Sony Sends DMCA Notices Against Users Spreading Leaked Emails 138
Dangerous_Minds writes Last week, Sony threatened legal action against users spreading information obtained through the e-mails that were leaked as a result of the Sony hack. Sony has begun carrying through with those threats. Twitter, after resisting demands that a user account be suspended for publishing leaked e-mails, has received a DMCA notice saying that the e-mails are, weirdly enough, copyrighted.
Move everything offshore (Score:1)
And screw Sony...
Considering how copyright law is being applied, the emails probably are.
Perjury (Score:4, Interesting)
No, the weird part is not that they claim the emails are copyrighted. The weird part is them claiming they own the copyright. While it's almost certainly true that most the email would be considered work-for-hire and hence default to Sony Pictures, it's also a good bet that there's plenty of emails that are personal in nature and would fall into the camp of abuse of network services by their users but that would simultaneously amount to the point that the emails were copyrighted by the actual sender and not Sony Pictures.
And that alone would seem grounds enough to move against them for perjury charges since as been pointed out many times, you can't legally send a takedown notice over a copyrighted work that you don't own the copyright on. So, I can't send take down notices for "The Interview" but if I made a game called Interviewers and had a bot that send auto take down notices that accidentally flagged "The Interview" over my Interviewers copyright, that'd be okay. Of course, either way I could be sued, but it wouldn't be outright illegal in the latter case.
Not that I think Sony Pictures gives a fuck. Hmm..is that libel? Nah, that's just an opinion.
did they DMCA any non-business emails (Score:5, Informative)
Let me startbby saying, "rootkit" Sony sucks. With that out of the way:
The emails mentioned in TFA appear to be business emails from Sony people. Did they send a DMCA notice about any personal emails? Did I miss that somewhere?
Regarding perjury, the DMCA doesn't say that any erroneous or improper notice is perjury. The perjury clause refers to identifying yourself. If I were to send a DMCA notice about content owned by Dice, claiming to be a representative of Dice, that claim that I am Dice's representative would be under penalty of perjury. I'd be in trouble because I'm not actually a representative of Dice.
Any other deficiency in a DMCA notice is likely to be grounds for a civil suit, only, based on damages. It might be tortiuous interference, for example. It wouldn't be perjury.
copywrites to the writer, incl summary (Score:3)
>. include ones that describe Brad Pitt's reaction to certain movie cuts". If you read the email (God forbid), it seems the content is somewhere in-between personal and private and 80% of it is summarizing an email/text/conversation/whatever that, if anything, would be copyrighted by Brad Pitt
It describes a party contracted with Sony Pictures threatening to breach that contract; a contract to make and publicize a Sony Pictures product. It then addresses what Sony Pictures has done (reassured the other p
ps YOU claiming fair use (Score:2)
PS - in the example of you quoting me, you could of course try to claim fair use of my writing, but that's not the situation you're talking about. If I understand you correctly, you are talking about if "your" words were copypasta from someone else, in doesn't which case adding my words wouldn't give me grounds to authorize infringing their copyright.
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IIRC, the DMCA only requires that you have a "good faith belief" that you control the copyright in order for mistaken use to be allowable without punishment. That's a pretty hard thing to disprove. And, also IIRC, a lawyer is allowed to have a "good faith belief" that his client is telling him the truth even if said client has a very long history of lying. (Did a lawyer actually issue the request? It's often done that way.) In that case the client risks NOTHING, except being refused.
So why *wouldn't* S
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In addition, the copyright of any emails received from thrid parties do not belong to Sony. They belong to the originator of the emails.
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For added fun - this varies.
In the EU, 'sweat of brow' copyright is generally recognised - if you spent a lot of effort doing something, you may have it copyrighted - even though it is merely a collection of facts.
In the US, this is much less true.
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would fall into the camp of abuse of network services by their users
Most companies allow limited, non-disruptive personal use of computers. Unless youre in a really sensitive job like CIA or something, people generally allow shooting a quick email to family during or after hours.
Sorry, can't get excited about this... (Score:3)
Sure, copyrighted... Whatever. Seriously, these emails are relevant only to a relatively small number of people in the entertainment industry, so publishing them is really nothing more than a "fuck you" to Sony.
I think the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Case against... (Score:2)
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Forwarding an email is, legally, copyright infringement. But copyright infringement is only (legally) enforced if the owner of the copyright is willing to either enforce it or to delegate the enforcement to some other entity. The problem with the DMCA is that there is no penalty for fraudulent use of takedown notices. (Well, there *are* penalties, don't *you* try it, but any lawyer can work around them.)
Right To Be Forgotten (Score:2)
Re:I think the point... (Score:5, Informative)
You've got the wrong handle on DMCA...
1. It criminalizes the creation of software designed to circumvent copyright. That's not happening here.
2. It grants"safe harbor" to ISPs and companies against violations*BY THEIR USERS* so long as the company has a takedown & dispute resolution mechanism. In this case Sony claims copyright, and Twitter can absolve itself of responsibility by leaving the user in question to be the one to file a counterclaim (presumably on fair-use grounds)
The "Safe Harbor" is the point (Score:3)
It makes it really easy to get stuff silenced and much harder to get it back out there; especially for quasi-legal journalistic sources like leaks.
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This doesn't seem particularly related to the DMCA, except for the ability to send a take-down notice instead of a lawsuit.
Circumstances such as these are why the principle of fair use has existed since the 1700s. In US law:
Biggest tech story of the last few months (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Biggest tech story of the last few months (Score:5, Informative)
There is a difference between reporting, and wholesale redistribution. Reporting is fair use, but that's not happening (much). Wholesale redistribution is certainly not fair use, and Sony can indeed claim such redistribution violates copyright.
Now the interesting thing is going to be (if this ever gets challenged in court): who owns the copyright over those e-mails? Is it Sony as employer, or are it the individual authors of those e-mails? The received e-mails are certainly not copyright Sony, the copyright on those is owned by those who sent them to Sony employees.
In principle, everything falls under copyright. Even these comments. However by posting it on a public board, we implicitly give Slashdot permission to redistribute it. An e-mail I send to the feedback section of a newspaper also comes with the implicit permission to print and redistribute it in the newspaper. An e-mail one sends to Sony or someone else, however, does normally not have such a permission - it's hard to argue implicit permission to redistribute. This sidestepping the obvious privacy related to e-mail, which is generally meant to be read by the recipient(s) only.
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However by posting it on a public board, we implicitly give Slashdot permission to redistribute it. An e-mail I send to the feedback section of a newspaper also comes with the implicit permission to print and redistribute it in the newspaper.
Two different kinds of implicit, one is much weaker than the other. In one case the terms are also implicit, I could have just sent the email to the wrong address. What about editing for size, can they do that though it no longer fully expresses your opinion? It's all up in the air. Boards and feedback forms are usually different, they typically have an explicit agreement that you agree to through:
a) User registration
b) Checking a box
c) Submitting/uploading content
d) Terms of the site
I'm pretty sure that if
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A better question, if this ever gets challenged in court, is who registered the copyrights?
IANAL, but my understanding is that for a copyright lawsuit in the USA to go anywhere, the "work" has to be registered with the copyright office. No registration, no lawsuit, do not pass "Go".
Which, practically speaking, means a DMCA complaint on something like an e-mail (which is unlikely to be
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Registration is not necessary, but it does make things a lot easier if you indeed have to defend a copyright.
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Not really. The fair use provision here is if the copyrighted work is newsworthy. The fact that the emails have been leaked is big news, but the emails themselves are not necessarily newsworthy.
If the emails are just boring everyday emails of people at work, then copyright would still apply. Ironically, if the email were scandalous or embarrassing to Sony, then it would be fair use to publish them because the revelation would be newsworthy. So all a DMCA n
fair use commentary (Score:1)
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Yes, it does.
Note the line at the top of the comment section on Slashdot:
Slashdot is acting as a publisher of your comment. By hitting post you are using that publication service, asking Slashdot to distribute your copyrighted comment in a particular way. Slashdot can't use your comment in other ways, such as making TV commercials featuring it, without your permission. Also, I can't take yo
old /. (Score:2)
Why hasn't the dump been posted? years ago, there would of been 5 links to the data to sift thru in every article posted for consumption here.
Small emails (Score:1)
They must be small emails if someone can send them in tweet.
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They must be small emails if someone can send them in tweet.
Sony employees communicate exclusively in Haiku.
Sony views this as primarily a PR problem (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why there are the DCMA takedown notices and the threats to sue. They figure that if they can keep it out of the press then it will soon be forgotten and they won't have much to worry about.
This might work for the general public, but in Hollywood it's not going to be that easy. Besides the powerful individuals that they trashed, it's now obvious that that they also engage in routine conspiracies to get what they want. That's what the Google maneuver was about. A lot of players are going to realize that Sony had done a lot of dirty deeds already, and some will see that previous problems may be the result of underhanded tactics. Not that anyone else is better, but having confirmation effectively raises the stakes.
Personally, I enjoy looking forward to some real pain in Sony land. They have a bad reputation among the Hollywood rank and file, so there will be a lot of schadenfreude in the new year. It's long overdue.
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It's all about stopping the Hollywood Accounting facts making it to the real press. They don't care about senior staff making nigger jokes about the president, but they
are terrified the illegal financial dealings practised by the industry will prove prosecutors with enough data to start hauling CEOs into court facing RICO charges.
Sony have successfully persuaded large media outlets to remove or change what's being discovered. It's pretty scary just how they can manage this, it makes you wonder what dirt the
Thiscould be GOOD (Score:1)
If emails are copyrighted materials, we may suddenly get the backing of giant industries in the fight against the villains at the NSA.
After all you wouldn't want "personal emails" to be a perfectly acceptable thing to copy and redistribute...
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Emails are copyrighted already.
Everything you make is copyrighted, to you.
That people don't understand this is, "weirdly", common.
The question of whether you could enforce action against infringers and/or whether reproducing those emails is against the copyright is another thing entirely and down to local law.
But, pretty much, this post is copyrighted. There may be a line somewhere that assigns the copyright in it to Slashdot (I don't think there is, Facebook tried that and couldn't get away with it), but
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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"Stolen"? "IP"? The data was copied, not stolen. And using propaganda terms like IP here just seems totally inappropriate. The DMCA is a law created by government thugs for the purposes of making it easier for companies to censor information on demand under threat of force (websites lose safe harbor if they don't comply, which is bad for them).
Is there a list of Sony films in theaters in 2015? (Score:3)
Is there a list anywhere of Sony produced films hitting theaters in 2015 so I know which films to boycott and not go and see?
I know The Interview is Sony (not that I had any intention of going to see it anyway) and Hobbit is Warner Brothers/New Line (saw it the other day and it was great) but I cant find any information to help me figure out what other theatrical releases of 2015 I should be avoiding (both going to the cinema AND pirating) if I want to avoid Sony.
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Is there a list anywhere of Sony produced films hitting theaters in 2015 so I know which films to boycott and not go and see?
How long will it take you to visit Wikipedia or the IMDB before you buy tickets for a given film, to make sure it's not published by Sony?
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Pixels. The screenplay was one of the leaked documents. It actually looked somewhat amusing, skimming through.
Oh, well. To the torrents!
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and don't bother checking if the claim is valid
If a host receives a notice and wants to keep their 'safe harbour' privilege in the eyes of the law, then the host has no choice but to accept the claims in the notice and immediately take down the file. The host does not (and in most cases cannot) make any determination of validity. It's up to the person who posted the file to prove to the host that the claim in the notice is incorrect. - In other words the DCMA system operates under the assumption of "guilty until proven innocent". There are penalties for
This post is copyrighted (Score:2)
If you cut and paste this message I will raid your kid's college fund.
Happy New Year!
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If you cut and paste this message I will raid your kid's college fund.
Happy New Year!
I didn't know I had a kid.
please please (Score:2)
We are rich (Score:2)
Is this a good thing? (Score:2)
The more companies try to cram under the umbrella of DMCA, I feel, the more opposition to the DMCA notices will crop up. This may end up being a good thing. Sure, cram it all under DMCA - start spamming everyone you can with accusations not befitting of copyright violation, and it'll only water down the 'authentic' violation notices - perhaps authorities will throw the baby out with the bathwater when evaluating DMCA complaints.
not weirdly... (Score:2)
Re:Are emails copyrighted ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Everything you create is copyrighted automatically; unless you create it as part of your job, in which case it's owned by whoever paid you.
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Everything you create is copyrighted automatically; unless you create it as part of your job, in which case it's owned by whoever paid you.
No that is not true. If I create some software I can license it or effectively give it away, although I should have to explicitly state my intentions with regard to the mail and/or software otherwise that mail or software can be considered copyright however I would leave this up to the Lawyers.
If someone stole my mail or anything from my computer then they are effectively "Breaking and Entering" or to use the correct wording "Cracking" which is a crime. Now if that same mail and or software is given without
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No that is not true. If I create some software I can license it or effectively give it away...
The fact that you - automatically - hold the copyright for the works you create doesn't prevent you from doing either of those things. Indeed, copyright is necessary for you to be able to license the work.
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Copyright ownership does not mean something cannot be distributed or given away or copied, how would anyone publish anything then? Copyright ownership is merely legal control over how something is copied and distributed and the owner get's to define how people can and cannot copy their work. For example, the copyright owner of a book would allows a printer to create copies of their copyrighted content in each book that they print. There's limits on the control with things like fair use and the first sale do
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*I Am Not A Supreme Court Justice
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unless you create it as part of your job, in which case it's owned by whoever paid you.
Usually. If for instance youre an independent contractor and create the work as part of a solution you sell to the client, the copyright may remain with you.
Re: Are emails copyrighted ? (Score:1)
You don't need to register it, but doing so makes the legal proceedings more straightforward.
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however, in order to protect said automatic copyright, and have legal standing to win a lawsuit for instance, in the u.s. works must be registered with the trademark and copyright office.
Nonsense. That's only true if your lawyers don't have deep pockets, but Sony's do.
You are factually incorrect. (Score:5, Informative)
however, in order to protect said automatic copyright, and have legal standing to win a lawsuit for instance, in the u.s. works must be registered with the trademark and copyright office. this, of course, was not done with the emails. this can be considered dissemination of proprietary and confidential corporate property and trade secrets, which should have at least as strong of a case for sony.. just not via dmca.
Very incorrect, on two counts:
(1) Copyright registration is merely a verifiable record of the date and content, in case of some future claim of plagarism or Copyright infringement by another party. Registration is only required on claims of statutory damages for an infringement suit, and that's valid as long as it occurs within 3 months of publication. For that to be useful to Sony, however, they would have to also establish value for the Copyright work. Since they were able to do this for the "Spectre" script, Twitter took the excerpts down. Email is a different matter.
(2) AT&T USL attempted to pull the "Trade Secret" trick of having their cake and eating it to in the AT&T USL v. The Regents of the University of California at Berkeley. The problem with Trade Secret disclosure is once a secret is disclosed, it's no longer secret. You can Patent something (requires disclosure) or you can Copyright something (also requires disclosure). In exchange for that disclosure, you are then granted certain legal protections, but those protections do not attach to Trade Secrets. For a Trade Secret, in order to collect damages, you, again, have to establish a value for the Secret. But - and this is a big one - you can only collect those damages against the original discloser - you are not permitted to seek out deep pockets. So Sony can take it up with North Korea (or whoever we've decided was responsible this week), but they can't take it up with this Twitter user, unless they can prove he was the disclosing party. So again: any trade secrets in to emails is *gone*.
The other problem is the use of the DMCA in this case: unless you are the Copyright holder, or you are a designated agent acting on behalf of the Copyright holder, you do not have standing, under the law, to assert a DMCA claim on behalf of someone else. This was the problem that a number of the DMCA takedown companies had with their third party takedown notices. This was actually precisely what occurred in the Righthaven v. Wayne Hoehn case.
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Copyright does not require disclosure. If that were so, significantly more source code would be available for perusal.
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>The other problem is the use of the DMCA in this case: unless you are the Copyright holder...you do not have standing...to assert a DMCA claim...
So what's the problem? Virtually all business-related correspondence and documents can probably be safely presumed to have been created under work-for-hire agreements which would place the copyrights firmly in Sony's possession. Thus granting them standing.
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>The other problem is the use of the DMCA in this case: unless you are the Copyright holder...you do not have standing...to assert a DMCA claim...
So what's the problem? Virtually all business-related correspondence and documents can probably be safely presumed to have been created under work-for-hire agreements which would place the copyrights firmly in Sony's possession. Thus granting them standing.
It depends on whether the emails constitute work product or not. Certainly some of the emails which I've seen would not qualify, as they were personal emails. In fact, most of the significantly inflammatory ones were personal emails to business partners and colleagues, rather than business related, other than tangentially. And these are the ones Sony would most want quashed.
For attorney/client communications, it's possible that privilege would attach. Under U.S. law, the attorney would need to be acting
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Unless both parties took step to secure the email, it would be hard to prove such privacy applies. Email is stored as plain text on every system it passes through. And in many (most?) cases, flows between systems in plain sight. Your own email application is also likely passing traffic in the clear. ('tho tls/ssl are far more common these days, very few MTAs use an encrypted local store.)
It would be further invalidated by the fact that company resources were being used for private personal communications. (
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Re:Are emails copyrighted ? (Score:4, Informative)
Everything you create is copyrighted automatically; unless you create it as part of your job, in which case it's owned by whoever paid you.
Not in my country it's not. You have to register it first otherwise it isn't copyrighted.
If your country is a signatory to the Berne Convention, and it probably is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_international_copyright_treaties) you're wrong. Copyright is automatic upon creation of a work. This post I'm writing, right now, is automatically copyright... the TOS I agree to by posting it here allows[1] Slashdot to present it, archive it, etc. But you're not allowed to distribute it without my consent, except as per fair use and other exemptions, not that I actually give a damn or would even know about it, mind you.
[1]Is it 'allows' or 'allow'? If I read the sentence and think of 'TOS' as a word, 'allows' sounds right. But if I read the sentence and mentally expand TOS to 'Terms Of Service', 'allow' sounds right.
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[1]Is it 'allows' or 'allow'? If I read the sentence and think of 'TOS' as a word, 'allows' sounds right. But if I read the sentence and mentally expand TOS to 'Terms Of Service', 'allow' sounds right.
Both are correct in American English. Anytime you can read an acronym as a word or as the represented words, you can treat it like either for things like subject verb agreement.
You can also view this as having an extra word with it in the singular case. For example, if you say, the TOS allows, what you really mean is that the terms of service *agreement* allows.
Anyway, pick the interpretation that you prefer (TOS is a singular collective or an abbreviation of a plural) and go with that. Don't switch inte
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Anytime you can read an acronym as a word...
An acronym must form a word, that's what distinguishes it from an abbreviation (such as TOS).
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The Handy Dandy Slashdot Guide to Stuff
Initialism (say the letters): DEA, FBI, CIA, NSA. TLAs.
Acronym (say the word): NATO, RADAR, SCUBA, LASER.
Abbreviation (say the full form of the word/phrase): Mrs., lbs., vs., etc..
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This isn't true. Well, mostly.
Any work you create is copyrighted; however, it's unenforceable unless registered, assuming you live in the US.
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Any work you create is copyrighted; however, it's unenforceable unless registered, assuming you live in the US.
And that's also not true. It's not a prerequisite to register copyrights for it to be enforceable. Having it registered however does make it a lot easier to enforce later.
About 95% of the people in this world do not live in the US, and will not register their copyrights in the US, yet the material they produce is fully copyright protected in the US under US copyright law.
Most of the software created by individuals and released under the GPL is not registered either. That doesn't make the GPL any less valid
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Very little copyrighted work is registered. Registration only serves as a verifiable record of when it was produced, and by whom. If there's another verifiable record, such as a published copy, then registration isn't even particularly useful. Which is why a lot of published work is not registered.
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The Pentagon Papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] did offer some insight into the idea that publication and discussion was the role of a free and unrestrained press in the USA.
The other legal idea is that of the Snowden GCHQ files and the UK gov understanding of the jigsaw quality of intelligence information.
Do people in the US want to enjoy the role of a free and unrestrained press or enter a new UK like legal system of professional responsibility and l
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Do people in the US want to enjoy the role of a free and unrestrained press or enter a new UK like legal system of professional responsibility and legal safeguards?
I dont know. Does the UK system cause fundamental human nature to change such that you can trust those in power to act responsibly with no scrutiny?
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"You lose, journalism. Carrying GCHQ docs is terrorism" 19 Feb 14
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar... [wired.co.uk]
"... because the journalist will have his own take or focus on what serves the public interest, for which he is not answerable to the public through Parliament."
The UK has other ideas on press freedoms and any scrutiny
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Do those ideas involve super injunctions for libel? Blocking the mere discussion of a company and its doings in Africa because they might cause financial harm?
Yes, the US has issues, but our default stance is much more towards free speech than the UK.
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Re: Are emails copyrighted ? (Score:1)
I wonder why people believe that? Where did this peculiar misconception originate ?
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Have you noticed right at the top of the comment section this text?
Whatever you right is automatically copyrighted as soon as you write it (or take a picture, or record a song). Marking it with a copyright symbol is not required, and is mostly useful to indicate who owns the copyright (who to contact for permission to use it) and to indicate that the author intends to enforce his copyright.