the source) and posts it.

While you could suggest copyright, voicing an opinion doesn't imply it is a literary work that falls under copyright. No more then this very post. It isn't a literary work, it is my opinion that I happened to type out, no different then typing to copyright it if I had spoken it in a mall.

The only issue that I can see (in a practical sense) is why is a grown adult principal lurking on a former student's myspace page?! If I was the father I'd be breaking the pervert's legs right now.

Re:Duh

[tinkerghost]

Then CNN gets ahold of the youtube video (regardless of the source) and posts it.

Which CNN would never do as a video-letter to the editor. They would incorporate it into a larger story dealing with youths disaffected with their towns and include excerpts of the video as they are appropriate to the topic at hand - you know, fair use. Deliberately mis-attributing the source opens them to fraud & goes a long way towards negating any defense of their intent.

Did the paper have a fair use right to use the rant in reporting news - yes. Did they use the rant in accordance with those rights - no. Ergo, they did not exercise their fair use rights when publishing the work.

Re:Law is bullshit

[langelgjm]

Often? To do the patent bar, you need an engineering or science undergrad degree, or one that was very heavy in those areas. There are some minor exceptions to that rule, but yeah, most patent attorneys have an engineering or science degree.

Re:Law is bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod points for trolling......

Wait.

Damn!

A local paper does something similar

[pjp6259]

The Colorado Daily publishes (on their front page, everyday) facebook status updates of people who have 'friended' this paper on facebook. I recently talked to someone who had their status update published on the front page, and she had no idea this could even happen. I wonder if they could be sued in this case, or does the fact that you have to 'friend' them give them an implicit right to republish your status?

Re:A local paper does something similar

[opiv6ix]

I find more disturbing that there is so little actual news content for the Colorado Daily, that they're putting updates from "friends" of the newspaper on the FRONT PAGE, EVERY DAY. Do they pick through for the best updates, or do they just throw the entire newsfeed up there? I can only imagine! Right next to the picture of the President at whatever event just occurred is the status update of John, who became victorious yesterday over his bout of constipation.

The lesson here is ...

[joebagodonuts]

Principal and principle are not synonymous.

Re:The lesson here is ...

[Bent Mind]

Spell check is evil, first thing in the morning.

Re:You do end up sharing some of those rights, tho

[Trails]

Well, just cause it's in the TOS doesn't make it law.

IANAL, but I do read techdirt (that's a joke) so here's my opinion:

I doubt there's much of a copyright issue here since the letter was attributed to her, and since she put it up on myspace, it is fair ground for commenting and reporting. The more salient point was if the publishing, associating with her name, etc... was done with malicious intent. While harder to prove, it strikes me that some teenager/tween bitching about a town on myspace doesn't really bare publishing in a paper except as a means to stir up a controversy. Newspapers can stir up controversy, but if was done with malicious intent or reckless disregard for the well being of the people in question, that could be the actionable point.

Again, this is all conjecture, and IANAL.

Country Mouse

[rlseaman]

The appellate judge states as if established in fact:

"The community reacted violently to the publication of the Ode. Appellants received death threats and a shot was fired at the family home, forcing the family to move out of [AnyPlaceUSA]. Due to severe losses, David closed the 20-year-old family business."

Did the lawyers for both sides stipulate to these "facts"? Or were they somehow proven in the trial court? There are at least six assertions here:

1. The community reacted violently.
2. Appellants received death threats.
3. A shot was fired at the family home.
4. The family [was forced] to move.
5. The [business suffered] severe losses.
6. David closed the business.

Numbers 2, 3 and 5 are assertions that should be straightforward to establish evidentially. Although the precise scenario of the "severe losses" is not laid out. Did business simply drop precipitously? Or was there an extended period of tedious sniping back-and-forth, for instance in the local chamber of commerce? How exactly did the (former) customers learn that the business was connected to the girl's family? And what kind of business was it, anyway? What was happening with the business's competition at the same time? Did one profit at the expense of the other? Or did the entire local industry fail (a very familiar scenario in small towns)?

But was the business forced to close (#6) as a direct result of the republication? The implication is that the family moved due to both safety and economic concerns (#4). The first of these seems a criminal matter almost impossible to connect back to republication unless the bullet is traced to a gun and the gun to a death threat and the death threat to someone unhinged by a letter to the editor. In rural America, having a shot fired at a house is more likely to be an incautious sportsman. Was it deer season? While moving due to economic reasons is simply a restating of the prior assertion about the business failing. This is perhaps pertinent to damages, but not to the facts of the case.

What does it mean for an appellate judge to assert "the community reacted violently"? Surely there must be prior case law to understand this point? The implication in the Slashdot article is that this happened in fact and that it was causally related to one poor girl's teenage angst about where she happened to grow up.

It appears rather to this reader that the judge overreached unnecessarily. To come to the same decision ("go away little girl, you bother me") there was no reason to rule on the copyright aspects of the case at all. The judgement can be taken to say that any intentional "publication", no matter how temporary, to an online source permits a newspaper to republish your work. This doesn't do the newspaper industry any favors. Fair use is a two-edged sword:

"Having been published on myspace.com, the Ode was not private."

Doesn't this apply to everything a newspaper ever publishes? If there is no copyright protection of the girl's expression of her all-too-typical teenage thoughts, why can't complete articles from this newspaper now be republished at will as letters to the editor on MySpace pages? Either MySpace is a publication coequal with a newspaper - or it isn't.

One remains skeptical about the facts in this case. Surely the bad actions (as described) of the community's high school principal and newspaper publisher would have been even more likely to arouse community ire? While one could almost take a sensitivity to insult as a defining characteristic of small town life versus city life - similar negative screeds to city life are published every day in city newspapers - one is skeptical that this small town is such a caricature of the girl's description. In Aesop's fable, it is the Country Mouse who scurries home.

Re:Country Mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

Living not too far from Coalinga (and having friven through it only last week), I can tell you what (little) I know about it. That a gun was fired at the home as a death threat is entirely plausible. Coalinga is a miserable little racist town. Many years ago, being black and in Coalinga after sundown was to risk lynching. Nothing about the town makes you think "urban" or "modern".

The last name, Moreno, sounds spanish enough. So I actually COULD see all items stipulated. The judges in Fresno know enough about Coalinga to not try to put lipstick on a pig.

Re:Country Mouse

[armitage787]

Im from coalinga, couple answer for you. . . 1. I dont believe shots were fired, i know local pd that didnt know anything about it (only a hand full of pd work in the city) 2. might have gotten threats, but i dont know who from and no one said anything about death threats until it go to court. . .Fabricated??? 3. Business was a trucking business, so all contract based not regular store front customers 4. only 1 other local trucking company and they do fine. 5. everyone knows everyone so it isnt hard to know that it was his daughter that wrote the blog. 6. yes it was deer season, but house is no where near hunting grounds :P

Re:Country Mouse

[gv250]

Did the lawyers for both sides stipulate to these "facts"? Or were they somehow proven in the trial court?

The appellate decision says this:

Since the appeal is from the sustaining of a demurrer without leave to amend, the facts are derived from the complaint. This court must give the complaint a reasonable interpretation and assume the truth of all material facts properly pleaded.

I don't know what that means, but I presume it answers your question.

Copyright or not, that's freakin wire fraud!

[michaelcole]

If the story is true, the principle committed wire fraud when they misrepresented themselves as the student to the newspaper. That's a felony. Like jail-time style!

There may be civil damages that can be attributed to that fraud, but I aint no lawyer.

Yes, the rant was publicly available on the myspace page, but it wasn't presented in the context of a "letter to the editor". The principle :

• 1) fraudulently represented themselves as the author
• 2) through that fraud, changed the context of the writing from "web page" to "letter to the editor"
• 3) this change of context had repercussions that damaged the student and their family.

Had the principle contacted the newspaper as the principle and asked that the students letter be publishes, what would the newspaper have done?

------ If it's a "legal code", how come it doesn't compile?

Re:You do end up sharing some of those rights, tho

[tixxit]

But when Google did it with AP's content (content was published publicly on internet, Google attributed the source to AP and Google was making a profit), AP claimed it as copyright infringement and Google paid for licenses to use their content (though it didn't go to court). This is the same situation; content published on internet, paper attributes source to girl, news paper makes a profit. So... the difference is?

Libel

[swm]

It seems like she should have a case for libel.

She wrote the MySpace rant, yes, but by printing it on their letters page, the paper represented, in writing, that she submitted it to them as a letter to the editor, which is false.

And there's a case that the libel caused real damage. Some (much? all? what say you, members of the jury?) of the townspeoples' ire may stem not from the rant itself, but from seeing it published as a letter to the local paper. That's a much more in-your-face thing to do than publishing it on MySpace.

Bonus points if the paper added the boiler plate

        Dear Sirs:
and
        Sincerely, Jane Doe

tags to the rant when they printed it.

Re:Libel

[DaveV1.0]

Unless, of course, the principal and his friend created a letter to the editor for her. Then, the paper unknowingly committed infringement and is not liable because they had every reason to believe the letter came from her.

Re:Libel

[Anonymous Coward]

The friend _is_ the editor. The situation you envision isn't possible.

public vs. private

[busmasterDMA]

Concerning the public vs. private disclosure of facts, would it have been considered private if it had been posted not on Myspace but on Facebook, with restricitions limiting the viewing audience to certain people? Also it might be difficult to prove the claim that the business failed as a result of publishing her editorial. Lots of businesses are failing these days.

I found my photos foe sale once

[AnAdventurer]

At a friends gift shop, I found some of my photo's for sale. I had sold them a single use license (signed and paid for) for their tri-fold brochure.

What do you know, a few months later there are post cards with my photographs on them in their gift shop. Being close friends with the owner, I didn't mind to much (and there were selling them for a very low sum, it was not worth bringing up). And after the first run they choose not to sell any more postcards. Had it been someone I did not have a friendship with I would have raised the issue when I saw them and/or taken them to court and won my $3

where is the full text of 'Ode to Coalinga'?

[PJ6]

All this talk about 'Ode to Coalinga' and I cannot find more than the first sentence anywhere... I would very much like to read the whole thing. Everyone reports that the content was inflammatory - well, show me, please, so I can decide that for myself.

The important thing you are missing

[DaveV1.0]

a school principal downloading a rant form a former student's MySpace page and arranging with a friend to "out" her in the town newspaper

The paper's primary defense will be that the infringement was unintentional and caused by deceptive actions of a third party. They received what amounted to a work with forged permission to copy.

I think she would be better off going after the principal and the friend who helped him for copyright infringement, intentional infliction of emotional distress, etc.

Re:Law is bullshit

[jcnnghm]

You know law has been tried before where it was strictly analytical, and it doesn't work very well at all because it's overly harsh and doesn't allow for different circumstances. The best example of that is probably the Code of Hammurabi.

The fact of the matter is law is left intentionally vague so that the Judge's can use their discretion. Without that, people would be punished either much to harshly, or not harshly enough. Over time the judicial system develops tests to apply to particular cases. For example, in defamation cases the plaintiff must prove an additional element, "actual malice" (the person making the statement had to know the statement was false, or made the statement with reckless disregard for the truth), if the defendant is a public figure. This additional element was established by the Supreme Court in 1964 to balance the First Amendment rights of the plaintiff, with the rights of the defendant. It's not perfect, but it's better than the other way.

And sue for 80,000 per work copied

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like Jammie!

Re:Law is bullshit

[DoofusOfDeath]

I'm a computer-engineer-turned-patent-attorney.

My undergraduate degree was filled with (relatively) clearly-defined and immutable rules of logic and physics.

Law school was the polar opposite.

Wow, so you've specialized in taking away our freedoms. Cheers, mate.

And the illegal copying of a work does too

[Anonymous Coward]

To the tune of $80,000 per copy possibly made and sold.

Even if they never got sold.

But those are the CONSEQUENCES of just picking up someone's words from MySpace and printing them in your newspaper...

I mean, the RIAA put their stuff on CD that I can rip and share on MySpace or similar place too. If they don't want that to happen, they shouldn't have made a CD. Consequences.

Re:IANAL

[Mr. Shiny And New]

Fair Dealing != Fair Use. Fair Dealing is far more constrained. Note: format shifting is typically believed legal under fair use but would need to be explicitly specified as allowable under Fair Dealing. Note how time shifting is given its own line item.

I wouldn't like that place either

[OrangeTide]

If a place is going to send death threats and boycott a business because what some pissed off college student said, why the hell would anyone want to live there. What a crappy place.

Re:Slashdot suddenly cares about copyright?

[Bent Mind]

That depends, did exercising her right to copyright involve illegal searches and dubious proof of identity? Was she awarded hundreds of dollars, per print, over the resale value of the work in question? Did she sue everyone who obtained a copy of her Ode from the paper?

I have mod points but

[commodoresloat]

I can't find the option for "-1, Mean-Spirited and Douchebaggy"

What about Libel?

[ckaminski]

Both the newspaper and the principal falsely represented the letter as being from her, what recourse does she have to sue for libel?

Re:You do end up sharing some of those rights, tho

[ImprovOmega]

The basic premise of youtube requires that they be grant a non-exclusive redistribute right, otherwise they would have no right to stream it for watching at all!

The consideration received in return for that grant is in the form of exposure and reaching a wider audience. So, while you wouldn't post the whole Transformers movie on there (as a studio), you would probably want the trailer and maybe a few promotional clips on there and you absolutely want youtube to distribute those as widely as possible.

It's basically a business deal. Youtube's upside is they get advertising revenue. There's nothing sneaky about it.

IANAL but

[Pvt_Ryan]

I'd have thought the newspaper's use would have been commercial as it was added to entice readers to read. She should have attached a EULA... :D

Re:You do end up sharing some of those rights, tho

[blitzkrieg3]

...that google contacted the AP and bought a license to redistribute the copyrighted material? Is that really hard to figure out?

So much for the Principal's MIssion Statement

[ImNotAtWork]

http://www.chusd.k12.ca.us/chusd/Our%20Schools/Coalinga%20High%20School/

IV. Act responsibly, demonstrating the ability to:

a. Invest time, energy and talents to improve the quality of life for themselves, their school, community and the world.
b. Develop respect for the needs, ideas, opinions and property of others.
c. Employ initiative and common sense for the good of others and their world.

I see several violations of his own rules.

Re:So much for the Principal's MIssion Statement

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol. Those are just WORDs man.

Here's the board of trustees roles in life:

Oil Man, Former Paper Pusher for the school district, Lawn Mower guy for the parks district, A prison guard, someone with NO previous employment history(?), and a union thug.

These people, especially when collected, do not run a nice school district. They run a Beulla Ballbreaker school district.

Re:So much for the Principal's MIssion Statement

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging from his photograph published at http://www.coalinga-huron.org/chs/administratorsa-z.html it would appear that he spends his time checking out myspace entries of girls some 30 years his junior who are neither family members nor with whom he has any kind of professional relationship - she was an EX - student.
If my wife caught me doing that I would be in BIG trouble.

How appropriate that the motif of Coalinga High School ( http://www.chusd.k12.ca.us/chusd/Our%20Schools/Coalinga%20High%20School/ ) is a toad.

Boo Hoo

[strikeleader]

When will people learn. Don't put yourself out on the Interweb like that. I don't feel sorry for people when they put their feels on Myspace , Youtube, or any other "social networking" site and then get upset when bad things happen after they do it.

Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic that the principal's intent was to embarrass the ex-student, but instead ended up outing what a gigantic douchebag he and his friend are.

Yes, that's right, Principal Roger Campbell of Coalinga is a douchebag, Pamela Pond formerly of the Coalinga Record is a douchebag, and the Coalinga Record newspaper is a haven for douchebags.

Consider this a letter to the editor.

Former editor fired for printing Moreno's essay

[EMB Numbers]

Neither the school district nor Cynthia Moreno or her attorney were available for an interview. The newspaper, The Coalinga Record also declined to comment, but the paper's former editor tells me she was fired for printing Moreno's myspace entry in the paper last year. http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/local&id=4850386

So she put it on myspace. So what?

[rantingkitten]

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that the judges/lawyers leaning towards "fair use" keep pointing out that the girl posted her diatribe on myspace, meaning it was more or less freely available to all. I'm with them up to that point.

What I don't get is how they can interpret that to mean any passing slob has the right to copy most or all of the work wholesale. Just because it was "public"? What does that even mean?

If I write and publish a book, that book is now "in the public eye", is it not? Anyone can presumably go buy it or even check it out of a library for free, Does that give them the right to copy and distribute it themselves? How is my claim to copyright on my hypothetical book any less legitimate than this girl's claim to copyright on whatever she wrote?

To me, "fair use" would mean publishing a brief excerpt, enough to get some point across. Copying the entire work, falsely claiming it was sent to you as a letter, and distributing it seems to go well beyond that.

Am I missing something?

Re:You do end up sharing some of those rights, tho

[mwvdlee]

I don't know about how this works in US law, but in dutch copyright law there is a something roughly translated as "author rights". These are the irrevokable rights of the author of a certain copyrighted work, regardless of who has the distribution rights and no contract can sign away these rights nor can they be sold.

Effectively this law prevent the authors' work to be used in a context sufficiently harmfull to the authors' reputation and different from the intended context.

I.e. a photographer sells a portrait of some africans to a publisher for use in a travel guid and the publisher ends up using it in rascist propaganda. Even though the author sold all rights, he can still object to this type of use.

If US law has such a law, that might be a valid complaint.

Clearly not fair use.

[asdfndsagse]

Fair use requires a transformation, the copies the newspaper published have the exact same use as the one posted on myspace, and therefor fair use defense of the entire work is quite difficult. It was this transformation of use that was the central point in both the Google Images fair use verdict as well as in Betamax, two places in which the entire work was copied (albeit in low res re Google), however the use was transformational and served a differnt purpose from the origional published copies.

The Public Suffers

[b4upoo]

This girl's rant is identical to the problem with porn laws. It exposes a simple fact. If a case at law proceeds from this situation then the public must fork over the money that it takes to run the court, pay the jurors etc.. Each similar but not identical case will cause public expenses as it plays out in court. The total cost of these nonsense law suits can bury our nations economy. In other words the reason that copyright laws are bad may be many but the greatest is the cost to the tax payers of having such laws.
            How many billions have been squandered in our courts debating whether a porn movie went too far? How many millions has the RIAA cost the tax payer whining about supposed lost sales due to illegal copying. Are we now supposed to throw millions out the window debating fair use of utterances made in public whether on the net or in other mediums? It's time to stop this nonsense.

I enjoyed reading this story

[pturley]

It's interesting how much legitimate detail there was here, and how many lessons to learn. Thank you for the careful research.

Law is Complex

[Petrini]

I'm a mechanical engineer-turned-patent attorney.
 

My undergraduate degree was chock full of tests where you drew a square centimeter-sized box around the final, right answer. Bridge fell over if it was too small, collapsed under its own weight if too large. Either way, someone was unhappy.
 

Law school was the polar opposite. I expected this, because it deals with an infinite permutations of human situations conflicting with abstract guiding principles. I accept this. To some degree, I enjoyed it during the education phase. I certainly enjoy it in the practice phase. Makes things challenging, keeps me on my mental toes.
 

If you want the cut-and-dry world, stay in programming. Nothing where human interactions are managed will ever be clearly-defined with immutable rules of logic and physics. To expect the law to be that way is naive and/or unrealistically simple. This is not to say that lawyers don't exacerbate the situation from time to time. But there is little that makes for easy decisions in the world of human behavior.
 

False Light Publicity

[Wowlapalooza]

IANAL, but I think maybe the strongest claim here was "false light publicity", which is a well-established tort theory-of-recovery This is sometimes defined as "publicity that invades a person's privacy by a false statement or representation that places the person in a false light that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person." The "false representation" here is that Cynthia Moreno sent a Letter to the Editor, disparaging the whole community -- a very provocative and confrontational act -- which was intended to be seen not only by Internet users (which might very well be a minority of the inhabitants of Coalinga), but by anyone who receives the Coalinga Record, or is shown the Letter to the Editor by any means. In other words, while the content of the Ode is the same regardless, a falsehood is created -- that she deliberately and intentionally used it to provoke and outrage the inhabitants of Coalinga, even the non-Internet-using inhabitants. This was not her doing.

The Superior Court doesn't even consider this line of reasoning, since it declares "Having been published on myspace.com, the Ode was not private". Yet, one of the decisions it cites while coming to that conclusion involved a subtle distinction between "secret" and "private". In that decision (M. G. v. Time Warner, Inc. (2001) 89 Cal.App.4th 623), a Little League team photograph, taken on the baseball field, was included in a television broadcast looking into allegations of sexual abuse by Little League coaches. The team members in that photograph sued for invasion of privacy because it was not "public" knowledge that they were members of the team, until the photograph was broadcast. Because of the broadcast, they were viewed as victims, perpetrators, and/or collaborators in sexual abuse, which led to great mental anguish, etc., hence the lawsuit

Yet, how are the situations fundamentally different? Cynthia Moreno's "Ode" was on myspace.com for all of 6 days before she took it down (not before her former High School Principal found it, unfortunately for her and her family). While the Little League team in the other case wasn't permanently located on any particular baseball field, if someone had been shooting random photographs of baseball fields at random places and times, they might have just as easily captured that "team photograph" and it would have been easy to deduce the members of the Little League team from the photographic evidence. Perhaps the judge(s) in this case simply don't understand what a vast wasteland myspace.com is, and how unlikely it is that anyone would find anything of particular interest there, unless they were specifically aiming to find it (as apparently this High School Principal was). Yet again, judges need to get more up to speed with Internet technology and community, in order to render proper decisions in cases that touch on the Internet, even if only indirectly.

I suppose one (relatively weak) argument could be made that posts to myspace.com are indexed automatically so that, for instance, the Ode might have shown up on a Google search for "Coalinga". But there is no discussion of that "indexing" angle in the court opinion, and no factual evidence, that I can see, that the High School Principal found Cynthia's "Ode" through any kind of index or search engine.

Copyright's Purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

If she were to try to recover money for the personal losses and to her father's business by suing under copyright, wouldn't she be making the sort of excessive claims that most of us dislike? Can you imagine copyright claims and suits if 'emotional distress' was added to the dollar figure at the bottom line?
The motivations in this case just don't seem to make copyright law the correct answer.

Re:IANAL

[TheCycoONE]

It's just that under American/Canadian law quotes in an essay are exempt because of Fair Use (afaik). The GP said everything is black and white in the UK, but how large can a quote be of a commercial source before it's infringement? Can I copy an entire book within a quotation block; a chapter of a book; ten pages; 1 page; 2 paragraphs; 2 sentences?

Re:You do end up sharing some of those rights, tho

[piojo]

You misunderstood the parent. His point was that just as google can't use AP's content for free, this newspaper shouldn't be able to use this girl's writing for free.

Re:IANAL

[Travelsonic]

I don't have to register anything, it doesn't matter if its public or private. There is no fair use law here so they couldn't use that excuse either. If anyone did this in the UK, they would have their asses sued off and they would lose.

Fair Dealings - similar to fair use. Look it up. I don't know how it works in the U.K, but in the U.S, works automatically fall under copyright but you still need to register before ever hoping to be able to collect damages. It isn't as black/white or difinitive as you make it out to be.

Im From Coalinga

[armitage787]

Ok, So I am from Coalinga i was in High School when all this was going on. First thing I want to say is that if you read around on this case you might hear that there were shots fired at her dad's house. This is an out right fabrication. No shots were ever fired I know quite a few of the police officers in town and none of them can account for any of that sort of thing. Moving on. . .The girl that wrote the blog had come back to coalinga to visit her parents and go to the Football game. At the game her old friends treated her like crap and so she wrote this blog. The reason why this became such a huge deal is because the girl that wrote the blog on Myspace was a "Coalinga Golden Girl". Coalinga is very small and being that it is small everyone knows everyone and when someone goes off to a good college and shows alot of promise we as a town are very proud of them. When she wrote that blog it hurt a lot of people's feelings. I believe she intended on it only targeting a few of her old friends but she didn't choose her words carefully enough to exclude all coalingons. Once word got out that she had written her ode everyone was printing it out and it was circulating the school and everyone was getting really worked up about it. Our principal got wind of it and in his anger decided to submit it to the local paper. Right or wrong that is how it all started. Coalinga is a small town. When everyone knows everyone stuff like this happens. It is sad to watch, and I was disappointed that the Family lost their business because of it, because they were a good asset to the community in Coalinga. If you have any other questions about it let me know. . .

Re:Im From Coalinga

[tpgp]

were shots fired at her dad's house. This is an out right fabrication. No shots were ever fired I know quite a few of the police officers in town and none of them can account for any of that sort of thing.

I don't see how you can assert that it is an outright fabrication. Even a police officer can't say for certain that something did not happen.

If you have any other questions about it let me know. . .

Why are the people in your town so petty and pathetic that they give a flying fuck what's on a myspace page?

Possible source of "Actual" damages

[GameMaster]

IANAL, but think I can see, at least, one way that she could try to justify "actual damages". Newspapers fund themselves through advertising. They justify their rates to their advertisers through thee of their readership and the size of their readership is based on the quality of their content. Basically, they could figure out what percentage of that edition of the paper her letter represented and use that number to calculate what percentage of that edition's ad revenue is based on the content they stole from her. Of course, they may want to weight that value based on the section of the paper it's in which could use a similar scale as the cost of advertising in that section vs. the cost of advertising in the most expensive section in the paper. I would think that that would provide some concrete "actual damages" on top of the consequential damages to her father's business.

As far as any possible fair use right the paper might have, I think that the only leg that they have left (according to the lawyer above who was the most stridently pro fair use rights) is the idea that they were using the information for criticism, comment, and newspaper reporting. What I would think would discredit this possibility, completely, is the fact that they actively chose to falsely represent the letter as having been sent in, by her, as a letter to the editor. Had they printed the letter acknowledging that she hadn't chosen to send it in then this claim might make more sense.

llyda

[Anonymous Coward]

more

http://mazok.ucoz.com/

What's wrong with you?

[fm6]

Suppose a product you helped create were trashed by somebody. And suppose you thought that person's criticisms were really stupid and childish. Worst of all (from your point of view) your economic future depends in part on how well this product sells. So this person is taking money out of your pocket. Tell me you wouldn't react really strongly.

That's pretty much the situation faced by all the people who got bent out of shape. Presumably they have some economic tie to Coalinga: a house with a big mortgage, a business, a job, whatever. So anybody who says "Coalinga sucks" is taking money out of their pocket.

Which is not to justify the death threats, the boycotts, etc., etc. But we're in no position to talk. On Slashdot, you can generate death threats just by pointing out simple mistakes, never mind a rant about how sucky somebody's favorite product is.

Re:What's wrong with you?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty much the situation faced by all the people who got bent out of shape. Presumably they have some economic tie to Coalinga: a house with a big mortgage, a business, a job, whatever. So anybody who says "Coalinga sucks" is taking money out of their pocket.

Yeah, because everybody knows that the be-all and end-all of advertising is a 16-year old's MyFace page.

You're a fucking moron. Some 16-year old ranting about how her town sucks has zero impact on anyone's pocketbook.

Re:What's wrong with you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod +1 insightful

A death threat in this reply would have been very pithy, too.

The real tort here appears to be forgery....

[n4djs]

As the letter was signed by the high school principal as if he was the girl. Nice friendly town, BTW. Identity theft? maybe... copyright infringement? probably...
I think the person that did this is likely to be out a job once it is all said and done....
I am not a lawyer... I am just doing this build my typing speed....

Sue the Principal himself

[Anonymous Coward]

Suing the newspaper for copyright may be difficult. Therefore, I suggest that she sued the principal personally for copyright violation. He copied her work for no defendable purpose. He has no defense. While she won't be able to get her father's business back, she may be able to get that principal fired. A convicted copyright violator? I wouldn't hire him, nor would I vote for a school board member who did. It'd be nice to see her get a $1 check from him.

yeah not much of a problem

[Chris Burke]

given the nature of computers and the Internet, almost every action one takes makes a copy of digital content - making the "automatic copyright" at the heart of the current problems. copying is using, which makes all content created near useless without specific permission (fair use aside).

Except any of those copies made as an essential act of using the computer are specifically exempted. Ergo, using is not copying from a copyright perspective.

This is not a fair use argument by the way. It's simply a limitation on the copyright.

Also, that's not the heart of most copyright problems, since the majority of copyright cases don't involve automatic copies made while otherwise viewing a work distributed with permission of the author.

Re:You get what you deserve

[darthwader]

Shouldn't you be in some remedial summer school class about now?

In a remedial summer school class? He should be teaching the class. The GP is posted by the principal, right?

Re:IANAL

[masterzora]

Incidentally, that's what we refer to as "fair use" in the US.

Re:IANAL

[jabuzz]

There are strict guidelines on what constitutes quotation. The basics are the longer the work, the more you get to quote. However you *never* get to quote the whole work.

A very similar scenario has been to the courts in the U.K. Prince Charles sued the Mail on Sunday for breach of copyright (among other things) when it printed extracts from his private journal. He won the case but as there was a whole bunch of other issues such as breach of confidence I am not quite sure what if any ruling was made on the copyright issue.

Remember it is the U.K. and *ANY* copy of material under copyright without the express permission of the copyright holder is breach of copyright. There is no fair use.

Technically if I buy a poster, stick it on the wall in my house, and then take a picture of someone which includes the poster I have broken copyright law. In fact I probably break copyright law just by photographing my wallpaper. There is however a recognition that this needs to change...

Re:IANAL

[jabuzz]

In most Bern convention countries that is not the case. In the U.K. and the rest of the E.U. to my knowledge there is no registration of copyright period.

Re:Bush voters

[Bourbonium]

"You're either with us, or you're against us." No middle ground there.

Re:You do end up sharing some of those rights, tho

[Anonymous Coward]

You grant YouTube (google) a non-exclusive right to redistribute as they see fit, and that includes deals with big organisations that deal with broadcast (TV) material.

Copyright breach, no. In that you are correct.

However, you did not grant them the right to send such material to someone else, and claim that it was YOU that sent it, etc.

The issue is not really that the information WAS published (even if that's what the girl is trying to bitch about), but in what MANNER that information was distributed. Specifically, the editor claimed that this was a LETTER to the editor from the GIRL, not the principal.

So there is definately some type of cause for fraud, identity theft, and probably libel as a result. IANAL so I don't know exactly what laws would cover it.

Think about it like this. Let's say I post on my MySpace page that "I have a bomb". Then the school Principal sends this to the newspaper. What I posted would have been a statement of fact (or a lie), but when sent in such a fashion this now becomes a bomb threat which is totally different.

The right or ability to use someone's information does not mean you can use it as will & then claim that you are them or doing it on their behalf, which is essentially what both the Principal and the newspaper did.

Re:IANAL

[harlows_monkeys]

There is no fair use law here so they couldn't use that excuse either

It's called "fair dealing" in the UK. It's not as extensive as "fair use" under US law, but it is there.

California impersonation laws

[ExRex]

Some excerpts:

CALIFORNIA CODES
PENAL CODE
SECTION 528-539

529. Every person who falsely personates another in either his private or official capacity, and in such assumed character either:
1. (stuff about marriage)
2. Verifies, publishes, acknowledges, or proves, in the name of another person, any written instrument, with intent that the same may be recorded, delivered, or used as true; or,
3. Does any other act whereby, if done by the person falsely personated, he might, in any event, become liable to any suit or prosecution, or to pay any sum of money, or to incur any charge, forfeiture, or penalty, or whereby any benefit might accrue to the party personating, or to any other person;
Is punishable by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or by imprisonment in the state prison, or in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

538a. Every person who signs any letter addressed to a newspaper with the name of a person other than himself and sends such letter to the newspaper, or causes it to be sent to such newspaper, with intent to lead the newspaper to believe that such letter was written by the person whose name is signed thereto, is guilty of a misdemeanor.

Once the principal has been convicted in court for criminal impersonation the family will have an excellent chance of recouping something.
Of course, they should probably move for a change of venue.

Widespread transfer of information

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess they want to know how we would handle situation like this. We're known to be against the restrictions copyright places, and this seems like a perfect test case -- whether copyright should be applied to the situation or whether it should be handled some other way. File sharing and P2P seems to be closely related to the same problem -- both situations someone publishes information he was not supposed to publish. So clear test case to find out how we'd react in this situation.

Ideally we'd want information to be free. Free flowing information available to all. Technology currently allows widespread transfer of information. We're no longer restricted by the transfer of information and the lost information, but instead there is too much of it available. While most of the information (and it's transfer) is useful and good, some of it can be bad, like in the case of loss of reputation when your opinions are distibuted wider than what you thought while creating and publishing those opinions. Copyright places control to the author of the work. Copyright owner can decide who is allowed to receive the information created. After a while, the information falls into public domain.

How do we handle harmful information and widespread transfer of it? Answer is: we cannot currently handle it. Information transfer in the internet is so easy and so many people are doing it, that it is impossible to control it. Even when the transfer of information is harmful. If information transfer ever gets really harmful, we have no way to stop it, without disabling the whole internet by researching on weak points of the net.

RIAA/MPAA etc are the first test case for handling harmful information transfer in the internet. Many more will follow. They designed internet to withstand nuclear war. So they distributed all the elements necessary to keep internet running to individual people. Individuals can choose to not use the internet. But if the harm comes from someone else distributing information, and possibly acting on the information, there is no way to stop it.

They can find out who are responsible for distributing the harmful information. This works. But all you end up is shooting wrong people. You shouldn't blame people who are just using the net. Different people will have different ways of using the net. The real problem is in the architecture of the internet -- you cannot control flow of information in it. Information will flow in it recardless of the consiquences.

RIAA cases show another important aspect of the internet. Only information that is widely available otherwise will have problems with the internet. Finding information on the net is very difficult. It is unlikely that many people will read the same blogs and same sites. But the example of movies and sound recordings, they are made available to millions of people through big companies that distribute them. Controlling those kinds of information is absolutely impossible. Once millions of people have access to the same information, someone will put it to internet. There is no way to prevent that from happening. Any attempt to prevent that is bound to fail. They can shoot whoever distributes the information, but that does not change the fact that internet has the same information available. And there will be more people who will put the information to the internet. Once millions of people have access to both internet and the information, it will be available on internet -- recardless of consiquences. Only two conditions are necessary for information to end up in the internet: it's availability to millions of people, and that those people have access to internet.

If the information happens to be interesting, widely available to millions of people outside internet, then it'll find it's way to the internet _and_ millions of people access it through the internet. There will be widespread distribution of the information. There is no way to prevent this. Even if it has harmful consiquences. Even if it cost the companies millions of dollars. Any attempt

From the school district website "mission statemen

[Anonymous Coward]

"We seek to create a safe and supportive environment, which instills in all students a sense of self-worth and integrity."

Think they succeeded?

Asch Conformity Experiments

[pgn674]

In fact, I wouldn't even trust the results if I asked 10 lawyers who were all in the same room; my general impression is that when I ask lawyers a question who are in the room together, they agree more frequently than if I ask them a similar question separately, perhaps consciously or subconsciously out of a desire to make it look as if the "expert consensus" is stronger than it really is.

This would be an example of the conformity experiments performed by the social psychologist Solomon Asch in the 1950's: Asch conformity experiments - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Re:IANAL

[1u3hr]

Fair Dealing != Fair Use.

Different in detail, and I won't pretend to be authoritative on exactly how. However, under UK law, you certainly CAN quote passages of copyright text under some conditions, contrary to the post I was replying to.

I dunno you but...

[Requiem18th]

I find the oft-repeated idea that not-for-profit works can be exploited at leisure by corporations abhorrent in extreme..

Re:IANAL, but...

[Duggeek]

To be “granted Copyright” and “having Copyright protection” are indeed two different things.

As TFP says, the differences between registered and non-registered works comes down to the types of damage. In just about all cases, real damages (real money directly lost or illicitly gained) can be awarded, but only registered works can receive damages for statutory (pre-defined amount or range of amounts) and legal costs. (duh) I guess it depends on just what you mean by “protection.”

Shouldn't this fall less inside Copyright law and more inside Identity Theft?

While the Principal may have been acting in--what he feels is--her best interest, couldn't it otherwise be called malignant or at least mischievous acts?

• Suspicious act "A":
  A former principal checks-up on an alumnus' MySpace page. That's creepy to begin with.
• Suspicious act "B":
  Principal chooses to copy, submit and impersonate her to the local newspaper as if she had submitted it herself! I believe that fulfills the criteria of Identity Theft right there.

At its core, isn't this is about control? The Principal took away the control of her own pursuit, her opinion. When she “publishes” on MySpace, she retains full control over the content; it could be there today, gone tomorrow. It's her choice.

When you submit content to a prestigious publisher (and yes, I am including just about all newspapers under that title, deal with it) part of the submission clause is that you release control of that content to the publication entity. The girl didn't make that choice, the Principal took that choice from her.

That should be a crime, even if it isn't.

If there isn't legal precedent for this, then let hers be the landmark case that opens the door.

Re:IANAL

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL either, but yesterday it was asserted that there is implicit copyright to any published material.

To hell with yesterday. It's right there in the (very long) summary:

You own the copyright on something as soon as you create it, but you can't file a copyright lawsuit until after you've registered your work. However, once you've registered, you can then go back and sue for copyright violations that took place before the registration date. If you register more than 90 days after the date of first publication, you can only sue for actual damages â" your monetary losses, or the infringer's ill-gotten gains â" for violations that took place before you registered the work. But if you register within 90 days of first publication, you can sue for statutory damages and attorney's fees, even for violations that took place before you registered.

The OP should have posted a goatse or GNAA link or something instead of rushing to get first post and ask a question that was already answered.

Re:Slashdot suddenly cares about copyright?

[cliffski]

I see. so slashdot will vigorously defend the copyright of people who do not undertake any of those acts?

Bullshit. It just shows the flagrant hypocrisy that runs through posters here.

Remove copyright - save the children!

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case forget the copyright issue - she did publish it on her myspace page open to all...

HOWEVER apart from that there were two - or arguably one crime(s) being commited against her and her family.

1 ) The Principal is guilty of slander by fraud.
2 ) The Newspaper is potentially guilty of slander. (depends on what she said, exactly)

In both cases those involved should lose membership of their respective professions for breach of ethics.

Quite apart from the "ownership of ideas" thing that "Intellectual Property" is concerned with*;- Publishing a toxic rant to a mostly-unknown weblog is roughly equivalent to shouting it out loud to the world... Whereas having it published in a newspaper is more like ranting on live TV. Clearly her intent was not to communicate directly to those who might take offence - And clearly also the Principal acted against his care of duty to her in causing her to seem as if she intended offence.

* We don't own ideas - they own us. When was the last time an idea gave its life in defence of someone? Would anyone care?
Contrarywise; Why is it that ideas have the same or more legal protections than we do? A corporation is essentially just an idea... So are religion, science and democracy.
Death isn't final for an idea - it can always be resurrected.
If you consider all human culture(ideas) as an extension of evolution (which they are) it is clear that the "we" really arn't the leading exponents of evolution we think we are - Ideas have long overtaken us - they are the first-class citizens now.
It seems to me that "human law" should really be about protecting individual humans, rather than our ideas.

Of course, this distinction gets even stickier when you realise that all judgement depends on values, which are ideas more-or-less implicit in our minds. Finding out you hold a particular value usually only happens when you meet someone who holds another value which is in conflict with it. Also, without a full list of *every* value in a human mind, you can't define what a human mind is. Miss a few and your model will break.
You can also figure out values from the bottom up - for example, to a computer, it's values consist mostly of it's ISA + whatever lookup tables are used to transcode data, eg ASCII or unicode. But consider also that every digital computer has at it's heart a core value we do *not* have - that "certainty of information is the most important thing". Without this value you cannot divide a voltage into "true" and "false" voltage levels.
Consider another value we share with computers - that "meaning is good" - without which a computer hangs, and neural networks never reorganise themselves to find patterns.

Now, if you put this together and make an AI - you end up with an entity like us that can embody understanding and play host to ideas.... and for whom death is not a problem...
Put this together with law protecting ideas more then individuals, and guess where it goes from there.

Obviously, we are in a very narrow window in time within which we might save our biological selves from obsolescence, or worse - endless future slavery.

Clearly - human law (all of it) needs to be fixed to offer protection commensurate with risk of absolute death. As *we* are the most complex devices currently unable to be "saved" from absolute death, then we need more protection then constructs such as ideas and software which is in no danger of absolute annihilation.

Conversely - the last copy of a manuscript itself become an individual in danger of annihilation, therefore copyright should read as follows:

All original (completely unmodified) works may be duplicated without restriction.
Imperfect copies are to be deleted where they offer no self-consistent meaning to differentiate themselves from the original. (clause to protect creativity)
Wilful plagiarism is to be elevated to a criminal offence with severity dependant on popularity of the incorrectly-attributed c

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Libel?

[GWBasic]

Uhm, isn't this libel? The newspaper claimed that the post was a letter to the editor, which it was not. I don't think copyright is the best venue to use to recover damages; because libel laws are meant for these situations.