Re: [dvd-discuss] Power play

["D. C. Sessions" <dcs(at)lumbercartel.com>]

On Wed, 2002-12-18 at 12:42, 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.

I titled the message "power play" because I suspect that the
publishers are looking forward to the Next Great Copyright
Extension and want to have the notices in place when the law
comes around to their side.

> --- 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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-- 
| The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. |
| Because the slow, feeble old codgers like me cheat.                |
+--------------- D. C. Sessions <dcs@lumbercartel.com> --------------+