Re: [dvd-discuss] Power play

[Bryan Taylor <bryan_w_taylor(at)yahoo.com>]

I think you are both over reacting. Copyright notices can only retain what
already belongs to the copyright holder. That has been the law for quite a long
time. A copyright notice does not meet the requirements of a contract, since
you don't click "I agree" before the book functions. It is nothing new to bluff
with copyright notices. The first sale doctrine came about in the US Supreme
Court case Bobbs-Merrill v. Strous when a notice was ignored.

--- John Zulauf <johnzu@ia.nsc.com> wrote:
> One ponders:  Isn't a "legal disclaimer" held to some standard of "we
> hold this to be true under penalty of perjury" or similar.  How can it
> be that a publisher can make assertions about rights they don't have
> with incurring some liability for lying to the public.
> 
> Perhaps this is an FTC matter.  The FTC cared that monitor makers were
> claiming '17" monitor' for a 15.9" visible model.  Claiming perpetual
> rights over a public domain work is as least equally misleading.  The
> consumer harm is that they have been misinformed of their rights w.r.t.
> the product they have purchased.  The customer may believe that they
> don't have the right to photocopy the whole of the work for a friend, or
> cut the binder and feed it into the scanner/copier/network printer at
> the office.  Instead they may believe the only way to give a friend a
> copy is to buy one from the self-declared licensee.  This is fraud --
> the intent to decieve for financial gain.
> 
> Imagine if Lego were to publish "these plans are licensed only for use
> with Lego(tm) brand building blocks" (with no termination date) on the
> construction plans included in a set of Legos.  Or if this same (public
> domain book) stated that it could only be read by Sylvania lightbulbs. 
> All of these assertions are bogus, but may impact the end users spending
> (and thus consumer) behavior as much as a mislabeled montior.
> 
> "D. C. Sessions" wrote:
> 
> > In place of the usual copyright notice, they simply have
> > "All rights reserved.  Reproduction or any other use of
> > this book without the publisher's written permission is
> > strictly prohibited."
> > 
> > No copyright notice or date, just the assertion that the
> > book and "any use" requires prior arrangements.  Looks
> > like they're already setting up for EULAs on books, with
> > "forever minus a day" control even over stuff that never
> > was under US copyright!
> 


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