Canadian Anti-Piracy Firm Caught Infringing Copyright 61
An anonymous reader writes: Canipre, a Montreal-based intellectual property enforcement firm, yesterday issued a press release announcing an infringement monitoring program designed to take advantage of the Canada's new copyright notice-and-notice system. Yet a new report indicates that the company may itself be engaged in copyright infringement, with a director's blog posting dozens of full-text articles from media organizations around the world, often without attribution and some that are subscription-only content."
Same ole, same ole ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Same ole, same ole ... (Score:4, Insightful)
We just made a simple mistake. You did it on purpose!
Re:Same ole, same ole ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd expect from a company that claims to be the crusader for copyright to understand it. Guess it either means that they themselves don't give a shit about what they claim to protect, they just want to milk it for money. Or even an expert on it can't understand it 'cause the friggin' crap is borked beyond repair.
You decide.
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Because with the combination of malice and incompetence they could earn a lot more in politics.
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Any sufficient level of Incompetence is indistinguishable from Malice.
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I'd expect from a company that claims to be the crusader for copyright to understand it.
The part they infringed upon is easy to understand (downloading and redistribution of stuff they find online, exactly what many lawsuits are fought over, and specifically what they always tell the public is not OK to do), so misunderstanding the matter is indeed not likely. So it's likely the first: they don't give a damn.
Re:Same ole, same ole ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm going to take some from column A.
It might be hard to prove a copyright infringement to the level needed for prosecution based only on an IP address and a file name, but copyright infringement is boneheaded easy to "detect" if you're sitting there watching when it happens (and doubly so when you're causing it to happen.) You don't even need to be a lawyer to realize that "derp copying something without permission is infringing the copyright."
The only times it would be even remotely questionable is if th
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But flat out copying articles from webpages without explicit permission or even attribution is almost certainly not a grey area, no matter how basic your understanding of the law.
There's also fair use/fair dealing which does allow some copyright infringement such as the quote of your copyrighted post above. A very gray area.
Also our Conservative government recently was planning to amend the copyright act to allow more use of copyrighted material as they want to use stuff for their attack ads and the copyright holders were saying no so they were/are making it legal. This government is a law and order government and every time they get caught breaking the law, they change the law to m
Re:Same ole, same ole ... (Score:5, Informative)
This [wired.com] is ten+ years old now, but Orrin Hatch is still a sitting senator. Good to remind ourselves stuff like this happened.
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But do his computers still exist?
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It's government. Last time I did a government job here in Canada, there were old as dirt IBM and netware servers made in 1988 running everything.
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Well, that is what happens if you let criminal organizations run the show....
Hypocrisy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:infringement is infringment (Score:5, Insightful)
It means he couldn't have reasonably thought it was free to distribute. So no excuses.
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Is the point that the two-faced bastard had to work harder to infringe?
Yes, that's exactly the point. Some people believe, erroneously, that putting material on a public web site voids the copyright. However, in order for the web to work, clearly there must be some form of implicit licence when you put material on a public site or no-one would be allowed to lawfully download it so they can view it. That argument does not hold for content that is hidden behind some sort of registration scheme or paywall, where typically there would be explicit terms for accessing the material t
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There's an implicit license that you can view the articles and download everything in the course of viewing the articles. Saving a copy for yourself (say by printing to PDF) would be valid fair use. So would quo
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It's not copyright infringement... (Score:5, Informative)
"We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."
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"We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."
"We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."
"We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."
Technically, it's not theft if he wrote all those articles himself.
This kind of thing actually happens quite often. When a journalist is about to miss a deadline, he goes to a PR dept or an advocacy group. The PR department, which is staffed by former professional journalists (except that they're being paid far better than their counterpart), effectively write a unique article for the struggling journalist, and with a nudge and wink tell him or her, that he can just use the article in its entirety and take
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And no, before someone says it, that kind of article can't look like it's just another press release with too many buzzwords.
Are you joking, 95% of mass-media articles are rehashed/reprinted press releases from their sponsors, the other 5% are editorials extolling the virtues of the companies that provided the press release, that's how the news industry have always made their money - sponsors. However that does not give anyone the legal right to republish the full article from the media outlet, doing so is a clear case of infringement, actually it's willful infringement considering what he does for a living.
The proper thing to
Re:It's not copyright infringement... (Score:4, Interesting)
If Rupert had his way, supplying a link to one of his rehashed press releases would require a payment to him
Spain is trying that out right as we speak. I'm gearing up to laugh heartily when that entire concept explodes spectacularly in their face, and they're forced to rescind their ridiculous laws.
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Last I heard, it was already blowing up. Instead of rescinding the laws, however, they've doubled down and tried to make it mandatory for Google to link to them. In other words, they want to force Google to pay these sites and Google won't be able to drop them no matter what.
Re:It's not copyright infringement... (Score:5, Insightful)
Technically, it's not theft if he wrote all those articles himself.
Close, but not correct: "it's not 'theft' if he owned the copyright on those articles, or has a license to distribute them".
Having written something yourself doesn't mean you own the copyright on it: e.g. if a journalist writes an article for the newspaper he works for, the copyright usually goes to the newspaper. Another situation where you may not distribute your own stuff, is if you write something, and then license it on exclusive basis to someone. Though in this case it may actually be breach of contract rather than breach of copyright.
In both cases, however, the author should be very well aware of what he may or may not do with his own work.
Didn they already get cought (Score:2)
once before when they first appreaed on the scene? Something to do with their website and the desing or something.
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Wow my spelling :hides:
Re:Didn they already get cought (Score:4, Funny)
Would appear the article was rewritten (Score:2)
The copyrighted infringement items removed and links supplied.
Less than a page of text it must of been a huge article with the infringements included.
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Ha, wrong link I hit the third link which reported the infringements which itself has the links of quoted used.
My bad, ignore
Headline vs. Summary (Score:4, Funny)
"...may itself be engaged in copyright infringement..."
I guess the headline was deemed to be more eye-grabby.
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If it was a headline from them about someone they thought was infringing, do you think they'd worry about the niceties? It wouldn't be "alleged", or "may", it would be "Obvious Pirate is Pirating Content"
Welcome (Score:1)
Sauce for the goose: sounds OK to me (Score:2)
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Surely this is "fair dealing" isn't it? ;-)
FTFY, don't forget this is Canada ;)
You wouldn't... (Score:4)
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But I'd go to the toilet on the blog...
Revolving door criminals (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't the first time canipre have been identified as "thieves":
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/05/15/2110243/anti-infringement-company-caught-infringing-on-its-website
I believe it's time we throw the book at these commercial pirates. They clearly aren't learning from their mistakes!
Read the articles (Score:2)
Ok, there's a lot of nonsense on here about Hypocrisy... but I suspect he didn't even realize he was infringing.
But there's still plenty of room for getting him good here. Often the people they claim are pirates don't know they're pirating either... but they don't think that's an excuse. And your grandma ends up torrenting that movie for 6 months and thousands of people download it... they think those are all violations as well.
So Slashdot his site... hundreds of thousands of people read those "pirated" new
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Ok, there's a lot of nonsense on here about Hypocrisy...but I suspect he didn't even realize he was infringing
You're more trusting than I am. Grandma looks after 15 cats and writes the church newsletter, this guy runs a company that tracks down people on the internet and tales them to court for infringement. I (reasonably) suspect willful commercial infringement by someone who (IMO) has a broken moral compass and a natural talent for manipulating the justice system.
BTW - It's true, "we're all hypocrites in our own way", but this arsehole's extreme sense of entitlement still gets up my nose.
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Not to mention a view of copyright that essentially says "Nobody can copy my stuff without my permission. Everyone else's stuff is fair game for me to copy, though, as I see fit."
Re:suspect he didn't even realize he was infringin (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but I would like to stand in friendly relations to you but ratchet up the rhetoric where it needs to go on this kind of stuff.
"...suspect he didn't even realize he was infringing". No. Just no. But before we get to the big ticket reason why, let's go to an extremely important edge case why.
Look at YouTube. Look at the multi millions of things posted by random accounts. (Who really identifies with handles like grap3fruuit77 anyway?!) Account posts a song, let's say it's Justin Bieber, because th
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Because usually when that happens there is a footnote acknowledging the original source.
I am shocked... (Score:1)