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Author Drops Copyright Case Against Scribd Filter

Posted by timothy on from the damned-if-you-don't dept.

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."

7 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. What about Child Porn? by mightybaldking · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Let us suppose we are an image hosting site, that has in the past been used to host child porn (Think Flickr or ImageHost). By the same logic, it would then be appropriate for us to maintain copies of child porn in order to filter new uploads against it. In my opinion, the only organizations that should be allowed to retain copies of c.p. are those government organizations actively involved in policing it -- regardless of motive. So when our company gets v&, do you think they'll accept our filtering excuse? Notwithstanding that the IP laws are screwed up, It was still an illegal copy, and I feel the author's case has merit.

    1. Re:What about Child Porn? by cgenman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What if you're training filtering applications to automatically discover and block child porn? You'd want to talk to the police first, obviously, but you have a strong legitimate reason in having it there. By you having it for non-nefarious reasons, in order to help stop it, the world would have significantly less of it going around.

      US courts have ordered many services to implement filtering systems for copyrighted material. For those to work, they need to know what the copyrighted material to be blocked is. If you rule that copyright filtering systems can't itself have copies of the material, the copyright blocking systems stop working (to some degree or another). This is exactly the sort of situation that falls under fair use. Otherwise the court orders to implement filtering would have to be overturned, and there would be significantly more infringement going on.

      --
      The ______ Agenda
  2. Re:Seriously? by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know if it is getting ridiculous as much as the law itself is just confusing and unclear.

    It doesn't need to be, the original laws on the subject were pretty easy to understand, and pretty reasonable. Each time they revise it though it just gets worse and worse.

    --
    Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  3. Re:Seriously? by Iamthecheese · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The purpose of America's laws is to benefit the socioeconomic elite, keep everyone else in line, and prevent major social upheaval. The laws are doing just what they are designed to do.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
  4. Re:Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers. --Ayn Rand

  5. Re:Seriously? by Dhalka226 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, it is certainly on the silly side and the money-grubbing-greedy-bitch side as well. But legally speaking, aren't they correct? Especially if they really were holding an entire copy of the work for their filter?

    I'm no expert, but it doesn't seem to me like they actually need to hold a full copy of the work to do their filtering. Can't they just take a random sampling of phrases and search for those, or something else entirely?

  6. Infringed from Orwell's work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Infringed from Orwell's work. The story 1984 has that as the central theme, concentrating on the fact that it is partial enforcement that is used to keep people down, NOT merely lots of laws.

    After all Randians would NOT like the bit about "don't enforce the laws against the rich and connected". Hence her gutting of 1984's main thread.