RE: [dvd-discuss] Power play

["Richard Hartman" <hartman(at)onetouch.com>]

Note that they do not mention which rights.  "All rights
reserved" just means that any right they might possibly
have left to them is being retained as firmly as possible ;-)


-- 
-Richard M. Hartman
hartman@onetouch.com

186,000 mi/sec: not just a good idea, it's the LAW!



> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Zulauf [mailto:johnzu@ia.nsc.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 8:14 AM
> To: dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] Power play
> 
> 
> 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!
> 
>