The one area where I could see this law really coming into play would be something like a class action suit against some big photo company (i.e. Corbis) who was claiming to sell licenses for the copyrights of images that they did not own.
Corbis has a number of photos in their library which I know for a fact were made by the U.S. government as part of the Manhattan Project. I contacted them about this, and they said that even though it says you are buying a license to the copyright (and says copyright Corbis all over the page), that they really mean that it is only the copyright "on the scan itself" that they are claiming. I suggested that this seemed disingenuous, especially given the rather obvious reading of the application of Bridgeman v. Corel in this instance, and they cut off communication. Go figure. I think it is pretty criminal that they claim to be selling licenses to these photos when they own none of the intellectual property, and I find it very likely that in their vast collection they have sold people rights that they did not actually have, and threatened, by means of their pages and license information, to sue them for infringement if they used them outside the licenses, etc. In my mind this constitutes a form of fraud, but again, I'm not a lawyer.
But anyway, I'm getting a little off track here... :-)
FF
On 5/16/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Fastfission wrote:
On 5/15/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Is it illegal to claim you have copyright control over something you do not? I'm sure there are plently of laws against claiming you *wrote* something you didn't, but if you properly attribute the authors but tack on a false claim of copyright, I don't see how that can be illegal.
As I understand it (again, I am not in any way a lawyer), the relevant parts of U.S. copyright law are:
(c) Fraudulent Copyright Notice. - Any person who, with fraudulent intent, places on any article a notice of copyright or words of the same purport that such person knows to be false, or who, with fraudulent intent, publicly distributes or imports for public distribution any article bearing such notice or words that such person knows to be false, shall be fined not more than $2,500. (d) Fraudulent Removal of Copyright Notice. - Any person who, with fraudulent intent, removes or alters any notice of copyright appearing on a copy of a copyrighted work shall be fined not more than $2,500. (e) False Representation. - Any person who knowingly makes a false representation of a material fact in the application for copyright registration provided for by section 409, or in any written statement filed in connection with the application, shall be fined not more than $2,500.
"Fraudulent intent" is a key element to these provisions. That brings it all into criminal law where the standards of proof are much higher. A lot of people who put up these notices have the good faith belief that they are correct in doing so, and as I stated before they may still have copyright on the layout of the page, but nothing else.
Ec
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