Copyright follies

[nihilistic_kid]

A friend of mine has a story to tell-her article on early modern apple pies of interest to medieval recreationists was copied wholesale and published in the ad-driven, newsstand-distributed, for-profit magazine Cook's Source without permission or payment

Comments

[vintagehandbag]

The whole thing is so profoundly offensive. The only excuse for thinking everything on the internet is public domain that I can conceive of is being, say not understanding what the internet is. That's not even a good excuse, it's just the only situation in which I would find this plausible. But, given that the magazine is online, well ...

Wait, can we just copy the parts of the magazine that are online and use them as we please?

And, my understanding with regards to those e-mail disclaimers about privacy is that they don't hold water, and that courts have largely ruled that correspondents have no reasonable expectation of privacy when using e-mail.

[zeborahnz]

This isn't the first time I've seen that mistake. I think people reason thusly:

1) The internet is a domain which is public.
2) Therefore it's a public domain.
3) "Public domain" is a legal term that means that anyone can use it.
4) I'm too stupid to realise that there's a difference between English vernacular about where something exists and legal terminology about who owns it.
5) Therefore if it's on the internet anyone can use it.
6) QED.

[crssafox]

I've seen this happen too. One such instance was an IT manager saying that images found on Flickr were okay to use in printed advertising materials sent to customers. When I brought up an issue that could potentially get the company in trouble, the manager cropped off the copyright information on the images and basically said, "There, I fixed it." I'd done what I could, but seeing as that employee was above me in the hierarchy, there wasn't much more I could do about the issue.

[codeman38]

The worst thing on that one is, if he had only used the advanced search options on Flickr, he could have found plenty of images that the photographers had licensed for free commercial use!

Of course, I think that probably muddies the waters some too, with respect to Flickr. "Some pictures on Flickr are free for the taking, so clearly, all of them must be!" ::headdesk::

[crssafox]

Part of the problem with the "free" photos on Flickr is, they still ask to be credited in one way or another. When you're sending out a flier about services your company offers, it's sometimes hard to give appropriate credit for an image in a way that would fulfill the requests of the image owners

[halleyscomet]

Look at this way:

This editor has just announced that all the articles she's published online are now in the public domain!

Quick, grab all the articles you can cookssource.com and their facebook page and start printing them up and selling them!

Could be.

[the_godiva]

Griggs claims she's been editing for 30 years