[LINK] copyright on the internet

[Kim Holburn]

There's an interesting case on groklaw recently, a case relating to a  
copyright enforcement company.  This is a company that tries to shake  
down bloggers who quote articles from online journals.  It's  
interesting in a number of ways but I find most interesting is the  
quotes from  an article by one of the defence lawyers "Using the  
Implied License to Inject Common Sense into Digital Copyright, by John  
S. Sieman".

"Existing copyright law is not well-suited to handle the transmission  
of copyrighted works over the Internet."

The links are all in the article:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100922113406655

The case is also mentioned here:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/sep/20/righthaven-judge-review-journal-implied-license-de/

And here is what I find an extremely interesting bit.  Given it is  
just a legal argument and has not been tested in court:
> Navarro in her ruling wrote: "The defendant has reasonably asserted  
> that the plaintiff’s conduct may have constituted an implied license  
> and that the defendant may have properly inferred that the  
> (copyright) owner consented to the use, especially in light of the  
> established and accepted custom of users freely and openly sharing  
> certain information posted on the Internet."
>
> The plaintiff's conduct the judge referred to, according to the  
> Lewis and Roca attorneys, is that: "The Las Vegas Review-Journal  
> offered the allegedly infringed work (story) to the world for free  
> when it was originally published. It encouraged people to save links  
> to the work or to send links to the work to others anywhere in the  
> world at no cost and without restriction. The Las Vegas Review- 
> Journal website also enables third parties to 'right click' and copy  
> the text of articles on the site. Accordingly, based on this implied  
> license, the allegedly infringing copy was, in fact, authorized by  
> the Las Vegas Review-Journal and therefore, is not an infringement."
>




-- 
Kim Holburn
The Pinchgut Press
http://www.pinchgut-press.com.au
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