Re: [Bug-gne]Copyright infringements

[Bob Dodd]

--- Mike Warren <address@hidden> wrote:
[snip]
> Well, I'd say the ``someone'' would have to provide some sort of
> plausible evidence that they hold the copyright first...

Assuming that they have to... Do they have to? Certainly with British
law, you need only say "hey, stop breaking the law", and if the
offender doesn't stop then you provide your proof to the courts. You
*can* offer evidence, but you don't have to, it's the publishers
responsibility to check copyright on what he publishes, and you as
author don't have to cooperate... It would be interesting to see what
the RIAA offered as evidence to Napster with their list of 12,000
songs. Not much I suspect.

That said, we can always ask of course, and a lot of the time it may be
obvious as soon as you look at an article what the problem is.

The type of original material maybe a problem, even if the copyright
owners cooperate... Books are "easy", if you don't mind the hassle of
looking it up in a library and assuming that it's not out of print, or
privately published, or a translation from the oringinal written in
Malayalam (the language of Kerala, a state in south-west India ;-))
Pictures are more of a problem especially if the image is digital to
begin with, or a scanned photo (i.e. not from a book). Then there's
text and pictures from defunct web sites...

I'm sorry to sound so negative, but the only legally-safe solution is
to take down any material people claim copyright on, if the claim is
even slightly possible. And yes, I understand the possible abuses in
such a system, I just can't see an alternative.


/bob


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