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Author Drops Copyright Case Against Scribd Filter
natehoy writes "Apparently, monitoring for copyright violations is not in itself a copyright violation, lawyers for Elaine Scott decided. As a result, they have dropped the lawsuit against Scribd, who was being simultaneously sued for allowing copies of Scott's work to be published, and retaining an unlicensed copy of the work in their filtering software to try and prevent future copyright violations."
Of course, I knew that already. My hard-drive contents, including the "diff" program are one big copyright violation monitoring tool.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
1 - forbid site from avoiding copyright infringements.
2 - sue when copies of copyrighted works appear on site.
3 - PROFIT!
Sorry, a hash is a derivative work.
The ______ Agenda
The deposition goes like so:
Plaintiff's attorney: Are you blocking users from uploading content belonging to my client?
Defendant: Yes.
Plaintiff's attorney: How?
Defendant: We compare uploaded items to a copy of the book on our server.
Plaintiff's attorney: I see. And did you pay for it?
Defendant: What?
Plaintiff's attorney: This book, that you have on your server.
Defendant: Uh, yes. We bought it at Borders and scanned it in.
Plaintiff's attorney: Did you buy a license to make an electronic copy of the hardcopy you purchased?
Defendant: A what?
Plaintiff's attorney: (makes a note).
Defendant: Aw, shit.
I swear, judge! I downloaded that copy of Backyard Vixens 7 because I was trying to make sure nobody infringed on their copyright to do doggie style...that way.
If they found them guilty, then it would have been impossible for them to filter copyrighted stuff, making many people's lives easier. "Sorry, we can't do copyright filtering without violating copyrights..."