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CBS Sues Man For Copyright Over Screenshots of 59-year-old TV Show (arstechnica.com)
CBS has sued a photographer for copyright infringement for publishing a still image from a 59-year-old television show. From a report: The lawsuit against New York photojournalist Jon Tannen, filed on Friday, is essentially a retaliatory strike. Tannen sued CBS Interactive in February, claiming that the online division of CBS had used two of his photographs without permission. Now, CBS has sued Tannen back, claiming that he "hypocritically" used CBS' intellectual property "while simultaneously bringing suit against Plaintiff's sister company, CBS Interactive Inc., claiming it had violated his own copyright." "Without any license or authorization from Plaintiff, Defendant has copied and published via social media platforms images copied from the Dooley Surrenders episode of GUNSMOKE," write CBS lawyers. CBS is asking for $150,000 in damages for willful infringement.
Live by the $150,000 sword, die by the same as the saying goes.
People who live in glass houses and all that.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
If there was no payout to lawyers for enabling this garbage it would go away
This was petty payback by the CBS legal department because the guy sued CBS for using his copyright photos without approval.
So the lawyer at CBS is suing him for using screenshots. Very petty since everyone shares screenshots and screenshots are not photos.
So fucking petty, and this should be a SLAP lawsuit and the Judge should bitch slap the CBS lawyer for abusing the courts.
So? The exclusivity of copyright isn't in any way a natural law - it's an artificial creation which society provides for a limited time to encourage creation, so that society can afterwards gains from unrestricted use of that work. Nobody writes a song assuming an ROI covering more than 20 years. Copyright doesn't need to be longer than that (or the original 14 + one 14 year renewal, which I support) in order to encourage creation of new works. Current term is life of the author plus 70 years. Would you at least agree that is too long?
There's no reason for Beatles songs to still be under copyright, either songwriting or performance. Same for Disney's Snow White. It's long past time for society to get paid for providing those exclusive rights to begin with.
Copyrights are automatic at the time of creation. A patent is much more effort to obtain, not just the idea but the documentation and process. Yet they last only 20 years. And there's no lack of new inventions because of it.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
And that's another problem with copyright as it's been implemented. When you publish a work, you are contracting with the government to protect your work for the period of copyright at the time you publish the work; if the term of copyright is later extended, it should not retroactively apply to already-published work. Those works were published with the full knowledge and agreement of the creator knowing what the term of protection was; if they weren't satisfied with the term of protection, they were free not to publish.
Yep. Although to be honest, while they fucked over the world, the EU did the same by trading Disney's copyright extension for continued support of EU agriculture subsidies. Equal opportunity assholes.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
What has to actually change to prevent these kind of out of proportion, justice and claims?
Human nature.
Copyright being limited to 25 years.