[Taxacom] copyright infringement by "Nabu Press"?

[Stephen Thorpe]

well yes, things may be different in the U.S. of A., though Nabu Press may be far enough away to avoid extradition to the U.S. for selling pirated copies of Doug's bee paper! (Mind you, Kim Dotcom was nabbed from up the road here, because those poor, hungry Hollywood moguls thought his activities definitely weren't kosher!)
 
I doubt that there is in general a clear distinction between commercial and non-commercial use, though selling copies on is fairly clearly in the former category!
 
There is a certain amount of analogy here with the trade in bottled water (if you want to buy it, good for you, but the stuff out the tap is probably just as good), except that, in the US, in particular, they seem to want to retain much more control over anything that has been published (water hasn't been published, so you can do what you like with it!)
 
Seems to me like a case of wanting your cake and eat it too, i.e., you want your publication to be widely advertised/noticed, but you don't want anybody to make money out of it without you getting your share. Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with that approach, of course, though it does seem somehow "very American", but perhaps that is why America is (or was) so successful economically (and only ran into trouble when it came to paying back borrowed money)  ...
 
so Nabu are either in the running for the entrepreneur of the year award, or likely to share a prison cell with Dotcom, depending on one's point of view ...
 
Stephen


________________________________
From: Curtis Clark <lists at curtisclark.org>
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Sent: Thursday, 29 March 2012 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] copyright infringement by "Nabu Press"?

IANAL, but I have some familiarity with US copyright law:

On 3/28/2012 5:07 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> well, yes, confirmation should be sought from an authority higher than me, certainly! However, some thoughts for what they are worth:
> (1) is the BHL use of the publication really "non-commercial"?? Don't people at BHL get paid? Isn't it a commercial company of sorts?

Immaterial. Any copyright holder can grant specific broad licenses, for 
non-commercial use, use with no derivatives, etc. Creative Commons, for 
example, is based on specific license of rights. In general, under 
current law, you can only give up rights explicitly, although in older 
works you had to explicitly declare rights.

> (2) since anybody can get the item free on BHL, the authors/publishers are not losing any money from people buying the item from Nabu, so no victim, no crime?

If a copyright is registered with the Copyright Office, there are 
specified statutory damages which are independent of actual damages. So 
you could recover the statutory damages no matter what, and if the 
actual damages were greater, you could go after them. And the profits 
made by Nabu are damages, even if BHL is giving it away for free.

> (3) I suspect Nabu are exploiting a grey area, rather than gambling that nobody will bother to take the matter to court (i.e., taking the matter to court wouldn't be successful, as it is unclear if any law is being broken, and since nobody is losing money, the matter would not be taken very seriously)

If in fact BHL owns the copyright, and licenses non-commercial use (and 
did not license the Nabu Press use), US copyright law is being broken. 
However, if the copyright were not registered, there's little advantage 
in trying to enforce copyright unless you already have your own staff of 
attorneys.

-- 
Curtis Clark        http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark
Biological Sciences                  +1 909 869 4140
Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona CA 91768


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