Reinventing the scarlet letter
May 18, 2007 11:48 AM Subscribe
Can a blogger humiliate copyright infringers?
I ran across a discussion of this a year or two ago at someone's blog (if I knew whose it would simplify this wonderfully). The blogger had suffered copyright infringement, but rather than go through the courts, which is expensive and time consuming, the blogger decided to post the person's name and offense and keep it on the blog. There was discussion as to the legalities and ethics of this.
Me, I like the idea and might incorporate it if I start a creative blog I'm considering. What say you?
I ran across a discussion of this a year or two ago at someone's blog (if I knew whose it would simplify this wonderfully). The blogger had suffered copyright infringement, but rather than go through the courts, which is expensive and time consuming, the blogger decided to post the person's name and offense and keep it on the blog. There was discussion as to the legalities and ethics of this.
Me, I like the idea and might incorporate it if I start a creative blog I'm considering. What say you?
well it might backfire since the person could sue you for libel (arguing that you improperly called them an infringer, and this damaged their reputation or something), and so you'd end up in court anyway arguing the original issue (was there copyright infringement?).
i dunno where you are, but most jurisdictions have a small claims court process where you could go and represent yourself if the claim is under a certain $$ amount; the court costs for small claims needn't be excessive.
posted by modernnomad at 12:09 PM on May 18, 2007
i dunno where you are, but most jurisdictions have a small claims court process where you could go and represent yourself if the claim is under a certain $$ amount; the court costs for small claims needn't be excessive.
posted by modernnomad at 12:09 PM on May 18, 2007
This is not legal advice, but if you're going to post criminal accusations against people on your blog, you might want to look into the defamation laws of various jurisdictions (where you live and where the target lives, at a minimum).
And yes, it may well be a criminal accusation, as many types of copyright infringements are crimes. Anyway, short story is, make sure everything you say is absolutely true, and lay people asserting legal conclusions may not necessarily count as true (e.g., even if you can honestly, certainly assert, "he copied XYZ from my site," you cannot necessarily say "he infringed my copyright on XYZ").
posted by rkent at 12:10 PM on May 18, 2007
And yes, it may well be a criminal accusation, as many types of copyright infringements are crimes. Anyway, short story is, make sure everything you say is absolutely true, and lay people asserting legal conclusions may not necessarily count as true (e.g., even if you can honestly, certainly assert, "he copied XYZ from my site," you cannot necessarily say "he infringed my copyright on XYZ").
posted by rkent at 12:10 PM on May 18, 2007
"All publicity is good publicity." You may just end up drawing more attention and traffic to their site.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 12:22 PM on May 18, 2007
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 12:22 PM on May 18, 2007
The only way this could even possibly be a "criminal accusation" is if the person said "This guy criminally infringed on my copyright."
Simply saying "He infringed on my copyright" wouldn't be because that phrase is at least as applicable to civil as it is to criminal, especially since the definition of criminal copyright infringment (17 USC 506a) is an extension of the base copyright infringment... "Any person who infringes a copyright willfully [and] either...". By my reading of it, without adding some sort of qualification, I don't see how anyone could claim that simply accusing someone of "copyright infringment" would implicate the criminal remedy.
Anyway... yes, if you claim that he infringed your copyright you could wind up in court... (of course, if you write anything about him you could wind up in court) although I question how stupid he'd have to be to sue you if he actually did. You err on the safe side and just say that he copied something of yours without your permission.
posted by toomuchpete at 12:27 PM on May 18, 2007
Simply saying "He infringed on my copyright" wouldn't be because that phrase is at least as applicable to civil as it is to criminal, especially since the definition of criminal copyright infringment (17 USC 506a) is an extension of the base copyright infringment... "Any person who infringes a copyright willfully [and] either...". By my reading of it, without adding some sort of qualification, I don't see how anyone could claim that simply accusing someone of "copyright infringment" would implicate the criminal remedy.
Anyway... yes, if you claim that he infringed your copyright you could wind up in court... (of course, if you write anything about him you could wind up in court) although I question how stupid he'd have to be to sue you if he actually did. You err on the safe side and just say that he copied something of yours without your permission.
posted by toomuchpete at 12:27 PM on May 18, 2007
Who knows if it's had any effect, but t-shirt huckster Todd Goldman has been getting a pretty good thrashing on the tubes lately.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 12:42 PM on May 18, 2007
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 12:42 PM on May 18, 2007
This "shame the ripoff artist" idea is not new. It's no longer active, but there used to be a website called "Pirated Sites" that tracked web-design ripoffs. And this flickr thread documents Dan Cedarholm's Simplebits logo being ripped off by a logos-R-us type company--with the ripoff artist joining the thread.
Obviously, for this to work, the ripoff artist must be capable of shame. And I can't see any legal/ethical/moral problem with pointing out "Gosh, look how similar X is to Y."
posted by adamrice at 12:44 PM on May 18, 2007
Obviously, for this to work, the ripoff artist must be capable of shame. And I can't see any legal/ethical/moral problem with pointing out "Gosh, look how similar X is to Y."
posted by adamrice at 12:44 PM on May 18, 2007
Could you take a screenshot of their page with the copyright violation and just link to it with no declaration of "this person broke the law".
I don't know if anyone would consider that libel or defaming, and it could get your point across if right next to the screen shot you put a small thumbnail of your work that they borrowed.
Let the readers figure it out.
posted by quin at 1:06 PM on May 18, 2007
I don't know if anyone would consider that libel or defaming, and it could get your point across if right next to the screen shot you put a small thumbnail of your work that they borrowed.
Let the readers figure it out.
posted by quin at 1:06 PM on May 18, 2007
Could you take a screenshot of their page with the copyright violation and just link to it with no declaration of "this person broke the law".
That in itself could be a copyright violation, unless the screenshot was an exact copy of your own work, with no modification.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:42 PM on May 18, 2007
That in itself could be a copyright violation, unless the screenshot was an exact copy of your own work, with no modification.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:42 PM on May 18, 2007
I have no ideas as to the legality of things like that, but was the copyright infringement thing the whole Aido/Fallen webcomic incident? I know that was a big deal a while back, and the person's name was listed in the post.
posted by Verdandi at 6:25 PM on May 18, 2007
posted by Verdandi at 6:25 PM on May 18, 2007
Was it Tequila mockingbird by any chance? Copyright infringement case 1 and case 2.
posted by lioness at 7:04 PM on May 18, 2007
posted by lioness at 7:04 PM on May 18, 2007
Philip Greenspun:
I still didn't have enough money to hire a team of lawyers to "put the genie back in the bottle" but why not use the following assets: (1) philip.greenspun.com is more interesting than average; (2) philip.greenspun.com is more stable and, because it is so old, better-indexed than average. Every time another publisher used one of my 10,000 on-line images with a hyperlinked credit, I might earn a new reader. Did their site suck? So much the better. The user wouldn't be likely to press the Back button once he or she arrived at my site through the "photo courtesy http://philip.greenspun.com" link. Of course, my site is non-commercial so extra readers don't translate into cash, but it is satisfying that my work becomes available to people who might not find it otherwise. That took care of the good-faith users. Could I use my site's stability and presence in Web indices to deal with the bad-faith users?posted by russilwvong at 9:33 PM on May 22, 2007
It hit me all at once. An on-line Hall of Shame. I'd send non-crediting users a single e-mail message. If they didn't mend their ways, I'd put their names in my Hall of Shame for their grandchildren to find. I figure that anyone reduced to stealing pictures is probably not creative enough to build a high Net Profile. So a search for their name won't result in too many documents, one of which will surely be my Hall of Shame. What if the infringer were to retaliate by putting up a page saying "Philip Greenspun beats his Samoyed"? Nobody would ever find it because a Google search for "Philip Greenspun" returns too many documents. Try it right now, then try "Shawn Bonnough" for comparison, making sure to include the string quotes in both queries.
This thread is closed to new comments.
I'd imagine someone better versed in the law will chime in shortly.
posted by JaredSeth at 12:06 PM on May 18, 2007