Copyright Issues on a list
James C. Armstrong
lists I maintain, and was wondering if anyone here has faced a similar
situation.
I maintain some lists for professional sports teams in the UK. I run
these lists in California. (Rangers football club, Scottish football)
Some members of the lists have occasionally posted copyrighted
material. My intro statement for members strongly discourages this,
but I do not manually approve all postings, nor do I attempt to
censor after the fact.
One of the publishers has recently requested that I stop all copyrighted
material from going to the list, with the veiled threat of criminal
action.
I don't want to moderate the list, I do not have the time. So, I
can't effectively prevent the list members from posting, I can only
retroactively unsubscribe them (but does such a retroactive unsubscribe
open me up for any legal liability? I'd be censoring list members,
and isn't this similar to what Prodigy did?)
Any experience with this? Any opinions?
--
James C. Armstrong, Jr. | "Using Windows NT, which is known to
ja...@sagarmatha.com | have some failure modes, on a warship
| is similar to hoping that luck will
| be in our favor." Anthony DiGiorgio,
| on the US Navy's decision to use
| Windows NT instead of UNIX.
Mike Nolan
> material from going to the list, with the veiled threat of criminal
> action.
Civil action is much more likely. To get a criminal case going, the
publisher would probably have to convince some DA that you were stealing
sufficiently valuable material to make it worth pursuing, and I don't know
that there are many prosecutors out there looking to pursue the Internet
as a serious source of white collar crime based on copyright infringement.
> Any experience with this? Any opinions?
Opinions we all have in abundance. :-)
Most of us are in similar straits, performing moderation after-the-fact, or
as I prefer to label it, moderation by intimidation.
Peer pressure, public rebukes, and swift and sure punishments by the
list manager will IMHO deal with most copyright problems on lists, though
if your subscribers are used to getting away with it, you've got an uphill
battle on your hands regaining some measure of control.
Keep in mind it is YOUR list. If anybody gets sued, YOU are at the top
of the chart. And when you get the usual 'freedom of the press' or
'freedom of speech' moans, remember that freedom of the press guarantees
only apply to those who own the printing press, which in the case of a
mailing list means YOU, and freedom of speech doesn't mean that YOU have
to pay for or build someone else's soapbox.
--
Mike Nolan
Chuq Von Rospach
> I maintain some lists for professional sports teams in the UK. I run
> these lists in California. (Rangers football club, Scottish football)
> Some members of the lists have occasionally posted copyrighted
> material. My intro statement for members strongly discourages this,
> but I do not manually approve all postings, nor do I attempt to
> censor after the fact.
My intro statement doesn't discourage it -- it says "don't. Period".
(in more words than that, but that's the effect). When people do do it,
I post to the list telling people not to, and refer to the rules. The
rules specifically say that repeat offenders will be kicked off the
list.
> One of the publishers has recently requested that I stop all copyrighted
> material from going to the list, with the veiled threat of criminal
> action.
And that's why. Mistakes happen. But if you allow them to happen,
you're responsible for them. And if you don't stop them, you're party
to the infringement. You have every right to say "no. period", because
what they're doing is illegal, can get everyone involved sued, and the
list shut down.
> I don't want to moderate the list, I do not have the time. So, I
> can't effectively prevent the list members from posting, I can only
> retroactively unsubscribe them (but does such a retroactive unsubscribe
> open me up for any legal liability? I'd be censoring list members,
> and isn't this similar to what Prodigy did?)
Tell them to stop, and if they don't, nuke them.
Retroactively unsubscribing opens you up to a lot LESS legal liability
than allowing content piracy does. think about that one... If your
rules make it clear it's against the rules, and they break the rules,
what grounds do they have to complain?
--
Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? <http://www.plaidworks.com/hockey/>)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:ch...@apple.com)
Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chu...@plaidworks.com)
<http://www.plaidworks.com/> + <http://www.lists.apple.com/>
Mark Rauterkus
Hi,
A few suggestions: --- to go along with the other bits of great advice
posted so far:
Ask list members to post only POINTERS to the whole article and not the
article itself.
Ask list members to make their comments exceed 2x the length of the
posted article so as to add lots of value to the article. This is a thin
attempt at "fair use."
Ask the publisher to post all their articles to the list -- and give them
a chance to put a tag line of advertisement along with their article.
This way you get in bed with copyright holders.
Ask the publisher to post all their articles to another list that you set
up for them, free of charge. Or, allow for others to post their articles
to that list if the publisher isn't swift to publish the news themselves.
Get permission for this to occur. Then have this "joint-ownership" so
that they can't get you in trouble. So, readers can post articles from
the paper to this list. Then subscribers would have to get on multiple
lists.
Mark Rauterkus
List-...@SportSurf.Net