Doc Savage Novels?

[tompe]

I found

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html#p2p

that says "Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution."

But I do not think it is obvious that exclusive rights if reproduction makes it illegal to have a work that you have gotten in an unknown way.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

The reason it would be illegal to have the files is because they were "illegally created and illegally obtained," that is, created and downloaded without the copyright owner's permission. Again, ignorance of that status is considered no excuse, and I would be required to delete/surrender them or face prosecution.

Looking through the documentation that tompe pointed out, I don't see where your statements are justified.

I'd like to point out this:

§ 506. Criminal offenses
(a) Criminal Infringement. —
(1) In general. — Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed —
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.

If we assume that the downloader did not use BitTorrent (and so only downloaded it to his PC and didn't share it out):
(A) it was not for commercial purposes or private financial gain - the downloader only downloaded it for his use.
(B) The limitations here would probably not be met with a single download
(C) The downloader did not make it available to others.

So it would seem that, according to what I am reading from the copyright law, downloaders (for the most part) are not committing criminal infringement.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Nope. You're wrong. A number of the RIAA cases involved downloaders. Go look them up.

Sorry. Can't find any. All the ones I see are based around the "made available" argument (as in "they made files available for others to download").

See Transmission + Reproduction != Distribution:

But even more importantly, the labels are hoping that the courts will extend the distribution right to include transmissions over the Internet. When a file-sharer uploads a file, the file is transmitted and a copy retained at the other end. While that may look like a "distribution," the Copyright Act does not give a copyright owner control over all distributions, but rather only distributions of physical, material objects ("copies and phonorecords"). So, unless a file-sharer has unscrewed her hard drive and handed it to another person, she is not infringing the distribution right, because that right only extends to distributions of physical objects.

The labels would like to make downloading illegal, but as the article points out, it would cause pain to many other companies.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by tompe

that says "Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution."

Interesting. This seems to directly contradict what the EFF claims.

It also directly contradicts this part of the copyright law.

§ 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works

Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

I don't see anything pertaining to the Internet in that list. So as the EFF argues:

... the copyright law does not give a copyright owner control over all distributions, but rather only distributions of physical, material objects ("copies and phonorecords").

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Sorry. Can't find any. All the ones I see are based around the "made available" argument (as in "they made files available for others to download").

The usual method for downloading files like that tends to be through the use of peer-to-peer protocols like Bit Torrent.

The whole point to Bit Torrent is to reduce load on host servers. When you download a torrent file, the torrent points to a tracker that maintains a list of seeds (sites with the complete file) and leechers (sites getting the file). Your bit torrent client contacts other sites listed by the tracker and initiates communication. At the same time you are downloading parts of the file you don't have from peers that have them, you are uploading parts of the file you do have to other peers that need those parts.

This qualifies as "made available for others to download"
______
Dennis

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The whole point to Bit Torrent is to reduce load on host servers. When you download a torrent file, the torrent points to a tracker that maintains a list of seeds (sites with the complete file) and leechers (sites getting the file). Your bit torrent client contacts other sites listed by the tracker and initiates communication. At the same time you are downloading parts of the file you don't have from peers that have them, you are uploading parts of the file you do have to other peers that need those parts.

Of course in practice you always upload. But here I thought the interesting question was if possession of material that you did not explicitly had the right to was illegal to possess. And the argument was that since it was illegal to download it was illegal to possess it.

Poeple do not seem to be in agreement on what holds. Is everybody in agreement on that if it was not illegal to download then it can not be illegal to have it? Or to show that its is illegal to have it you must show that it was obtained in an illegal way?

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The usual method for downloading files like that tends to be through the use of peer-to-peer protocols like Bit Torrent.

Ebooks, due to their small size are quite often downloaded from IRC channels, and Usenet servers. Those methods don't make the files available to anyone while downloading. BitTorrent, eMule and similar P2P technologies are more feasible to the downloaders because of the large size of the files, and that's why they're used with video clips and music collections.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by tompe

Of course in practice you always upload. But here I thought the interesting question was if possession of material that you did not explicitly had the right to was illegal to possess. And the argument was that since it was illegal to download it was illegal to possess it.

Well, you can download and not upload in Bit Torrent, but you'll be very disappointed in your download speeds...

Poeple do not seem to be in agreement on what holds. Is everybody in agreement on that if it was not illegal to download then it can not be illegal to have it? Or to show that its is illegal to have it you must show that it was obtained in an illegal way?

If you are in possession of stolen property, it is stolen property. From the legal perspective, it may matter whether you knew it was stolen when you got it, if someone presses charges against you for having it.

In the case of the stuff that the RIAA cares about, it's hard to claim innocence when you use Bit Torrent to get the files. They are available through Bit Torrent in the first place because someone ripped them from a CD or DVD and made them available. Folks with enough savvy to use a bit torrent client, find a tracker, and locate the stuff they are interested in will have a real hard time claiming they didn't know it was illegal. There's certainly been enough publicity about it.

But frankly, I think such discussions are wandering rather far afield from the original topic, and simply allowing a few folks to ride their favorite hobby horses again.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

Ebooks, due to their small size are quite often downloaded from IRC channels, and Usenet servers. Those methods don't make the files available to anyone while downloading. BitTorrent, eMule and similar P2P technologies are more feasible to the downloaders because of the large size of the files, and that's why they're used with video clips and music collections.

Sure. But RLauzon was specifically talking about the stuff the RIAA is going after. That generally doesn't go through IRC or Usenet. P2P is far more likely, for a variety of reasons.
______
Dennis

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

If you are in possession of stolen property, it is stolen property. From the legal perspective, it may matter whether you knew it was stolen when you got it, if someone presses charges against you for having it.

I do not believe it is stolen property. The crime is copyright infringement if any and the property laws and concept of theft is not applicable. But the question was that if it is legal to download (assume that downloading anything is legal) can it then be illegal to have the material?

There are a lot of material that is distributed and people distributing it thinks it is legal to do this. So I think it is an interersting question about what holds if it is later shown that it was not legal to ditribute the material.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by tompe

I do not believe it is stolen property. The crime is copyright infringement if any and the property laws and concept of theft is not applicable. But the question was that if it is legal to download (assume that downloading anything is legal) can it then be illegal to have the material?

You can't assume that downloading anything is legal. It should only take a moment of two to think of examples that would be considered illegal to download almost anywhere.

There are a lot of material that is distributed and people distributing it thinks it is legal to do this. So I think it is an interersting question about what holds if it is later shown that it was not legal to distribute the material.

Various people are in trouble. How much trouble will depend upon the material and who is claiming it's illegal and trying to stop downloads.

Let's say I put material up for download on a server and you download it. As far as you know, it's legal to download the material. I may even think it's legal for me to provide it, but that's not really relevant.

Someone else pops up and says "Hey! I own the rights to that material, and I didn't give you permission to make it available!" and hits me with a take down order. What I do will depend upon the circumstances. It's possible I really believe I have the right to make it available, and it's also possible I'm right. But the practical question is "Can I afford the time and money to go to court and prove it?" Depending upon who is telling me to take it down, I may have little choice but to grit my teeth and take it down, because I can't afford to fight it. You're probably safe enough, as the claimant rights-holder wants to stop me from distributing. It isn't worth it to go after you for receiving.

In too many cases like this, the determining factor won't be the law, but rather who can afford the court costs and legal fees.
______
Dennis

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You can't assume that downloading anything is legal. It should only take a moment of two to think of examples that would be considered illegal to download almost anywhere.

Well, it was a hypothetical example were I assumed that just to get a simpler example to analyse legally. In practice i think that youtube is an example where you download thing when you are viewing it and it is very unclear if the material you download is legal or not. Most people probably assume it is legal

Let's say I put material up for download on a server and you download it. As far as you know, it's legal to download the material. I may even think it's legal for me to provide it, but that's not really relevant.

Someone else pops up and says "Hey! I own the rights to that material, and I didn't give you permission to make it available!" and hits me with a take down order. What I do will depend upon the circumstances. It's possible I really believe I have the right to make it available, and it's also possible I'm right. But the practical question is "Can I afford the time and money to go to court and prove it?" Depending upon who is telling me to take it down, I may have little choice but to grit my teeth and take it down, because I can't afford to fight it. You're probably safe enough, as the claimant rights-holder wants to stop me from distributing. It isn't worth it to go after you for receiving.

In too many cases like this, the determining factor won't be the law, but rather who can afford the court costs and legal fees.

I was interested in what the law says because people in this forum claims things are illegal and I wanted to know if these claims were correct or not.

In Sweden for example I do not think it is illegal to distribute something if you though it was legal and there was no reason to think it was illegal. When it is pointed out to you that it was illegal you have to remove it if the claim that it is illegal is correct but everything that happened before that is legal. So I thought it was interesting to understand a legal system that worked different in this respect.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, it was a hypothetical example were I assumed that just to get a simpler example to analyse legally. In practice i think that youtube is an example where you download thing when you are viewing it and it is very unclear if the material you download is legal or not. Most people probably assume it is legal

And rightly so.

But that illustrates another problem. If you are someone like YouTube, you are hosting content other people create. Is all of the material people post on your sihe stuff they have the right to make available? You don't know, and you can't know. There is simply too much being posted by too many people, and there's no way you can vet it all before allowing it on the site.

All you can really do is state that you don't willingly host illegal material, and ask folks to tell you if they encounter rights violations.

SF writer Harlan Ellison was having a long running dispute with AOL over pirated electronic copies of his work being available on AOL. I don't think he ever grasped the concept that it wasn't possible for AOL to prevent it from happening, as way too many people had sites hosted by AOL and there was no way AOL could screen everything before it got posted.

I was interested in what the law says because people in this forum claims things are illegal and I wanted to know if these claims were correct or not.

In Sweden for example I do not think it is illegal to distribute something if you though it was legal and there was no reason to think it was illegal. When it is pointed out to you that it was illegal you have to remove it if the claim that it is illegal is correct but everything that happened before that is legal. So I thought it was interesting to understand a legal system that worked different in this respect.

You may not be in violation of the law if you didn't know it was illegal when you did it. But what happens if you are told it is illegal, because you do not have the right to distribute it, and you continue to do so anyway. Are you then in violation of the law? I'd bet you are.
______
Dennis

[dmoynihan]

First of all, I've got a lengthy post about all this, which some guy who works for other people told me was stream of consciousness... others have said was hysterical.

Second, while I'm not in any way condoning or encouraging anyone to download or otherwise infringe such copyrights as may currently be owned by Advance Magazine Publishers (parent company of Conde Nast) or its authorized licensees, I will say that they're not after downloaders; they're not that interested.

The thing started up when, rumor has it, Advance, which has kind of hit on hard times of late (they own newspapers and magazines), began to look for additional money through licensing certain film-able properties in their collection. Supposedly, they signed a contract with a certain large Japanese electronics manufacturer for first Doc, later the Shadow to make movies. I wouldn't know, and anything like that would be covered under protective orders.

Advance, which used to own Random House, but upon the sale of that division stopped caring about bound books, had previously taken down every other site having Docs and Shadows (and The Avenger). I'm stubborn, and when they finally came after me, it was Christmas Eve, '05, and I had a few friends, particularly if the documents weren't properly registered, as seemed likely. Also, Advance was probably hiding something by doing things just then.

Anyway, turns out every single Doc and Shadow and Avenger (and just about everything Street & Smith ever published... be aware) was properly registered, so I was, like, friendless. But there was still the issue of discovery, and the fact that I'd had things on my site for seven years.

So I fought, mostly because I will not be intimidated by the publisher of Men's Vogue. Of course, they won, but I did request a couple of documents, and was granted them. The punchline is, while the rights to Doc and the Shadow (and the Avenger), are currently owned by Advance, because of what's called "termination provisions" in the copyright acts, those rights are going to start reverting to the estates of Lester Dent (aka Kenneth Robeson) and Walter Gibson (aka Maxwell Grant), shortly. Film rights to Doc revert to the Dent estate on September of this year, film rights to the Shadow, and at least some of the books, revert to the Gibson estate early next year, book rights to many of the Doc Savage novels revert to the Dents later next year. There will however be a court case about the Shadow, at least.

Doc's a funny story, and the dirty secret of all this. Essentially, Dent kept film rights when he started writing Clark Savage, Jr., then, in the early '70s, after he'd died relatively young, some Advance agents went to poor Norma Dent, who was living in poverty in Missouri, and bought those film rights for $2,000 (in the early '70s... when Doc paperbacks were earning literally millions annually).

If you're bored and want to know more about copyrights and terminations, I'd suggest you google 'Captain America terminate copyright,' as the same lawyer who beat Marvel is now working for the Gibson side.

As to Blackmask, issue was, in court matters, Conde likes to, a, delay, b, lie badly, c, win on procedure. That's just what they do, and they choose their attorneys accordingly. The DMCA is such that once my server was taken, I never got it back (good to know), however the delays Conde put in hurt them a lot more (a lot more) than if they'd just let it go. I know that pissed off a lot of people, and the only thing that kept me from going postal is the knowledge that, for a couple of years prior, I'd been in Project Gutenberg's way.

As to Australian hosts, etc.--I don't know Australian copyright law.

I believe a publisher called "Vintage Ventures" is redoing authorized editions of both Doc and the Shadow. The agent for the Dent estate used to write essays about Doc's origins, though that may have stopped

I do have all the other books Black Mask did, plus 5 or 6-thousand others, (save for some of my oldest pulps, which are being slowly being retyped in India) at Munseys.com. Munsey's has a different look, and some people don't like the new layout, however the same protocol that currently searches the LOC for records on each book will at some point search up to 700 other library systems, depending on some new agreements. Proof of concepts and all that. Also with tagging I've currently got 12,000 categories instead of 50, and there's things like "My Library" etc. Page views are already considerably higher than Blackmask's, though the visitors and downloads aren't quite there yet, but it grows.

Munsey's (another pulp mag) was chosen 'cause I didn't have quite full control of the blackmask url for a while (do now) when we started bringing the site back. I'm probably gonna relaunch blackmask as a specialty retailer (print mostly) when the Shocklines guy shuts down. (And for extra gory details, while all the fun court stuff was going on with the Nasties, every print and ebook competitor of Olympia, which has been since launch the bulk of my sales... went under for one reason or another, beginning with Ebookad and ending at a Blue Moon... so I'll be around for a while.)

David Moynihan
Disruptive Publishing
http://www.munseys.com
http://www.olympiapress.com
http://www.silkpagoda.com
http://www.blackmask.com (forthcoming)

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I think what happened to David (thanks for weighing in, dude) ably illustrates the fact that copyright law, national and international, simply hasn't kept up with the times, and is full of holes that the lawyers and courts have selectively applied, or ignored, at their pleasure. Pre-internet, these issues didn't amount to much, practically or monetarily, so no one really cared, and legal actions were noticeably lax. But now, they are starting to mean real money and other serious figures (such as the potential market for downloads, etc), so suddenly they have come front and center and become a big button issue.

Because the legal holes are there, it leaves up to whomever has the biggest pockets to decide how the laws will swing... upholding existing laws as written (Conde Nast), or revising rights to suit (Disney), whichever is their pleasure. And as the situation plays into the hands of the big moneyholders, there is little incentive to change things.

But the issues we've discussed at length here prove that the situation cannot stand, and could even cause major international incidents if not soon addressed. We can only hope that pressure from the international market bolstered by the Internet will eventually force a stand in international law that all countries will accept and enforce.