[Foundation-l] copyright issues

[Robin McCain]

Technically you are correct. As I've stated, I'm not a lawyer.

My original statement did not refer to any specific laws about 
plagiarism - rules are not necessarily laws and I'm sure that by 1831 
many institutions of higher learning had some sort of statement like an 
honor code that included such a rule. (My college honor code only dates 
back to 1848 but I'm sure it wasn't the first)

As for litigation - I don't think anyone was going to actually attempt 
to go into court on this matter. The Book of Mormon was extremely 
controversial and received a lot of adverse publicity - it is one thing 
to claim that you are going to file an action and quite another to do 
it. These people were simply trying to discredit Joseph Smith.

But notice what I said about the fine line and how an aggressive 
opponent can use it to waste your time and money.  That is why 
WikiMedia  (and every other publisher) has to budget for a legal staff - 
to deflect this kind of junk and is a good reason for purchasing E&O 
insurance.

On 8/17/2011 9:55 AM, Wjhonson wrote:
> Robin there are no laws (in the US) about plagiarism, that's what I'm 
> saying.
> None.  Zero.  They don't exist.
> Why? Because plagiarism does not de facto create any injury.
> Wikipedia and the foundation operate under U.S. law so that's what is 
> germane to this list, not what some other country including other 
> Berne signatories do or don't do.
> The U.S. does not recognize moral rights in the way that Germany or 
> France do, but rather claims under this umbrella are tried under 
> defamation or unfair competition laws.
> However some editors throw "plagiarism" around and shout "illegal 
> illegal", because they are trying to make some sheded point more concrete.
> It's not concrete in the U.S., you have to show what specific sort of 
> actual injury occurred.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robin McCain <robin at slmr.com>
> To: Wjhonson <wjhonson at aol.com>
> Cc: foundation-l <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Wed, Aug 17, 2011 9:44 am
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues
>
> On 8/17/2011 9:20 AM, Wjhonson wrote:
>> For plagiarism to "cause injury" you have to specify the type of 
>> injury in your suit.
>> And then the case is not about laws about plagiarism per se, of which 
>> there are none, but laws about the type of injury you are claiming.
>> For example unfair trade as in "I made all these designs and posted 
>> them to my website, company X stole my work by creating the actual 
>> products without the need to do any design work".  That sort of 
>> thing.  But that's not a law about plagiarism.
> Wow! you opened a can of worms...  I'm sure at least one of my lawyer 
> friends who specialize in intellectual property could respond in great 
> detail about this.
>
> According to the Berne Convention authors have moral rights as well as 
> legal rights.
>
> We aren't talking about student work here, but the real world where a 
> lot of money at stake. It doesn't even matter if the issue is laughed 
> out of court - you have still spent many thousands of dollars just 
> getting to that day. (this is why companies often settle rather than 
> go to court)
>
> I can assure you that no reputable publisher or distributor would 
> knowingly accept work that has been extensively plagiarized on the 
> basis that there is potential for a lawsuit of some sort unless they 
> had deep pockets and were knowingly doing this as a marketing strategy.
>
> All I'm trying to say here is that plagiarism often accompanies 
> copyright infringement, and that there can be a very fine line between 
> the two. In real world terms - you don't want to go there.
>
>