Re: [Bug-gne]Copyright infringements

[Tom Chance]

>From that article, one circumstance in which the
creator and/or owner of the mechanism by which
"illegal" material is distributed, can by taken to
court, is thus:

"The accused contributory infringer knew of the
underlying direct infringement. This element can be
satisfied by showing either that the contributory
infringer actually knew about the infringing activity,
or that he reasonably should have known given all the
facts and circumstances. At a minimum, however, the
contributory infringer must have some specific
information about infringing activity—the mere fact
that the system is capable of being used for
infringement, by itself, is not enough."

So if we had a membership, and we read through each
article before we "submit" it as moderators, then we
accept accountability. Its even GNE's fault as well as
the moderators, because we set the rules by which they
operate and we are all too aware of their possibility
for violating copyright laws.

Our only defences seem to be:

1) To say that we, as GNE, know of no specific
circumstances, only that the system has the potential
to infringe on copyright laws. "Have you built a level
of “plausible deniability” into your product
architecture and business model? If you promote,
endorse, or facilitate the use of your product for
infringing activity, you’re asking for trouble"

2) To say that is has many other uses which will not
necessarily infringe copyright laws, and these uses by
far outweigh the possible copyright infringement
problems.

3) To not many any profit from the system, especially
not from the copyright-infringing materials. It
suggests that an open source approach is also good
because it takes away the opportunity for us as GNE to
profit in the future, because it will also be
available for free somewhere else.

4) We must not manually make copies of the material
submitted, it must all be automated. That way we
ourselves have not propogated such material, the
system has, over which we will have no editorial
control.

5) We must not try and build devices into our system
which will circumvent copyright laws. So we should not
make it seem like we are trying to avoid the law.
Rather, we should provide a service from the outset
which appears to enable copyright infringement, but
makes no special provisions from it.

Those five points seem to me to be the most we can do
without substantial legal support.

Tom Chance


--- Bob Dodd <address@hidden> wrote: > There
is an interesting article on copyright over on
> /.
> The link is below.
> 
> The article is specifically US and P2P but its
> conclusions on avoiding
> copyright violations are worth reading. 
> 
> /bob
> 
>
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/Napster/20010227_P2P_Copyright_White_Paper.html
> 
> 
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=====
"True security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated 
individual effort - Fyodor Dostoyevsky"

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