Court Says You Can Copyright a Cease-And-Desist Letter 349
TechDirt has a follow up to a case they covered back in October where a law firm was trying to claim a copyright on the cease-and-desist letters they sent out. Public Citizen poked a number of holes in this claim and invited the lawyers to "try it." Well, unfortunately the lawyers decided to bite and what's more, they actually got a judge to buy it. The news was announced by the victorious lawyer who now claims he can sue anytime someone posts one of his cease-and-desist letters. "The copyrighting of cease-and-desist letters is an easy way for law firms to bully small companies who have committed no wrong, but who have no real recourse to fight back against an attempt to shut them up via legal threat. Until today, many companies who were being unfairly attacked by companies and law firms misusing cease-and-desist letters to prevent opinions from being stated, had a reasonable recourse to such attacks, and could draw attention to law firms that used such bullying tactics to mute any criticism."
FYI (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.citizen.org/documents/directbuycd.pdf [citizen.org]
Public Citizen Is a Fringe Operation (Score:3, Informative)
If you get into trouble and your bottom is on the line, make sure you get a lawyer with enough political sense to figure out how everyone thinks about the case. Not just the dreamers of the techno-utopia who believe that somehow everyone is going post all of their work for free and the farmers and carpenters will be so inspired that they'll just build us McMansions and fill the fridge with steaks.
Re:From the judgement... (Score:2, Informative)
"The recipient of this takedown notice is hereby ordered to take down this very take-down notice from your Web site immediately."
Fixed it. Now it's good to go.
Court did not rule on copyright issue (Score:5, Informative)
Re:not as important as summary makes out (Score:3, Informative)
Re:not as important as summary makes out (Score:1, Informative)
Contact Information from http://www.melaleuca.com/hr/display.cfm?m=1&p=12 [melaleuca.com]their website:
The above page also has a web-based form for contacting them.
Their website is http://www.melaleuca.com/ [melaleuca.com]
I do NOT endorse, in ANY WAY, the daily repeated visiting, or scripted downloading of content through the above website in order to rack up high service charges and/or cause the shut-down of their website, NOR do I endorse the sending of large quantities of copyrighted complaint letters to their electronic or physical location. I cannot be held responsible for what people do with this publicly provided contact information.
Cheers.
Re:The point of copyright (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed, it also a time limited monopoly not intended to last to the end of days, even though some American corporations tries to make it that way. One of the reason it is a time limited monopoly is in recognition of the fact that science and art is not done in a vacuum but builds upon work and ideas of others.
Re:From the judgement... (Score:4, Informative)
It's a literary work, albeit not much of one. So it falls under science (which, in the late 18th century English of the clause, roughly means 'general knowledge' as opposed to the useful arts, which roughly means 'applied technology').
Re:From the judgement... (Score:4, Informative)
Cooking is a useful art, and recipes can be patented if they meet the requirements of a patent. This does occur from time to time -- there's a patent for a peculiar kind of peanut butter and jelly sandwich, IIRC -- but often recipes lack novelty or nonobviousness, or the inventor doesn't bother getting a patent. The written expression of a recipe -- as opposed to the process for cooking that the recipe describes -- is copyrightable if sufficiently creative. But anyone could copy the process and reword it, and where the wording was not creative or original (e.g. "Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees") that wouldn't be protected at all. The difficulty in writing succinct, clear, copyrightable recipes is such that most people don't bother.
Re:not as important as summary makes out (Score:5, Informative)
Re:With rulings like this... (Score:5, Informative)
The ruling that a letter can be copyrightable is nothing new.
In order to claim copyright in a work, the author must give the proper notice as required under Chapter 17, Section 401 of the US Code. This section requires that the work must contain either the word "copyright" or the (c) symbol, followed by the year of publication and the name of the entity claiming the copyright. If the letter published on the Public Citizen website is complete, this information is missing.
Even though Mr. Dozier's press release mentions all of the possible penalties for the infringement of his firm's copyright, they seem to have forgotten Chapter 17, Section 412 of the US Code. That section includes a rule that neither statutory damages nor attorneys fees are available remedies unless the entity claiming copyright has followed Section 407 which requires mandatory deposit of two copies of the work with the Copyright Office within three months after it was initially published. Since the letter was apparently sent on October 5, 2007, the time for this mandatory deposit ran out three weeks ago.
Having said all that, I'll agree that the rich and powerful seem to be using the law to stomp on the rights of the average citizen. However, I don't think that the answer is bloodshed; try contributing to groups like Public Citizen and the Electronic Frontier Foundation who are trying to protect our rights.
Re:With rulings like this... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:With rulings like this... (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Obtaining_and_enforcing_copyright [wikipedia.org]
A FAQ on www.copyright.gov also mentions the automatic protection.
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#mywork [copyright.gov]
Nice, short summary of what was really decided (Score:5, Informative)
Re:With rulings like this... (Score:5, Informative)