{"id":238,"date":"2006-10-28T14:20:18","date_gmt":"2006-10-28T18:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/10\/28\/copy-permission-and-copyfraud\/"},"modified":"2006-10-28T15:27:34","modified_gmt":"2006-10-28T19:27:34","slug":"copy-permission-and-copyfraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/10\/28\/copy-permission-and-copyfraud\/","title":{"rendered":"copy permission and copyfraud"},"content":{"rendered":"
Judging from reaction to <\/font>our posts<\/font><\/a> this week on fair use, there’s a lot of interest out there in the contours of copyright protections and of the rights to repoduce\u00a0materials found on the internet and in print.\u00a0 Here are additional resources that continue those themes:<\/font><\/div>\n

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\"black\u00a0Nolo.com will by posting <\/font>a podcast<\/font><\/a> today (Oct. 28, 2006),\u00a0with a transcript<\/a> already available at its Podcast Weblog,\u00a0entitled “<\/font>Blogs, Websites & Podcasts: When Do You Need Permission?<\/strong><\/font><\/a>.”\u00a0\u00a0 It is an interview with Rich Stim, author of the Nolo book <\/em><\/font>Getting Permission<\/em><\/font><\/a> and an expert on copyright and fair use.\u00a0\u00a0 The interview examines “what happens if you use other people\u2019s material in your business ”\u00a0\u00a0It focuses\u00a0on when and how to seek permission, but also mentions when you do not need permission — i.e<\/em>., with public domain materials and when making Fair Use.\u00a0 The transcript includes a link to an Interview Release Form and Explanation<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Also, Nolo.com’s Copyright resouces center has an article on When\u00a0Copying\u00a0Is\u00a0Okay<\/a>, and has links to books such as The Copyright Handbook<\/a>: What Every Writer Needs to Know<\/em>, by Stephen Fishman.<\/font><\/div>\n

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\"writing\"\u00a0\u00a0 Prof. Jason Mazzone<\/a> of Brooklyn Law School has been focusing on another important area: Copyfraud<\/strong><\/em>: falsely claiming copyright over materials that are in the public domain.\u00a0Mazzone’s Legal Times<\/em> article “Too Quick to Copyright<\/a>: Companies cheat the law and the public by claiming\u00a0ownership over too much stuff” (Nov. 17, 2003, 2 pp pdf.) gives a good summary of what the problem is and how legislature could solve it.\u00a0 In June 2006, he expanded the analysis greatly with\u00a0the law review article Copyfraud<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, 81 NYULRev. 1026 (2006), which is availalble to download from SSRN<\/a>\u00a0(Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper #40).\u00a0 Here are excerpts from\u00a0the Abstract”\u00a0<\/font><\/font><\/div>\n
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“Copyfraud is everywhere. [even appearing on modern reprints of Shakespeare’s plays and the U.S. Constitution] . . . . These false copyright claims, which are often accompanied by threatened litigation for reproducing a work without the owner’s permission, result in users seeking licenses and paying fees to reproduce works that are free for everyone to use. <\/font><\/div>\n

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” . . . . There is also no remedy under the Act for individuals who wrongly refrain from legal copying or who make payment for permission to copy something they are in fact entitled to use for free. While falsely claiming copyright is technically a criminal offense<\/a> under the Act, prosecutions are extremely rare. These circumstances have produced fraud on an untold scale, with millions of works in the public domain deemed copyrighted, and countless dollars paid out every year in licensing fees to make copies that could be made for free. Copyfraud stifles valid forms of reproduction and undermines free speech. <\/font><\/div>\n
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“Congress should amend the Copyright Act to allow private parties to bring civil causes of action for false copyright claims. Courts should extend the availability of the copyright misuse defense to prevent copyright owners from enforcing an otherwise valid copyright if they have engaged in past copyfraud.\u00a0 . .”<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

——\u00a0 You can find more on the doctrine of Copyright Misuse, in “The Evolving Doctrine of Copyright Misuse<\/em>,” by Brett M. Frischmann and Daniel Moylan (July 2006, available at SSRN<\/a>; via Andrew Raff at IPTABlog<\/em><\/a>). Raizel at LawLibrary Blog<\/em><\/a> has a lengthy and informative article on copyfraud involving Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit (“A Cautionary Tail<\/a>,” March 15, 2006).\u00a0 Mary Minow’s LawLibrary.com<\/em> offers a comprehensive list of resources on Copyright and Libraries<\/a>, that many outside of libraries will also find helpful.\u00a0 It links, for example, to Peter B. Hirtle’s chart\u00a0Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States<\/font><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Judging from reaction to our posts this week on fair use, there’s a lot of interest out there in the contours of copyright protections and of the rights to repoduce\u00a0materials found on the internet and in print.\u00a0 Here are additional resources that continue those themes: \u00a0 \u00a0Nolo.com will by posting a podcast today (Oct. 28, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[896],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-consumer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}