Re: [dvd-discuss] Power play

[Jeremy Erwin <jerwin(at)ponymail.com>]

On Wednesday, December 18, 2002, at 02:42  PM, Bryan Taylor wrote:

>
> 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.
>
False, or inaccurate copyright notices have  been the case with Barnes 
and Noble Publishing for some time-- although not all of the books 
assert copyright in such a manner. Some of the books bear a notice to 
the effect that "Introductory material is copyright, but the rest is 
not." Perhaps a brief survey correlating degree of bluff and bluster to 
year of publication would be of some use.

It's merely a nuisance in print-- in digital form it is much more 
serious, because falsely asserted rights are taken at face value by a 
DRMS, whereas a human can (sometimes) call the bluff. And as the 
publishing firms may be "protecting" perfectly valid copyrights with 
the same sort of DRMS, anti-circumvention laws prohibit self-help.

I forget if 17US1201 et seq. merely prohibits the removal of true 
copyright notices, or also prohibits the removal of fraudulently 
obtained ones. Oh well-- at least the first and last 25 pages of 
copyrighted materials will become available for republication when and 
if the copyright expires.

Jeremy