Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
That's not an unreasonable question, but I think your blog visitor is in the clear.
But "Hold!" you cry, "she has copied everything I copied. She gets away with it and I don't? What if it was the entire book of poems, for sale at my local poem store, which I checked out from the library, copied & posted on my blog? You mean she can copy the whole book, and nothing happens to her, while I have to cough up penalties for copyright infringment?"
My answer to that is a firm and unyielding "probably." (Because if the answer were "certainly" we would have little need for lawyers. Speaking as a lawyer, my advice is that you need a lawyer.)
Suppose your reader eliminates the middleblogger, goes directly to the library, and copies out the entire book while innocently pretending to merely be taking notes. She now owns a complete copy of the book, which she takes home, types into her computer, and makes into her screensaver. So long as she doesn't send a copy off to her friends, or try to sell the screensaver, she is not going to be liable for copyright infringement.
About the worst that could happen to your blog reader (even if she copied the whole book) is that if she were to be hunted down & hauled into court, she could be required to erase the poems from her computer and either erase or destroy her handwritten copy.
In other words, as I read the law, merely copying something, even in its entirety, does not amount to "infringement," but can result in an unauthorized copy which no one actually owns. The copyright owner doesn't own it, not even the handwritten copy - that's the property of your blog reader. But at the same time, the blog reader doesn't own it, although she owns the physical medium in the form of the computer or the handwritten copy. But the computer file or handwriting has no right to exist - the author didn't give permission -so the court can order it erased.
Now, I am not a copyright lawyer, and someone who knows better than I could put me straight. But the way I read copyright law, it is not intended to punish individuals who make a single copy for their own use. It is intended to penalize people who make money - or get some kind of other reward, like attracting blog readers - by taking someone else's creation and publishing it without permission.
|
By your interpretation of the copyright law it would not only be unpunishable to download and keep a copy of pirated book, but would also make it 100% legal to do so. Even if brought to court the worst that can happen is the deletion of that ownerless unauthorized copy. Yes? No? I don't think they intentionally left the law that wide open. It is also another reason we might need a real copyright lawyer to explain things to us. No offence Harmon, but you said it yourself that you are not specialized in copyright.