Author Drops Copyright Case Against Scribd Filter 81
natehoy writes "Apparently, monitoring for copyright violations is not in itself a copyright violation, lawyers for Elaine Scott decided. As a result, they have dropped the lawsuit against Scribd, who was being simultaneously sued for allowing copies of Scott's work to be published, and retaining an unlicensed copy of the work in their filtering software to try and prevent future copyright violations."
Seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is getting really frickin ridiculous.
They are being sued for not blocking copyrighted data, and then sued for holding a copy in their filter so that they can block further copies? WTF?
What do you even say to that kind of idiot?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you even say to that kind of idiot?
"Case dismissed."
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What do the respective lawyers say to their clients?
Thanks. We'll invoice you.
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See, lawyers hate losing cases, so if they even think they might lose, or, in harsher cases, the plaintiff's a fucking idiot, they'll want to cover themselves, and there's two ways to do that:
1. Get as much money up front.
2. Tell the client they might lose (or are fucking idiots). This isn't for their conscience, mind you, it's to stave off a possible misrepresentation suit.
Of course, even if most l
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There should be a fine for filing a frivolous lawsuit. And of course all court costs.
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There is, if the judge actually rules it frivolous -- and there can be some pretty nasty penalties for the lawyer on top of the fine. However it almost never happens. You have to really be a fuckup to get a judge to make that ruling.
As silly as this case would be, I don't think they're wrong. Having a copy for a good purpose is still having a copy, and that's what copyright is all about. Even if it would be ruled fair use, fair use is an affirmative defense meaning you technically did do what you're a
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if it is getting ridiculous as much as the law itself is just confusing and unclear. It requires court arbitration to figure out the simplest of questions. "Is ripping CDs for a backup 'fair use'?", etc. Unfortunately, law is worse than code in terms of legacy support. Think of this as the ultimate code bloat legacy application. All you want to do is gut the whole thing and start over, but management will not entertain that motion at all.
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The law SERIOUSLY needs to be gutted. I think the common law system is fatally flawed in this way. There's no way for a reasonably informed and intelligent citizen to be able to scratch the surface of the thousands of laws, decisions, precedents which could be brought to bear on him at any moment. How can that possibly be fair?
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That's the point...
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There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers. --Ayn Rand
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I wish I had mod points for you.
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Infringed from Orwell's work (Score:1, Interesting)
Infringed from Orwell's work. The story 1984 has that as the central theme, concentrating on the fact that it is partial enforcement that is used to keep people down, NOT merely lots of laws.
After all Randians would NOT like the bit about "don't enforce the laws against the rich and connected". Hence her gutting of 1984's main thread.
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Just yesterday I saw a copy of the full criminal code, in all its fine print 700 page glory. I don't know how anyone can possibly say with a straight face that "ignorance is not an excuse".
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It's not that ignorance isn't plausible, or even relevant, but that it cannot be used as prima facie evidence against criminal charges. It doesn't *excuse* a criminal act. It *can* be mitigating though. If it were any other way, you'd have people claiming they didn't know rape was illegal.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know if it is getting ridiculous as much as the law itself is just confusing and unclear.
It doesn't need to be, the original laws on the subject were pretty easy to understand, and pretty reasonable. Each time they revise it though it just gets worse and worse.
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>What do you even say to that kind of idiot?
"I'm sorry, from now on I'll use a hash instead"?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, a hash is a derivative work.
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so you've copyrighted all empty files?
i think i have some prior art that nullifies your copyright.
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As I understand it, in the US a work is copyrighted the moment it is created, there is no need to file with anyone. So if you can prove that your work was created before someone else's identical work...
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Sorry, a hash is a derivative work.
I'd laugh but...I'm not so sure it isn't.
Has this been tested in court? Or have copyright lawyers not discovered hashes?
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But that's why you have fair use. It is derived but it's not inringing because copyright law has exceptions for the at sort of thing.
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Are you going to buy a legal copy of the work in question in order to make the hash? If not, you're still violating copyright when you get a copy to make the has with. If f you do buy it, then there's no point in making the hash since you own the copy you'll use in your filter.
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A slight modification to the source and your hash is toast.
mmm.....hash and toast.....and eggs.....and orange juice.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
The deposition goes like so:
Plaintiff's attorney: Are you blocking users from uploading content belonging to my client?
Defendant: Yes.
Plaintiff's attorney: How?
Defendant: We compare uploaded items to a copy of the book on our server.
Plaintiff's attorney: I see. And did you pay for it?
Defendant: What?
Plaintiff's attorney: This book, that you have on your server.
Defendant: Uh, yes. We bought it at Borders and scanned it in.
Plaintiff's attorney: Did you buy a license to make an electronic copy of the hardcopy you purchased?
Defendant: A what?
Plaintiff's attorney: (makes a note).
Defendant: Aw, shit.
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What do you even say to that kind of idiot?
You ask if this is a clever use of the Streisand Effect [wikipedia.org]. Had you heard of Elaine Scott before this?
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Well, it is certainly on the silly side and the money-grubbing-greedy-bitch side as well. But legally speaking, aren't they correct? Especially if they really were holding an entire copy of the work for their filter?
I'm no expert, but it doesn't seem to me like they actually need to hold a full copy of the work to do their filtering. Can't they just take a random sampling of phrases and search for those, or something else entirely?
knew that! (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, I knew that already. My hard-drive contents, including the "diff" program are one big copyright violation monitoring tool.
A real shame. That was a brilliant business model. (Score:2, Funny)
2 - sue when copies of copyrighted works appear on site.
3 - PROFIT!
Re:A real shame. That was a brilliant business mod (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that your #1 is not the facts of the case.
The site was using an unauthorized copy of the work to check for other unauthorized copies.
Stealing a car to look for stolen cars doesn't make you a cop.
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Abundance has ZERO to do with ownership.
Stealing a blade of grass off my lawn makes you a thief.
Got it?
Now, get off it.
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I don't own the air. You're free to breathe it in. Just don't breathe it out at me if you have a disease.
When I access slashdot I grant you a license to the bandwidth needed to read your post.
If every blade of grass remains on your lawn, what was stolen?
If you haven't taken one, you haven't stolen one.
Captcha: "Imbecile" No shit.
There's a reason you refused to sign your post.
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No, I am saying that if they choose to use a copy of the work as a means of automatically ensuring compliance with the law, then they have to pay for that copy.
There are other means to comply with the law. They don't have to break the law in one way to comply with it in another.
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Abundance has ZERO to do with ownership.
Stealing a blade of grass off my lawn makes you a thief.
Got it?
Now, get off it.
And if someone steals a blade of grass from your lawn, they should be required to recompense you for the value of that blade of grass. Which, due to abundance, is basically nothing.
Get it now?
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Grass is not a book. It took me a week to grow that grass from seed. Seed I dind't have to invent. Seed I bought. Regardless, it is my property, and stealing it makes you a thief.
If I did invent the seed, and it was valuable to someone, and you stole one of the seeds from me, you bet your thieving ass I'd be coming at you with a phalanx of lawyers and cops, especially if the law says that my failure to protect my rights to the seed causes my rights to lapse.
Copyright is a valid right. Stealing a book,
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Seriously? Scribd was essentially providing a service saving the author money, and that's grounds for a LAWSUIT? So to ensure that they have nothing illegal on their servers Scribd (and others) should be bound to purchase a copy of EVERY BOOK?!?
Side A: You are bound by law to prevent that from being copied.
Side B: What is "that"?
Side A: Give us money and we'll allow you to know what your bound by law to prevent doing.
IANAL but that smells of extortion to me.
By the way I think your argument using cars shou
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Scribd possessed a copy of a book that they did not pay for, and using it as part of a software program.
That's grounds for a lawsuit.
Whether it "saved" the author money is moot. They could have saved the author money by manually examining uploaded content, instead of by using a pirated copy in their software.
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The only thing "wrong" with it is that fools like you don't understand it.
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Even ignoring the practical impossibility of doing this, presumably they would still have had to purchase a copy of that, and every other, book (and probably one copy for each person that would be tasked with checking the documents) in order to do it legally.
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All we need to do is include books in shrink wraps, and have an EULA you must agree to before openingg, saying you may not use the book in a copyright infringement prevention system.
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Theoretically? Probably.
But the only way to be absolutely sure you are catching all of the violations is to store enough of the work itself that your filter can recognize it when it sees it.
A hash would work, for a specific version of the copyrighted work. However, I could add one sentence to the beginning of the document and the hash would then be different and the filter check would fail.
The only way to be sure is to somehow store enough information about the actual text to recognize that specific text
New Strategy... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's a new strategy for pirates.
"I'm not pirating software! I'm watching out for copyright infringement, and I need a copy in of the pirated product in order to do just that!"
What about Child Porn? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Why wouldn't you be allowed to keep copies for your filter? It would be inane to argue it's harming anyone.
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If you bought the copy you were using in your filter, then you did the right thing.
If you scanned it, or kept one of the illegal uploads as a template, then you hurt the people who didn't get paid for the copy.
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I have no idea why the title of this thread is what it is, but I'm certain it's for an unconscionably stupid reason bordering on or diving deeply into trolling.
I don't want to read it. Suffice it to say that I could refute the reasoning. So just consider it nullified and move on.
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If you bought the copy you were using in your filter, then you did the right thing.
Why should Scribd have to buy a copy to put it in a filter? They haven't infringed the work. They are preventing others from doing so.
The copy they retain will not be distributed. It will be used to prevent further distribution. It exists to help the author, not hurt them.
The logical extension of your line of reasoning is that any author can increase their sales by simply accusing every document-sharing site on the planet of distributing a copy of their work.
Since the site logically needs a copy of the
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If you scanned it, or kept one of the illegal uploads as a template, then you hurt the people who didn't get paid for the copy.
Hurt them? If you make an unauthorized copy, you have merely failed to benefit them. Despite the efforts of the content industry to equate the two, there actually is a difference in both degree and kind between taking twenty dollars out of your pocket and simply not giving you twenty dollars.
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It's not the industry, it's the law.
If I own the content, and you want the content, you pay me for the content. You don't copy it from someone else unless you've paid me, and you don't make copies of it without paying me, and you don't sell copies of it that you haven't paid me for.
There are exceptions to this, some called fair use, but stealing a whole copy of it to be used as part of your business is not that.
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You don't keep a copy of the image in question. You keep a hash to detect duplicates and a simhash to flag potential duplicates.
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What if you're training filtering applications to automatically discover and block child porn? You'd want to talk to the police first, obviously, but you have a strong legitimate reason in having it there. By you having it for non-nefarious reasons, in order to help stop it, the world would have significantly less of it going around.
US courts have ordered many services to implement filtering systems for copyrighted material. For those to work, they need to know what the copyrighted material to be blocked
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US courts have ordered many services to implement filtering systems
Really?
I'd think they'd just order services not to allow infringing content, and leave the means up to the service.
a solution to a simpler problem (Score:2)
What if you're training filtering applications to automatically discover and block child porn? ...
I heard a story about a similar problem with a clever solution. According to the story, IBM wanted to eliminate all "bad words" from all of IBM's computer programs. The expectation, clearly, was that there might be bad words in the comments, which would offend IBM's customers. IBM has customers all over the world, and they read a large number of languages, so the directive was to eliminate all bad words in all of the languages used by IBM's customers.
The programmer given this task was not fluent in all o
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Could I propose an extension to Godwin's Law? Or maybe a modernization of it? "As any legal or political discussion progresses, the probability that someone will bring up child porn approaches one", complete with the "and the person who brought it up loses the argument" clause? Seriously, is that all anyone thinks about anymore?
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That would only be valid if there were a single "child porn" and only exact copies of it were child porn. As this is obviously not true, your analogy fails.
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Child porn brings up some other arguments, but I'll leave those for another discussion and discuss this:
I feel the author's case has merit.
One or the other portions of this specific case may have merit, but saying that BOTH aspects of the case has merit is basically saying that all web sites need to be shut down immediately for potential copyright violation.
Ms. Scott initially demanded that Scribd perform due diligence on her behalf to prevent distribution of her copyrighted work. That is a fair and reasonable request, and the DMCA allows f
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Can you explain how Scribd knowingly made a copy of her work and profited from that copy?
Scribd's users knowingly made copies of her work. Once Scribd was made aware of the infringement, they reacted properly and appropriately to the DMCA notice and implemented a filter to prevent further distribution of the work. So they did not knowingly make the copies that they profited from. Case one for the defendant, DMCA "Safe Harbor" protects them from prosecution since they acted swiftly and appropriately in re
Judge! (Score:2, Funny)
I wish they would have been found guilty (Score:2, Funny)
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actually it more likely would have led to a system where user generated content is dis allowed because there is no other way to block copyrighted material.
Is this a precedent for online music? (Score:2)
This could be a useful precedent for the music business. A growing problem is: You're a musician who thinks you've written a new tune, but think you might be pulling a George Harrison and merely putting new words to someone else's tune. How do you find out if the tune in your head is copyrighted?
Some significant work has been done with putting music online in several computer-encoded forms, with several lookup tools that try to identify similar pieces of music. Leaving aside the fact that this is a nont
so, let's see what's happening here (Score:2)
Step 1: Private profit-making business wants to make money by hosting other people's work (not necessarily without authorisation).
Step 2: Some woman points out that her work was up without her authorisation.
Step 3: Private profit-making business takes down her work and instead makes a copy of her work as part of an algorithm to prevent further infringement.
Step 4: Woman points out the business is still making an unauthorised copy of her work.
Step 5: Slashdot protects the "right" ("sense of entitlement") of