I said 'copypasta' because that's what happens when you copy a link via MS Word or similar and it turns the spaces into gibberish, making the link useless.
Anyway...
QUOTE(luna'sceiling @ Sep 29 2008, 06:01 AM)
Ok how about from her website the first day of the suit:
There's a difference between a specific statement that she would not authorise a specific book and a general desire to control a market of a certain type.
As far as the fair use argument, I'm only going to make one point that keeps getting missed: SVA had every opportunity to publish an encyclopedia type book, provided it was a fair use of the source material. Jo even said so. It wasn't, so he was disallowed.
QUOTE
Any ruling that would expand the monopoly of the author (the derivative right is protected by copyright law if you recall) would take away some of the First Amendment limitations wouldn't it?
Possibly. However, this ruling was as I expected and did not expand anything. The only nominally grey area was the decision on whether the material was derivative, a decision that had no impact on the work's degree of infringement. Using a generality to describe a specific case to which the generality did not apply does the RTW no favors and makes them look bombastic.
QUOTE(article)
The short answer to the question is that the relationship between copyright and free speech rights has not become a part of legal culture. The primary reason almost surely is that judges view copyright against the backdrop of property law. As one court said, “The first amendment is not a license to trammel on legally recognized rights in intellectual property.” Such a position almost surely forecloses a recognition that while copyright protects the author's exclusive right to publish, the First Amendment protects the citizen's right to read what is published.
Well, yes, and? That's sort of stating the obvious. However, the author has a right to exclusively market their own property. Other authors only have limited- fair use compliant- rights to market works which use the same material. The LM exceeded fair use and marketed too much of Jo's material. That's why it was found to be infringing.
This insistence that this case was about a violation of anyone's first amendment rights seems unnecessary when there is already a mechanism in place for defining exceptions to and dealing with apparent violations of an author's rights- fair use. The only 'reason' I see for this approach is that US citizens have a tendency to react without thinking when anyone plays the 'unconstitutional' card, and the more ambiguous connection between copyrights and the constitution allows for greater hyperbole on the part of those who find fair use overly restrictive. (*cough*FUP*cough*)
QUOTE
Did she or did she not ask Emerson at Mugglenet to not write an encyclopedia because she intended to? If it is a gross distortion and a lie that she wanted to stop encyclopedias why did she make an issue of her refusal to license one because she intended to write her own throughout her declaration in Filing 24? Wasn't her declaration made under oath?
She didn't want to stop all encyclopedias in general. She wanted (from what I see) to stop the specific ones that would lessen the value of a project she specifically planned for herself. She had every right to ask. Mugglenet had every right to refuse- they chose not to. SVA had every right to refuse. He did, but did not do the work needed to ensure the work was a fair use. That is why it was enjoined, not because of Jo's wishes regarding specific competition. That was her motivation for asking. It was not the court's justification for the injunction. The former was a personal request from one author to another. The latter was the law.
Jo requested that Mugglenet stop their project as a favor. She requested that SVA stop because the evidence (the site) led her to believe that he used too much of her property to be a fair use, and her request to look at the MS before publishing to see if it actually did- a common professional courtesy in publishing- was refused. Seeking an injunction was a perfectly legitimate alternative, under the circumstances. Spinning it as anything else is only making a tempest in a teacup and giving those who would cloud the issue by invoking amendments fuel to rail against existing fair use statutes.
This post has been edited by Hinoema: Sep 29 2008, 05:28 AM
Sep 25 2008, 01:52 PM
