Copyright Material vs. File Sharing - Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107

[Marc]

Just a reminder:

Folks, PLEASE do not ask for or attach copyrighted standards or other copyrighted documents to posts and PLEASE do not offer to send anyone copyrighted standard(s) or documents by e-mail in forum posts.

In the past this has not been a significant problem, however lately more and more people are asking for copyright documents and some folks are openly offering to send others copyright documents via e-mail in threads. I don't want to debate whether this is right or wrong - I know many people 'trade' documents from time to time as have I. Unfortunately, people are doing this too publicly which puts me, and the site as a whole, at risk for not controlling it.

I have been contacted by the ISO and AIAG folks in the past (granted it's been about 5 years) and they were not amused. I cannot afford a lawsuit. I know people are going to 'share' from time to time, but Please - Keep your sharing activities private. Remember, what you write in posts in public threads thousands of people can and do read.

Oh, well! On with the show!

 

[jaimezepeda]

Just a reminder:
... Unfortunately, people are doing this too publicly which puts me, and the site as a whole, at risk for not controlling it.

I have been contacted by the ISO and AIAG folks in the past (granted it's been about 5 years) and they were not amused. I cannot afford a lawsuit. I know people are going to 'share' from time to time, but Please - Keep your sharing activities private. Remember, what you write in posts in public threads thousands of people can and do read.

Marc,

Thanks for the reminder and for your efforts (and all others that contribute here regularly) to make The Cove available to those of us seeking answers to common questions.

Jaime

 

[Marc]

Re: Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 - File Sharing vs. Copyright

Here is a very interesting paper on copyrights. It is a Law Review Article on the Problems with Copyright by John Tehranian: from Turnergreen.com (.pdf file). NOTE: Turnergreen.com is long gone.

Excerpt:

"By the end of the day, John has infringed the copyrights of twenty emails, three legal articles, an architectural rendering, a poem, five photographs, an animated character, a musical composition, a painting, and fifty notes and drawings. All told, he has committed at least eighty-three acts of infringement and faces liability in the amount of $12.45 million (to say nothing of potential criminal charges). There is nothing particularly extraordinary about John’s activities. Yet if copyright holders were inclined to enforce their rights to the maximum extent allowed by law, he would be indisputably liable for a mind-boggling $4.544 billion in potential damages each year. And, surprisingly, he has not even committed a single act of infringement through P2P file sharing. Such an outcome flies in the face of our basic sense of justice. Indeed, one must either irrationally conclude that John is a criminal infringer -- a veritable grand larcenist -- or blithely surmise that copyright law must not mean what it appears to say. Something is clearly amiss. Moreover, the troublesome gap between copyright law and norms has grown only wider in recent years."

The point of the article is how, simply by acting normally, all of us are technically lawbreakers many times over every day. When laws are this far outside the social norms, it's time to change them.

 

[Marc]

I have updated the forum Policy on Copy/Paste as well as files attached to posts. Times are changing on the internet. If anyone *does* Copy and Paste, no more than a brief description and a sentence or two. You MUST cite the source of what you have copied. The same goes for files attached to posts.

 

[Marc]

I wanted to "Bump" this thread to remind everyone - Attaching Copyrighted files to posts in threads is strictly forbidden here. We do check uploaded files. One was posted yesterday. It was identified as such within about 15 minutes and the post was deleted.

Uploading a copyrighted file is a significant danger to the Elsmar domain, so please - Abide by our long standing policy here.

We all appreciate compliance with this policy.

Should you identify a copyrighted file someone has attached to a post in a discussion thread, please "Report" the post it is in immediately.

Thanks,

John and the Elsmar crew