[Foundation-l] copyright issues

[Wjhonson]

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.