Pondering copyright laws; questions for lawyer types

[elfwreck]

In Which Elf Considers The Legality Of Litigation-Related Intimidation, or, is it legal to say "I'll sue you," even if there's no grounds for a lawsuit?

I've recently signed up at Wowio, which allows free download of three ebooks per day (and a queue of up to 500, so you can pick the ones you like to download later, and adjust the order you want

Comments

[saralogan]

So what qualifies as a "non-anonymous" email address? I assume my @uiowa.edu email address is okay, although the email has yet to go through.

How are the books, otherwise? I LOLed a bit when I saw Jane Austen in the romance section, but was sad at the lack of heaving bosoms. :(

[elfwreck]

The books are fine. A lot are in the public domain, and could be found at Univ of Virginia ebook collection or Gutenberg, but these are nicely formatted.

I'm reading Beyond a Reaonable Doubt and having fun considering that apparently several very high courts have decided that the phrase "reasonable doubt" is so utterly confusing that they refuse to define it for jurors.

Am also confirming my belief that (1) I will never be on a jury, and (2) if ever arrested, one of the first things I need to announce is that I'm a Discordian, with religious devotions that include misdirections and deceit for the purpose of bringing spiritual enlightenment, just as they have a right to lie for the purpose of uncovering crimes, and I will not agree to tell "the truth" unless they will sign a contract agreeing to same.

But that's secondary. I'm liking the books from Wowio, even though I find their TOS in regards to copyright to be an utter mess, and the copyright notices in the books themselves to be examples of speculative fiction.

[brock_tn]

If the law required that everyone be absolutely truthful all of the time, there would be no advertising or marketing industries... ...which might or might not be a bad thing.

If the material being offered by a publisher is protected by copyright in the form in which that material is offered, then I believe that the publisher is entitled to assert that the material is protected by copyright. I don't think that any provision of the law requires the publisher to make it explicitly clear that the base text is in the public domain and that the copyright strictly speaking applies only to the format and appearance of the work.

One might as well call this the doctrine of caveat lector.There is an assumption present here that anyone with a legitimate need to make use of the work within the fair use guidelines will already know enough about what constitutes "fair use" as to not get into trouble. I suspect that the copyright notice that is present is primarily a means of legally maintaining the publisher's rights, since, in the case of of

[elfwreck]

By that logic, it'd be legal for me to post a "No Parking 4PM-Midnight" sign in front of my house, on the theory that people interested in parking in the area would know that any sign not affixed by the city wasn't legally enforceable. (And I'd love to do this. Really

[brock_tn]

By that logic, it'd be legal for me to post a "No Parking 4PM-Midnight" sign in front of my house, on the theory that people interested in parking in the area would know that any sign not affixed by the city wasn't legally enforceable. (And I'd love to do this. Really.)

I'm sure you would. But it's not a good parallel: your example has you usurping a prerogative of the gummint, and that always tends to make the gummint a bit testy and hard to get along with.

And these publishers are interfering with free speech, by insisting the public doesn't have the right to use the contents of these books.

The First Amendment (as modified and extended by the Fourteenth Amendment,) says that governments may not limit free speech. It doesn't say anything about private, non-governmental bodies like corporations. Corporations limit speech all the time: try sending everyone in your company an e-mail saying that your boss is an alcoholic, drug-using pedophile racist who runs a dogfighting ring and see how well a free-speech defense works at your

[elfwreck]

What would have to be shown to get a court to rule otherwise is that the public is somehow harmed by the lack of a more explicit and specific disclosure.Like, for example, the academic papers that aren't allowed to quote their subject matter? The documentaries that are told to delete relevant footage because a Coke delivery truck drove past during shooting? The stories and art that can't be published-for-money (or even shared openly) because some publishers think copyright covers total rights to control everything remotely inspired by their works

[gessatrude]

I don't know about the legalities of the copyright (since some of the books appear to be newer publications not in the public domain), but I do know you've managed to find me yet *another* site to get addicted to.

PS.

How exactly do you unlock the pda?

[elfwreck]

With PDF Password Remover 2.5. Available at many free download spots; google for it & use whichever one has the easiest interface for you to deal with. (Some of the free software sites are so loaded with ads and scripts that they won't load on dialup accounts

[crazykimmy]

Brock is right above. It's totally legal to copyright the form of something. This is what is actually copywritten in most compilations--the actual presentation of the material. Basically the content is freely available, and should you want to share it, you can simple find one of those copies--the original in the public domain--and run with that if you need to share it.

This is an area of IP law that gets sketchy--most pattern writers/recipe makers claim copyright on their material. They more frequently hold it on the presentation of the material and not the matter of it. Why? To prevent people from stifling the free flow of information by copyrighting simple repeateable things and preventing other legitimate usages of it. Truth be told, if someone actually could copyright a specific stitch pattern rather than the method of notating it, there'd be a lot less knitting books published. But it's a sketchy area of law, as he's noted, you can make a claim that the only course to challenge it would be court.

[elfwreck]

I know it's legal to copyright the form. The question is whether it's legal to imply that the text is copyrighted as well. (Which I'm not directly claiming is done here, but suspecting that it might be--that many publishers of public domain works, perfectly aware that only the format is copyrightable, nevertheless deliberately use phrasing the same as that which is used for original material, to imply that the text as well as the format is copyrighted.)

The claim, "no part of this ebook may be reproduced in any form without written permission" is false. The *content* can be copied at will--the strings of words are in the public domain--and those are certainly part of the ebook.

Is it legal to claim a right they don't have? Would it be legal for me, for example, to put a "No Parking" sign in front of my house--and remove it just before my husband gets home? (Or not remove it, 'cos he knows there's no police enforcing a no-parking zone here?)

[crazykimmy]

If you know IP Law, then you know that's not what they're claiming. It's perfectly reasonable to say that about their ebook: if you are copying over their formatting, you're violating their copyright. You acknowledged yourself that they've prettied it up; they have every legal right to protect that in the work. The language that accompanies their publication is standard and meets the criteria of the Act of 1976. There is nothing really remiss in their usage of it.

Because I deal with this type of copyright issue all the time, I can say with assurance that there is nothing illegal about their claim. Nor would anyone in IP Law or publishing look askance at it. Court decisions/goverment documents are public domain unless I am procuring them from a publisher like Thompson West that holds copyright over their formatting. I can tell you, certain publishers will assert their rights, like Westlaw. You just have to deal with the rights issue, or look for public domain sources elsewhere.

[elfwreck]

If you know IP Law, then you know that's not what they're claiming.

For years, tobacco companies claimed they were being honest about the risks of their products, and that they hadn't tried to mislead anyone about the dangers; they were, like alcohol companies, offering a substance that was subject to occasional misuse. Later, it was found they had attempted to cover up the dangers, to deceive people about the real risks.

Publishers are free to claim their copyrights. (However, even if they'd written the contents themselves, the statement is false: I don't need their permission to quote for review, or to write a parody of it.)

But they're not free to claim more rights than they have. Not free to restrict other people's free speech by threatening them with lawsuits they can't possibly prosecute. I'm pondering whether they are doing this, and what it would take to prove it if they were

[vicki_sine]

Apparently it is perfectly legal to sue someone even if you have no legitimate grounds.

They won't win the law suit, but hey they can find a cheap attorney to file it and the person sued gets to probably pay an even more expensive attorney, because they don't want to lose over some legal faux paux by a bad attorney.

Unfortunately there is no law against frivolous lawsuits. Believe me if there were I can think of one particular person who would find herself back in court in a heart beat.

[brock_tn]

In some jurisdictions (California, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, for example,) bringing a meritless action solely for purposes of harassment is a criminal act, formally known as barratry, and generally punishable as a misdemeanor. Barratry (in this specific sense) is considered an actionable civil tort in most jurisdictions.

The term "barratry" has other meanings at law, but they aren't really relevant to this discussion.

[vicki_sine]

Interesting.

And it certainly might apply then in the case under discussion.

Unfortunately I live in Texas, and we have a few unemployed lawyers who don't mind working cheap and judges who apparently want to keep them employed.