Hardcore Infringement

Oh the irony!  Back in January, I brought you the story of a Dutch court whose decision in a copyright infringement lawsuit plagiarized (and possibly infringed) another lawyer's work. Well, those fast and loose copyright attorneys are at it again. A Chicago lawyer named John Steele has filed a lawsuit suing hundreds (if not thousands) of file-sharers for copyright infringement on behalf of First Time Videos LLC, "a leading producer and distributor of adult entertainment content within the transsexual niche." But Mr. Steele sets a poor example for all the porno buffs out there who just got sued. According to Ars Technica, the complaint that Mr. Steele filed with the court is itself a glittering monument to infringement, with swathes of text lifted word-for-word from complaints filed by another company, the U.S. Copyright Group. Fortunately for Mr. Steele, the U.S. Copyright Group doesn't mind. Says Tom Dunlap, who wrote the filings that Mr. Steele infringed, "I don't know Steele but I'm flattered he likes my pleadings."

In Mr. Steele's defense, he's not an expert in copyright law. He makes his bread and butter from matrimonial cases and his number (if you happen to be in northern Illinois) is 1-800-DIVORCE.

via Ars Technica.

Copyright judges seen running away with stolen paragraph

A Dutch court has held that placing embedded links on a website without permission from the author of the linked content is copyright infringement (an embedded link allows a visitor to a website to view content on an external site, such as a YouTube video, without having to go to that site). Interestingly, the court's ruling plagiarizes a blog post by Douwe Linders, an attorney at Netherlands IP boutique SOLV Advocaten. The offending text, which was lifted word-for-word from the blog post and, ahem, embedded into the opinion without quotation marks or any mention of its provenance, reads: "In case law and legal literature it is generally held that an embedded link constitutes a publication. After all, the material can be viewed or heard within the context of the website of those who placed the link, and placement causes the material to reach a new audience." You would think that judges who come down on the side of authors would follow the don't-plagiarize rule they learned as kids.

Now, in the United States at least, plagiarism and copyright infringement are not the same. The U.S. Copyright Office's fair use factsheet includes "quotations of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations" among its examples of fair uses. However, actually using quotation marks and attributing the source of the quoted text would strengthen the fair use argument. After all, Mr. Linders' words "can be viewed or heard within the context of the [opinion], and placement causes the material to reach a new audience."

(via 24 oranges)