Excelsior the book

Basically, the same rule applies: If any contributor objects then I shall withdraw it.

Do I have copyright over things I post on ILx?

Yes.

Done and done.

Did you not think even for a second "maybe I should inquire about this first"?

If there are enough ans this could make into a second book.

(That said, releasing a book of all this is pretty damned goofy to start with, above and beyond not asking anyone about it.)

I thought this was the new Excelsior thread, but really it's just dumb!

Personally I think Mark, who strikes me as an all right feller in general, made an error in judgment here, and it can and should be righted by simply discontinuing this thing, along with an apology.

xxxpost

Hopefully this will result in long and erudite lastplanetoj4k4rta updates like every 15 or 20 minutes. Either that or like a new album every 4 weeks. I mean, he's gonna need an outlet.

but...
what is the problem here? most of you dont even post with real names and people who would buy it would have no idea possible who wrote stuff.
second, if you are using your real name, then you obviously dont care if you are googled. and its much easier to google someone than buy this book... and how many random people are going to spend 18 fucking dollars for an ILX book when they can just read it online?

also, for those who object... would you also object if i printed these threads out and used them for my own amusement? i dont see any difference at all there.

what is the problem here?

if i am a dick or insensitive, tell me.

Are you people massively dense or something?

While I'm sorry to see J0hn go, my issue is much less about his departure and much more about the GIGANTIC LEVEL OF STUPIDITY involved in doing something like putting people's copyrighted words into a product and selling it without asking for their consent first.

Not only obvious, but kind of pointless, too, as you say (especially when the only way you can BUY the book is online, but if you have online access in the first place, why do you NEED it? etc etc) -- but is it really a surprise? And why did J0hn seem to take it so personally? I'm extremely upset to see him go, too, FWIW.

I am so fuckin' angry and depressed about this, I love my ilx0r friends and am going to really miss them/y'all a whole lot but being printed without my permission is horseshit

xpost

It is really well known that "lastplanetojakarta.com" is J0hn's, also

Yeah, but there's a ton of M0UNT@!N G0@TS threads and it's naive to think that someone can't work their way back to it. Not that the book is right, but it's not the earth shattering public revelation that you're making it out to be.

Feel whatever you feel regardless, but some of the posts sound like the posters think otherwise.

and if he is ashamed of what he wrote, he shouldnt have written it in the first place/left a long time ago.

xpost i am sure

J0hn, because you (unlike Mark) understand the openendedness of these threads, I can only assume that when you say you're leaving "after this thread," it's a cruelly subtle way of saying you're not leaving at all! Cool!

Jon, people can't see full email addresses unless they're registered.

At least 3 Xs.

http://www.rainbownetrigging.com/rainbow-images/industrial-glove-big.jpg

I'm gonna leave this thread & the forum now for real, as my attemps to clarify my position are just making me angrier & angrier. Bye everybody.

Well, since this isn't inherent to the internet, I guess the responsibility for maintaining this belief falls on the moderators of this board, no?

For the record, I personally don't care that my posts are in this thing. I do not make the mistake of thinking that this means that no one else should care, either.

Because it won't ever be honored. Because it's unrealistic. It's like expecting that you can walk down the street having a conversation with the person next to you, or on the other end of your cell phone, without people listening. It's unrestricted space, and it's explicitly and visibly unrestricted space: it isn't possible to occupy it without being aware of that.

It's like expecting that those eavesdroppers -- whether they mean to be or not -- will never tell other people what they heard you talking about, nor post it to "In Passing," nor in their book about People Saying The Darndest Things, or whatever.

It might be a reasonable requirement of courtesy, but like it or not, courtesy beyond a certain point isn't a reasonable expectation. It just doesn't happen. It isn't something given by default.

It's not like this is new. The profit involved should be irrelevant, and seems to be irrelevant to most peoples' concerns: would they object to someone printing out a thread at Kinko's to read at work? That's all CafePress does: they print it out. They make no claims to copyright or ownership (they do require that their clients possess copyright to the work they're printing; it's never been clear they need to). So the concern is either empty principle or has to do with privacy: not wanting to be read by people you don't know are reading, or aren't answerable to the ILX community, or whatever.

How is it any different from printing out a thread and showing it to a spouse or coworker? Or letting them read your screen? Or the lurkers who read everything anyway?

I'm not saying it isn't okay to be bothered by it, although it's probably clear it doesn't bother me; I'm saying it's not reasonable to expect people to act accordingly, because they haven't been, and they aren't going to start.

(The odds that anyone who's been active in popular online places for a few years hasn't been reprinted somewhere without their consent or knowledge are not great.)

'Are you taking out email addresses or the names or what exactly?'

Mark hasn't ans this.

I didn't see any harm mostly bcz the threads selected (ILE) were harmless stuff, ilm would be a far more serious issue bcz there are ppl who make a living out of writing whereas the stuff selected here is not like that.

see you soon j0hn.

massive x-post

Why? This is a print on demand service, one no more public than here -- and harder to find. The word "book" doesn't have magic powers that make it different from "printout."

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/

'Welcome to our marketplace of over 3 million member-created products ranging from custom-designed T shirts to posters and books...'

This is like going to Kinko's and printing out a webpage, then circulating it amongst a few friends. Relax!

I still think Mark should have asked. I could have got the Bee Vibrator thread in if he had.

WITH A FOURTEEN CENT PROFIT!

Nick: Sorry, Kinko's was the only chain name I could think of; a photocopy shop, in other words.

Tep: So your friends are paying Kinko's for the copies, then?

x-post

let's hire a hitman to kill jon williams:
http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?msgid=4756047
http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?msgid=4773376

..and redefining 'enormous' on
How are they going to end ILX?

I will match every dollar raised with one towards a hitman.

-- Andrew Farrell (afarrel...), June 22nd, 2004 3:57 PM. (afarrell) (tracklink) (later)

Remember that pot we have for collecting money for a hit man? Can I contribute about £1000, please?
-- People love Gravity and Evolution! (masonicboo...), June 23rd, 2004 9:26 AM. (kate) (later)

Well a ferry ride to Rochester is $55, we could outfit Sean in a trenchcoat for another $50...
-- Mr Noodles (infinitecow...), June 23rd, 2004 11:22 AM. (Mr Noodles) (later)

This is cutting and pasting, though; the "phone conversation" here takes place in full view of a tape recorder kept in a public place so everyone who wants to listen to it has access to it.

Tep: So your friends are paying Kinko's for the copies, then?

It would be okay if Mark did this for free, but not if he asks people to pay cost?

(That isn't what it sounds like people are saying.)

As an aside, at what point in the conversation did I give the impression that I was completely unaware that Kinko's charges you for making copies? I would really like to avoid appearing like a complete and total moron in the future.

(AKA FOR FUCK'S SAKE)

I think a few people are severely overreacting. This is like "Pump Up the Volume" almost.

"Talk hard, Momus!"

-- VengaDan Perry (webmail), June 23rd, 2004 4:13 PM. (Dan Perry) (later)

AND MADE A FOURTEEN CENT PROFIT?

May I provide links to other sites on my Web Page?

This topic is debated often and no clear resolution has emerged. Unless you are given express permission to link to a site, you should contact the owner of the other site and obtain their permission before you do so.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that I'm giving Mark the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he did this out of cluelessness and a general ignorance of online tact, rather than out of some impulse to cause harm and hurt people. Maybe I'm wrong, in which case all the ire is justified.

I don't think you're a moron -- I addressed you, but I was talking to the thread, too, or I would've just emailed you. Not everyone knew what Kinko's was; I was trying to make the comparison clear, that CafePress is just a high-end photocopying service. So many of the complaints upthread are incredibly vague that it doesn't seem at all clear that people object for the same reason, or even agree with each others' objections.

also, what about people who link to ilx in their blogs?

ILX Mods plot Jon Williams death via hitman! [aka Bored Of The Flies 2004]

'Although it is illegal and an infringement of your copyright for someone to copy your work without your permission, the reality is that it is very easy for someone to do. It is possible to limit the systems that can access your site, for example, only UC computers could gain access; or set up a password system to allow only certain users to the site. You should place a copyright notice on the work and advise browsers what they may and may not do with your work. None of these approaches will prevent someone from copying your works off your site. In short, if you have something very valuable that you don't want people to use, don't put it on your web page.'

© Copyright 2001 The Regents of the University of California, All Rights Reserved.

I mean, sure, I can understand the general idea that things posted here are being willingly thrown out into the ether to be viewed by whoever happens to come across them; most of us use handles anyway and aren’t writing anything that’s particularly dear to us. But ILX has attracted a whole lot of people whose names and reputations are directly tied to the work they do. Which has always made me really happy --- that someone like John or the countless working-critics on ILM could join freely into the discussions without worrying that they were engaging in anything other than some casual in-house banter. Everyone’s always respected that on here; this whole book idea, whether anyone looks at it or not, basically knifes the idea that even the most explicit of our protections on here --- the clearly-stated copyright --- will mean anything to anyone. You may not care what happens to the stuff you post, but some people do, period.

Beyond which c’mon: it’s just illegal! You can't do this; you can't search up everything John ever wrote and publish “First Pl4ne to J4karta: The Collected Works of J0hn D4rneille”; you can't just wholesale print and bind Simon Reynolds’ blog, either. You write content here; it stays here. If people want to read it on the toilet, all they need are printers and heavy-duty staplers.

But it isn't a Jay-Z album. I don't want to dismiss your analogy, because I agree with part of it, but there's an important difference between "words by people who sell words" and "sellable words by people who sell words, written with the intent of making money from them."

The other difference -- regardless of that part of the analogy -- is that you can also make CafePress pages semi-private, so they're not listed in the directory or their internal search engines; no one finds them unless they're given the link. (I don't know if they're googleproofed; what would people google in this case?) Mark hasn't gone around "advertising" this. Even if he had, the page tells you virtually nothing about what's involved; no one who isn't familiar with ILX would have any reason or incentive to buy it.

I'm not arguing Mark had the right to put this together, although I don't think any harm has been done; I just think the response is completely disproportionate, and possibly in places not very considered.

yanc3y will then photocopy it onto microfiche, and sell the original on ebay.

To use an analogy, sure, you can't expect any conversation you ever have not to be monitored or recorded or listened-to by strangers, but you don't expect a lover or a friend or a band-member to tattle about your sex life to a gossip columnist.

(This may all be redundant now, since I haven't looked at the last twenty or so posts, but whatever...)

There's nothing at all "disproportionate" about the fact that J0hn left; my guess is that up until now, he had some vague trust that ILXors weren't about to do something dumb like this, and now --- in whatever tiny, doesn't-make-a-difference way --- he's been reminded that he can't trust that at all.

One final thing: this argument about exactly how much harm it does is ridiculous and beside the point. Each of us has copyright on what we write here. It's up to each of us to decide how we feel about what happens to our words, and we don't have to defend our reactions to anyone else.

Well yeah, obviously (that's part of what makes the analogy). No one's denying Mark didn't have copyright here, and I pointed out on the Moderator Request Forum that CafePress is known to respond quickly to "X doesn't have copyright to Y" complaints. But that doesn't actually sound like the substance of peoples' complaints.

Also, Tep, your Jay-Z analogy refutation, if I understand it, is off; copyright protection isn't just about sellable works you originally intended to sell -- it's about anything you created that happens to be sellable.

Chris, you're confusing an argument about legality, which I have no interest in, with the argument I'm actually participating in.

J0hn D, don't flee...the book won't happen now, it's all good...

x-post

I can't agree that it sets a precedent, because I can't believe it's the first time. The first time we know about it? Seems like it. The first time it's happened to ILX specifically? Could be. (Although wasn't there something about an ILB thread being reprinted in a newspaper? I could be misremembering.)

People keep bringing up J0hn as though his threat to leave were the whole issue here, and for the most part I haven't talked about that at all -- it's his choice, and I don't see why anything I'd say would make any difference. I started out trying just to figure out what, exactly, people were uncomfortable with or angry about. If we want to set a precedent, shouldn't it to make it clear what the community's okay with and what it isn't?

(Every time I hit Submit there are new posts! I may never see any of you again.)

ost of x-posts. And Tep, much as I like you I have to say fuckyou to the idea that you can label someone's objections to stuff like this "silly." This is like shouting-out-of-cars all over again: you can't do rights-infringing shit to people and then call them crybabies when they'd prefer you not to.

I was on the other side for shouting-out-of-cars, though. (Well, one of the other sides ... oh, let's not bring it all back up.)

You can object to my using the word "silly," and that's fine, but c'mon, we don't need to get into the "you have the right to do X and I have the right to think Y about you doing X, which triggers your right to think Z about my actually saying Y about your X..." Somebody started singing it not knowing what it was, etc.

That's not the sum of my argument, but sure, a CafePress isn't inherently a book the way something published by a professional publisher is. A publisher might use CafePress, but when I put my cookbook through there, for instance, it doesn't have an ISBN number, it can't be ordered by anyone not looking for it, it isn't listed on Amazon, it can't be special-ordered somewhere, etc., etc.

I don't know if I'd say it's the same as the difference between a mix CD and a commercially produced CD, but it's a major difference. If there wasn't, I'd be a published cookbook author.

summarize a book in 25 words, I think. But the diff here is that its an ilxor, on the other hand, the newspaper person should also know abt copyright.

xpost ISBN and Amazon don't get to decide what a "book" is or not! Many of my favorite books don't have ISBN's and aren't on Amazon, that's the whole idea behind "small press"! And I'm pretty sure most bookstores won't special order something that doesn't have an ISBN anyway.

Lemme suggest something better: how about ILX regulars just print out threads they think are funny to keep for themselves? It's not difficult.

(Chris, for heaven's sake, I'm both an author and an editor in the small press. We aren't going to have an argue about the innate essence of bookness. You can feel free to alone.)

'Webboard comments have ranged from anti-European ("More tastelessness and idiocy from across the Atlantic") to mildly amused ("Somebody had to say it") to vehement agreement ("George W. Bush should die in a hotel fire in Birmingham, wrapped in sheets gritty with Mr Kipling crumbs") since the incident.'

All three comments, unattributed, came from one ILM thread, and the third is mine... But it's a parody paraphrase of a comment Morrissey himself made about Brett Anderson. So, if the lawyers had their way, we could sue Pitchfork, Morrissey could sue me, Bush could join him in a class action, Brett Anderson could sue Morrissey, Bush could invade Highgate, Ned could lock every thread on ILM, and so on and so on. Only the lawyers would benefit, and in the end only three vultures would be left alive on earth. (Cue TAFKAJD to say 'Momus, don't be disrespecting vultures. They are noble animals.')

*This is not to say I don't think some of you have very valid arguments - it IS, rather, to say that he said if people said no that he'd get rid of it, people have said no, and now he'll get rid of it. Why waste the time and energy on something which has practically already been solved?

Thread's done, make way for the people to comment on the thread now.

Jess, the key part of your sentence = "on ILX." We are all of us aware that loads of people can read what we write on ILX. Some of us would prefer to state very clearly, right now and for future reference, that we do not necessarily wish that material to be reproduced outside the place where we originally put it. Especially for sale.

(I've just remembered something that saddens me: J0hn actually did this same thing once, didn't he? Posting an ILX thread over to LP2J and then coming back to ask if anyone minded.)

(xpost w/ nabisco)

He is merely one of my 83 identities.

$1 gets you all of the "I despair for humanity" posts.
$1 gets you all of the "Matos probably thinks this" posts.
$1 gets you all of the "OH! MY POOR EYES!" posts.
$1.99 gets you the photo with the Teddy bear.
A penny for your thoughts.

(x-post)

"(if anybody's interested, I really will finish this tomorrow, will probably both post it here & to LPTJ - warning, it'll probably also include why "The World's Greatest" is also quite triffic)

-- J0hn Darn1elle, June 15th, 2003."

I really, really don't want to get into a legality discussion. Let me make that clear up front. It's mostly because my understanding of copyright law is very case-specific, in the "please can you call legal and ask them before you make me change this" sense of "case" and very much not in the "Sparkwood vs Twenty-One" sense of "case." Slightly more than half of what I've published has sparked a fair use discussion with editorial; I think I know less about it now than I did before I ever dealt with it.

It's partly because one of the things I've been told in times like that is that the relevant rulings tend not to be as clear as either side would like, once you try to generalize away from the specifics of a prior case.

I don't like talking out of my hat, and I don't like huge discussions where hats are all anyone has to talk out of, which is the kind of thing "the internet and fair use" easily leads to.

But with all that in mind -- in other words, if you disagree, all I'm going to do is say "Okay" -- my short answer is that I think just about anything can be fudged at least a little, when it comes to copyright law.

i wonder what will happen the next time Mark does this

(Momus-as-J0hn: 'Momus, you're skating on very thin ice at this point. What are you going to make me say here?')

Also, since I have copyright over my posts please remove any of mine before continuing with this scheme. k thx bye

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It’s easy.

Nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It’s easy.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

Nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.
It’s easy.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

All you need is love (all together, now!)
All you need is love. (everybody!)
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need (love is all you need).

Yee-hai!
Oh yeah!
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah.
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah.

Of course.

I wonder which shit he thinks he is copping.

probably ILX.

The difference lies in the sale of the repackaged material. Nobody could successfully argue that photoshopping a giant penis onto Crudders' head isn't fair use. Embedding images is a grey area, as the content itself is still being supplied by the original publisher.

Republishing material unchanged without consent (as is the case here) is obviously not simply 'fair use'.

Just the one spike?

SAIL! SAIL! SAIL!

Andrew, this has been covered, and while I don't defend the book, that's positively ridiculous. They'd be making money from the sale of binding glue, labor, and paper.

You can disagree, and you do, but the bullshit like "I don't see how it could be any more clear" is exactly why I started posting: because we had a gaggle of geese running around thinking everyone saw it in crystal-clear terms exactly like theirs, and no one in fact did.

This isn't material (in the sense of a work of art, or a magazine article) and it was never published. Internet forums are the equivalent of talking with friends.

I understand why it's bad form to not float the idea at all or ask for input, but for the life of me, I don't understand why anyone would be upset about this thing's existence. There's no harm done. ILX posts aren't something anyone does in the course of business, so it hurts no one on the money end. ILX posts are available to many more people every day, so privacy concerns are out.

Subtract those words and they'd be selling blank books, and while there are companies who do that, I don't think that's what CafePress had in mind.

Photocopiers don't sell blank paper -- but they don't sell math finals, either.

People here link photos, sometimes from large money-making websites, without fucking asking.

And yet people are getting their knickers in a knot about a pissy little photocopied chapbook that NO ONE WILL BUY so NO ONE WILL PROFIT FROM and if you all stopped talking about, IT WOULD GO AWAY QUIETLY.

Unlike ILX itself which is here for all to see. I *really* do not understand the reactions to this.

Having said all that, I think the concept is also silly, cus why would I want to buy a paper copy of something I could print out myself? I mean, huh?

exactly, it's not like someone's singing out your beautiful words over accordion gina g.

ILX is dead, long live ILX (or something).

For the record, people (after an initial "eh?" period) conceded that the photographer had a point and removed his images. After we removed his images, he hung around and continued to whine and complain as if we were still linking his images. This was the point when we told him to fuck off.

Nobody would buy a blank book.

It has not stopped many (most) people here from linking images willy-nilly all over the board the rest of the time though, which semanticallty isnt far removed from what this is about, to my mind (you may not agree tho). I'm guilty of it myself, of course.

I dont think the book is a good idea, but only cos I think it is stupid.

I also think everyone's just been superbly trolled. Dropt a bomb and walked off, he has. Hasnt anyone noticed how quiet he went? Hmm.

Let this ruin everyones good natured friendships, if y'all like...

xpost: Andrew, nobody would have bought this one anyway. I mean c'mon. IT WAS A TROLL.

No way! That ILB thread was quoted in German newspapers, Italian newspapers, Australian newspapers, British newspapers, BBC radio, and even a magazine and NO ONE was ever contacted for permission.

say if we had been using an ad-supported forum provider we'd have made money for the forum for linking to those images that will make people read these threads more and give more ad exposure.

Sure, that's the thing -- on one end, it's not like image leeching; on the other, it's not like anthologizing peoples' published work without their permission, either. It's not the same as anything. It's its own thing.

(And I can't believe it's trolling, not only because Mark Grout is not exactly a name to leap to mind when I think of trolls, but because it would be such a bizarre thing to try trolling with -- and a CafePress shop takes some time and work to set up, if he didn't just fake the .pdf -- especially since it's something people have suggested before.)

Mark if that wasnt your aim, FFS speak up, your silence is deafening and suspicious.

I CAN'T HEAR A FUCKING THING.

(J0hn leaving is a big deal, of course, if he doesn't change his mind; but I think the fact of that and the size of the thread are making people overestimate the severity of general response.)

(xpost; oh okay, sorry -- but still, you see what I mean? Mark would be a criminal genius to have been able to predict this.)

I might have something to say about the fairness of that.

That is so absurd.

How come? If I suddenly found that ILX was a direct reason for me getting a $1,000 excess bandwidth bill (and normal use of pix of mine doesnt worry me, I might add), I'd be shitty at that; if I was quoted in a printed copy of something no one will make money let alone profit from, it wouldnt bother me at all.

And I am a published writer. I also have works of mine online. Someone could potentially take those and make a book of it on cafepress without asking me. But I still wouldnt be pissed off - because it still says I wrote it (assuming nothings been changed, as I assume here also), and no one else is making money off my work. Net result, I get more exposure, which any writer wants.

I know thats not the point here though, but still. Anyway this has all become a bit silly.

To make an analogy (and I hate making analogies between the 'real world' and the internet simply because they are always both limited and misunderstood) it's a bit like this: the publishing of a web page is akin to providing a series of little packages in a storefront. Each package contains either an image, a slab of text, or layout instructions. There's one package labelled "pick me first!" which usually contains information on what's in the other packets, and how to assemble a 'front page' from a collection of image packets and text packets. Each of these packages must be taken separately and assembled by the viewer.

Complaining about image leeches is akin to this shop owner saying "Hey! You can't just buy that image packet! Sure, I'm providing it here, but you're supposed to use it in conjunction with these other packets over there!" There are 'real world' ways in which this store owner can enforce his packets are taken in specific groupings, just as there are ways image leeching can be prevented online. (it is ridiculously simple technically to prevent images from being linked from other sites, it's just most people would rather complain and whinge than try to solve the problem)

Ugh, that was rather unclear but I hope it makes my position known.

This book hurts no one. There is no potential for it to cause harm - it costs no poster income (as copyright infringement is designed to protect), and it doesn't increase public exposure (as everything included in the book is already public and Googlable).

Thus, bandwidth-leeching is inherently more harmful and thus worse than this book, because the former has the potential to do harm, where the latter doesn't.

Neither is something the average ILX poster needs to worry about, but saying that one is irrelevant to the other, or that image-leeching pales in comparison to this doesn't hold a lot of water.

Monetary damage is a visceral thing, yes. And reputational damage, among other things, is harder to prove, yes. But the latter can lead to the former.

Bandwidth-leeching can be easily controlled by your hypothetical site's owner. ILX threads published through Cafe Press cannot. The one thing to Mark's credit is that, even though he didn't ask beforehand, he at least notified ILX. What if ILX is not so lucky next time?

Anyway, clearly there's never going to be a consensus on this, and I disagree with a few things on here, but there's nothing more to be said than that, really.

If the comments were edited or altered in the book, that would be one thing. But a straight copy wouldn't raise any issues, as the words poss. causing damage to someone's reputation continue to exist at ILX.

A couple totally irrelevant things I'm still confused by: (a) Tep, the whole "charging for binding" thing is ridiculous; even above the fact that they don't sell blank books, I'm guessing we've both run enough profit/loss statements on print-on-demand books to know that price point leaves as much profit as any publisher. It may not be much, and who knows what percentage kicks to Mark, but it's a book for sale like anything else. (b) Reprinting those particular threads may not be likely to inflict monetary harm on anyone, but I can think of instances where the precedent certainly could: I've noticed time and again that a lot of the paid critics on ILM wind up gussying up things they've said on the forum for use in paid articles. There are also people over there whose words, based on their reputations alone, are inherently sellable, and therefore maybe worth protecting, in whatever limited way.

In any case: a whole lot of people have made the point on here that this particular book is completely meaningless and won't be bought by anyone except as a joke and so on. Which, sure, fine. The point here is one of principle, which is why I'm loving the slippery-slope pics. Throw the copyright rule out the window and I'll be the first one sitting in DaCapo's lobby with my edited-down "Selected Conversations Between Several Music Critics Whose Books You've Paid to Read Before."

Well then no one would know, no one would buy it, and no fighting!

If professional critics are even vaguely considering using something as a money-making effort, they shouldn't be posting it or talking about it on a public forum to start with. The concept of stealing someone else's work wholesale has been around since, I dunno, Guttenberg. (Steve)

If you took a "selected conversations" book to a commercial publisher or stood to profit off of the content - which CafePress technically doesn't, as I read it - then you'd have to pay the "several music critics" to start with, and everyone wins.

14 cents per unit, I think he said; if and only if it adds up to more than $25.

It's a printing service, not a publisher. It's ridiculous to see it as anything else, independent of how you feel about Mark's using the service. Sure, they make a profit -- again, so does Kinko's, so does a Xerox machine, etc.

If you honestly can't see the difference between this and a book from a publisher ... then I really don't have any interest in putting anything after the ellipsis.

Jesus, Milo, you don't have to go to fucking law school to see the precedent: Milo's just republished, wholesale, in a different context, copyrighted works that people have not permitted him to take off of this server! If you allow that, you've just shattered whatever modicum of control the copyright is supposed to allow us!

And if site-owners can be allowed, in milo's hypothetical, to use "I just didn't know any better" about their ignorance of image-link-blocking, we might as well say it's fair that site-posters can use "I just didn't know any better" about anything they post here. Obviously I'm not on the side of that.

Except it's up there on the page right next to a bunch of other unrelated stuff which seems like it might possibly draw a crowd. Sure, most people probably wouldn't buy it on spec just cause it's next to a Beth Orton calendar...but you know, maybe it might happen.

OTOH, I'd love to see people band together, like some of us did on a usenet group Im on, to contribute stories and poetry etc for a book we could work on and print up. Stuff written not here, not online at all - but FOR a book.

It seems there's people here with a talent for great ideas - we should use them constructively :)

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children
and slaves in the West at the period of this story--that is to say,
thirty or forty years ago.

Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and
girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account,
for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what
they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked,
and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.

THE AUTHOR.

HARTFORD, 1876.

" I'd like to see you try it."

Those are my favorite parts.

And Tep, I'm starting to wonder why you're even attached to this printing vs. publishing thing; what possible difference does it make, rights-wise? When the end result is a bound volume that costs $18 to buy, it makes very little difference whether it's got an ISBN on it; whether it's CafePress that does the inking or RR Donnelley, it's the same product.

I dunno, I care very little about this particular book, but I've typed a whole lot of text into this box and I very very strongly prefer that none of it goes anywhere else without my knowledge and permission.

Precedent was set centuries ago (when was the first set of letters published? the first posthumous diary?) and precedent for overtly commercial ventures doesn't matter.

You really have to stretch to worry about ILX posts as "copyrighted works." Which screams "I want to be upset about this but don't really have a good reason" to me.

Except it's up there on the page right next to a bunch of other unrelated stuff which seems like it might possibly draw a crowd. Sure, most people probably wouldn't buy it on spec just cause it's next to a Beth Orton calendar...but you know, maybe it might happen.
As with the hypothetical "selected conversations" book (if some ILM writers were smart they'd get together, edit a half-dozen threads and sell it together - I'd actually buy one of those), if it becomes a profitable, commercial enterprise

But it wasn't, and it was never going to be.

The printing v. publishing difference is key. As a publishing company, CafePress is liable for the content of the works. As a printer, it's not. They're charging Mark $17.96 per book, so they make the profit of a publisher, but legally avoid the troubles.

Liability of Duplicating Houses for Copyright Infringement

By Bruce E. Colfin

Any duplication or replication business can be a copyright infringer without intending to be one. It may not even know about it until it is too late! The following scenario may apply to any manufacturer, duplicator or replicator of publishing media, whether it is print, CD ROM, audio only, video, film, photos, or other media.

SALE, Inc., ("SALE") purportedly the owner of the rights in a master tape, delivers the master to DUPE, Ltd., ("DUPE") a duplication or replication business, and orders thousands of copies of compact discs and audio cassettes. Assuming that in the normal course of business SALE has obtained all of the required rights, the order is taken by DUPE, paid for, completed, and copies are then delivered to SALE for distribution.

Shortly thereafter DUPE and its principal owners are served with a lawsuit for copyright infringement in a United States District Court. It is alleged that SALE had not acquired all of the rights necessary to make copies from the master, and DUPE is a party to numerous acts of copyright infringement. The owners of DUPE protest, "We didn't know! We only duplicated the copies for our contracting client, SALE. We didn't intend to infringe anyone's copyright!"

Under the American copyright laws of the United States, DUPE may be a copyright infringer. Generally, neither knowledge nor intent is required for one to be liable for copying someone else's work without permission. Being an "innocent infringer" has little bearing on liability, although it is important in determining the dollar amount of damages. A duplication business may also be liable if the contracting party (SALE) has a duty to obtain the owner's authorization and fails to do so.

In 1993, a federal court in Chicago decided that a printer of advertising brochures was liable for infringing the copyright of certain photographs its contracting client used in the brochures. In that case, the printer was unaware that its contracting client, who created the brochures, had failed to pay a licensing fee for the use of the photos. Nonetheless, the court found that the absence of knowledge or intent was not a defense.

DUPE's liability arises because it is an agent of the primary infringer (in our case, SALE), or it has the right and ability to supervise infringing activities, and has a direct financial interest in those activities. Copyright infringement does not require knowledge or intent of the illegal act.

Although DUPE may have performed the actual duplication, it is not solely liable for the infringement. SALE, Inc., is the primary infringer, and thus is jointly liable. SALE has the ability to supervise the duplicating house's activities and has a direct financial interest in the duplication of the product. DUPE, as the duplicating house, may be considered an agent of SALE, and would thereby be a vicarious infringer. Courts have imposed vicarious liability upon printers because a printer may be in a position to police the primary infringer's conduct.

Despite the apparent liability imposed on duplication businesses, a 1970 New York case, decided otherwise. In Leo Feist v. Apollo Records, the court decided that a company which had recorded, edited and prepared master tapes for its contracting client was not liable to the copyright owner. In fact, the court attributed sole responsibility to the primary infringer, the record manufacturer. The New York court cited an earlier case, in which the court dismissed a musical copyright owner's complaint against a record pressing company "on the grounds that the record presser was not a `manufacturer' within the meaning of" the U.S. Copyright Act. In the New York cases, the courts decided that the general manufacturer did not act "jointly" or "in concert" with the presser simply because it hired the presser for the duplication. The contracting party, and primary infringer, was the general manufacturer in fact as well as name and thus was solely liable for the infringements.

The New York cases appear to protect duplicating or replicating business from unintentional infringement liability. However, these cases may be limited to their particular facts and can be interpreted by courts very narrowly. In other cases, the courts still find a duplicating house jointly liable for infringement along with the general manufacturer.

The Copyright Act prescribes the minimum amount of damages an infringer will pay. In an average case, the minimum a party would pay would be $500 per infringement or the lost profits. In a case of innocent infringement the court may reduce the amount to $200 for each infringement. In order to deter future infringements, courts have the discretion to increase the damages in cases of willful infringement. Public policy dictates that willful and intentional infringers should be punished more harshly than innocent infringers who had no prior knowledge or intent, although the burden of proving innocence is on the infringer. The Copyright Act states that the infringer must prove that he "was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright."

Although the law establishes a minimum amount, there is no reduced ceiling for an innocent infringer. Thus, based upon the specific facts of a case, an innocent infringer could be required to pay up to the maximum statutory damages for all the infringements, although many courts would probably be reluctant to do so. There is very little deterrent effect if the infringer had no actual knowledge or intent. Nonetheless, even only a minimum amount could be costly. In addition, a court may award profits, actual damages, court costs, and attorneys fees when warranted by the circumstances of the case. The payments to defense counsel alone, even if found blameless and without liability, could be staggering to a small business.

There really is no legal standard for how thorough an investigation is needed prior to accepting a prospective duplication. By law, whether or not DUPE searched to see if SALE had procured the rights, or how reasonable the search was, is immaterial to DUPE's basic liability because of the strict liability standard.

It would have been in DUPE's best interest to secure copies of the "valid" licenses entitling SALE to duplicate. The review of SALE's licenses is relevant to DUPE's potential damages. Other businesses in similar circumstances should insist on reviewing copies of the contracting party's licenses.

DUPE, may have legal recourse against SALE, if DUPE, included an indemnification clause in its contract with SALE. An example of an indemnification clause would include the language similar to the following:

SALE warrants that it has procured all rights to duplicate the master and agrees to fully indemnify DUPE, and hold DUPE harmless from and against any and all claims, demands, losses, damages, liabilities, costs, and expenses, including all legal fees arising out of or by reason of a breach by SALE of the representations, warranties, or agreements made under this contract.

Some courts, however, may find that a "hold harmless" clause does not represent a good faith effort to avoid copyright infringement, but is actually an attempt to circumvent the copyright law. This notion was alleged in a recent St. Louis case in which a federal appeals court strongly affirmed the law that "hold harmless" clauses do not protect duplication and replication houses from copyright infringement liability. The St. Louis court further stated that a copyright owner does not give consent even if the "employer" is actually the investigator hired by the copyright owner, so long as the investigator "approached the [duplicator] in a conventional manner."

Although a warranty and indemnification clause may be irrelevant for the purposes of determining basic infringement liability, it is important for the assessment of damages.

Although an indemnification clause would not have protected DUPE from being sued by a legitimate copyright owner, it would have given DUPE the right to seek full compensation from the intentional infringer, SALE. If DUPE, were forced to defend itself in an infringement suit, SALE would have to compensate it for all expenses and attorney's fees paid, plus the amount of damages for which DUPE is held liable. In reality, indemnification, or reimbursement is not easy. It may require further litigation and the likelihood of repayment is questionable. Indeed, DUPE's judgment against SALE may be worthless and uncollectible. Duplicating or replicating firms are in a tight spot. It is not cost effective to do a background search on all contracting parties. Irregardless, a firm may be somewhat liable with the contracting party for copyright infringement. The importance of indemnification clauses, and more so, the prior review of all the relevant licenses, cannot be underestimated.

This article was prepared with the assistance of Laura Schneider, University of Miami School of Law.

And I totally agree and understand and support that opinion Nabisco, except we none of us can control where what we say in public ends up on the innerweb.

Ive found usenet posts of mine end up in all kinds of odd places I'd not been asked permission to copy to there. Like the time I made guesswork of the lyrics to a Throwing Muses ep and later found out a large 4AD fansite had pasted it verbatim as some kind of canon of what the words were, even tho I got some of them wrong and most certainly didnt get permission from the 'muses myself. It made me look like I claimed some expertise on the subject. I was very suprised, but let it be.

Google yr online names, and be very aphraid =)

As for letters, you might be interested to know that letters were long understood to be the given property of the recipient. And ILX posts are not letters: if anything, they're already-published works!

And I find this poo-pooing of those who care about their copyright to scream something closer to "I get so much joy out of acting more casual than others that I just can't keep my nose out of their business and personal decisions." I can think of a dozen good reasons I wouldn't want things I wrote here to be reprinted or paraded out of their original context.

ISPs buckle under copyright cases
Matt Loney
ZDNet UK
December 10, 2002, 11:37 BST

ISPs buckle under copyright cases

Internet service providers (ISPs) are reporting rapidly increasing incidences of take-down notices for copyright infringement material, in contrast to a diminishing number of requests to remove defamatory material from sites they host.

As the burden on ISPs increases, it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to fairly deal with cases where people or companies feel their copyright has been infringed, or where they feel they have been defamed. While ISPs have a duty to remove offending material, they say that because they also have a duty to their customers, the current situation in which they have to act as judge and jury is untenable.

Complaints related to copyright infringement now account for 54 percent of take-down notices issued to ISPs based in the UK, according to a preliminary survey by the UK's ISP Association (ISPA), which is being conducted as part of a bid to rationalise the process of removing possibly illegal material. Twenty-seven percent of take-down notices are related to defamation complaints.

ISPA is gathering the data to illustrate the growing problem with take-down notices in a bid to persuade the government to publish a code of practice that, it says, should effectively remove liability from ISPs. The work is being done by ISPA's sub-group on content liability. The sub-group spokesman Mark Gracey, who is also legal liaison manager at ISP Thus, said take-down notices are a huge burden, with each case costing between £50 and £1,000 to deal with.

"Anybody can put us on notice of take-down," said Gracey. "There is no standardisation of processes -- a ten-year-old child can do this by writing the notice on the back of a cigarette packet." At Thus, said Gracey, the number of take-down notices for alleged copyright infringement is "going through the roof."

But removing content -- whether because it is said to infringe copyright, defame somebody, be criminally racist or break laws such as the Obscene Publications Act, is not a simple process and can lay ISPs open to legal action.

"ISPs are rarely aware of the full facts of the case and could easily make a wrong decision," said Gracey. "ISPs are at risk of liability from the person giving notice and from their customers. Do we take down the content when asked by a complainant and if so, should we put it back when our customer who posted the content in the first place tells us to? We are the piggy in the middle. We are playing judge and jury."

ISPA is trying to encourage complainants to make contact with the person or organisation who posted the material in question, rather than the ISP. But there is an urgent need for a code of practice that would create a standard form for take-down notices and dictate who can issue them, sad Gracey. It should also address the issue of how and when content should be put back on the Internet if the ISP's customer is able to prove that it does not infringe any laws. "Rights holders do have rights, but we also have to consider the rights of our customers. Infringements are not always what they appear to be."

"There is also the notion of a safe harbour for ISPs, to provide freedom from liability," said Gracey. "That's what we need the government for." However, he said, any code of practice would take some drafting. "It has to be fair to ISPs, to their customers and to the complainants."

Gracey said the DTI does appear to be receptive to the idea, "but the government is still saying it is no convinced there is sufficient reason to go ahead." ISPA hopes to use the results of its survey to get across the fact that there is a big problem, and ISPs interested in filling out the survey or contributing their own horror stories should contact ISPA.

Gracey knows the problems as well as anybody. Thus owns ISP Demon, which in 1999 lost a defamation case brought by scientist Laurence Godfrey over comments posted on a Usenet conference hosted by Demon.

In that case the judge ruled that Demon's defence of innocent distribution was untenable because the ISP had been informed about defamatory messages.

(Stuff not really related to the thread matter:

God, if they can't print a book on demand for less than $18 raw cost, they're using the wrong machines.

But there's no minimum order; I haven't looked at the specifics of what Mark set up, but when I've used CafePress in the past (or have been involved with its use, etc), it's been comparable to or better than its competitors. Their binding is sturdier than most POD I've seen, especially in mass market or TPB-sized books under 400 pages. (Over that, and you get the spine going a little weird on some of them.)

It's not great, granted. And there's no option for color printing except on the outside covers. But when you don't have any startup capital, or need to spend it on other things ...

)

And Tep, I'm starting to wonder why you're even attached to this printing vs. publishing thing; what possible difference does it make, rights-wise? When the end result is a bound volume that costs $18 to buy, it makes very little difference whether it's got an ISBN on it; whether it's CafePress that does the inking or RR Donnelley, it's the same product.

Rights-wise, nothing particularly (except that making copies of something via Cafepress and distributing it without making money still lets you sell first rights to it -- that has nothing to do with this, though); and the ISBN number is just a concrete thing to point at to say "this is a book." Like I said -- I don't think the legality and rights are very important here. I'm pretty sure people wouldn't be okay with it if it were legal: so likewise, it isn't enough for me to say "it's wrong because it's illegal."

But I think glossing over the fact that Mark essentially arranged an agreement to make photocopies of threads -- with better and more efficient technology access than if he'd done it on a dot matrix printer 15 years ago -- rather than submit it to a publisher who would make it available to, and promote it towards, the general public ... leaps up the ladder of magnitude. I'm not saying it's okay he did it: only that it's not as bad, and Dan may find that a semantic argument, but so it goes. These threads always begin with agreement and descend into details. Towards the beginning of the thread, especially, it sounds a lot like people thought Mark was publishing this. I can't imagine getting livid over it otherwise, when it's so easily preventable, and he was asking for objections. Beth Orton fans notwithstanding, it's galactically unlikely anyone but an ILXor would even know to buy this, much less actually do so -- and I can't think of any objections made on more than principle that wouldn't be affected by the scale of what's under discussion. "Book" vs "chapbook" is an issue of scale, among other things.

I think I've covered all the ground I know how to cover on this topic; I think it's unwise to participate in public forums if you're bothered by the idea that what you type escapes your control when you stop typing it, because I know lots of it ends up elsewhere. Your Buffy post is probably in some sophomore's paper; I've seen less cogent stuff end up in students' papers before, with and without attribution, quoted or whole-cloth. I don't know if that bothers you more or less than the idea of someone you know collecting your post along with others in a printed volume. (xpost, as predicted; your response to Trayce pretty much answers that; I guess my approach to it is simply to not put anything in places like this if I care about its fate.)

In our opinion, the Congress did not intend to create such a situation when it enacted the 1976 changes to federal copyright law and abolished the traditional non-profit exemption from infringement liability afforded to public agencies. On the contrary, Section 110(4) was drawn to address the perceived abuses by public non-profit state universities in conducting large and perhaps very lucrative "rock concerts" featuring paid live performers which were then exempt from licensing fees under the non-profit exemption. In our view, the Congress did not intend the course now pursued by the major music licensing groups which seeks commercial rate fees for each and every public park and recreation facility using recorded background music in any manner and for any activity.

Specified exemptions are provided under Section 110 for annual agricultural or horticultural fairs. In 1982, fraternal organizations also received an exemption in so far as they also provide a community service. This community service rationale would arguably apply with even greater force to support a more specific exemption for public park and recreation programs under Section 110. Further, an argument could be made that the exemption extended to governmental entities for annual agricultural and horticultural fairs should be extended to similar community services programs, in particular public park and recreation programs. Otherwise, what is the legislative rationale for limiting non-educational governmental exemptions to fairs?

We believe the Congress must address the perceived ambiguity and abuses under existing federal copyright law, particularly the scope and applicability of Section 110(4). Thus, we call on your Subcommittee to conduct hearings to review this situation, and to determine whether remedial legislation is warranted to restore the public exemption contained in the earlier copyright law for programs like parks and recreation which clearly provide community services without private gain. As a minimum, Congress should clarify the scope of exemptions presently available to public park and recreation agencies under Section 110(4) by defining such unclear and ambiguous terms in the existing statute as applied to governmental entities, i.e., "commercial advantage", "not for private gain", "educational/charitable purposes."..

Once it gets outside of ILX - ie Cafe Press, Da Capo - ILX's wishes and precedents are worth nada.

There is no precedent set with this book. There is no effective defense that Da Capo and the "selected conversations" editor could make, based on the Excelsior book's publication. You don't lose your right to assert a copyright - say, for music criticism - because you didn't vigorously assert a separate copyright (say, for laughing at buttsex hijinks). And you certainly don't lose your copyright because another person posting at the same place didn't assert theirs.

(also, just to be clear, worrying about copyrights to something said on an Internet forum boggles my mind)

Also, hstencil, I suspect that cafepress has worked it out so that they fall under the duping guidelines referenced by New York up there, by having the shop owner submit an 'original' and then duplicating that exact original on different formats. They have to have some kind of protection, given their business.

Interesting FAQ, deals with libraries, but it contains these salient points:

Are there different types of infringers? It seems unfair to lump libraries with for-profit entities.
In addition to the garden variety infringement situation, there are two special categories of infringement. If the infringement was unintentional or the person infringing can show a good faith belief that he or she acted within the parameters of copyright law, he or she could be termed an "innocent infringer." On the other hand, if the infringement is done deliberately, and particularly if substantial profits were involved, the infringement could be termed "willful." It is important to know all three categories of infringement, since they have a significant impact on the damages available to the plaintiff in a case. More than likely, but certainly not always, a library would fall into the "innocent infringer" category.

Our library is part of a non-profit organization and our budget is small. Why should we be worried about liability for copyright infringement?
It is important to know that liability for copyright violation attaches whether or not the organization is for-profit or non-profit and in spite of the size of the operation or its budget. The ability to pay a judgment rarely factors into a decision on the merits in many civil cases. Although it may be the library which infringes, usually the parent institution will be held liable. And while many library budgets may be small, such as a hospital library, the hospital's overall assets may make the copyright action attractive enough to pursue. Bad publicity and a tarnished reputation may be just as costly for your institution as the money it would pay in damages.

You are right there of course. I dont mean to sound flippant or casual about this - IP is important to me also.

Tep so OTM it makes my eyes bleed.

And sure, Tep, if all you mean is that this particular thing isn't so bad at all, I'm completely 100% with you. I mean, I don't think I even posted to any of the threads in question, so clearly I'm here because of the bigger, principle-oriented picture.

The main reason I like having that copyright in place is because it makes it more likely that someone who actually does intend to profit off of the material -- and thus, more importantly, to put it someplace where anyone other than interweb mentalists are likely to see it -- will ask for permission first. I mean, at least DaCapo was nice enough to have us sign permissions for that Strokes thread before not-ever-paying us. Which may have something to do with my vehemence here: I've actually been making it an ongoing project to annoy them about my fifty bucks.

Anyway, here's my system: any person who'd bother looking over an ILX thread is a person I'm perfectly comfortable having read stuff I wrote here. If the material gets copied to other websites, well, in some cases I'm annoyed, but I expect it and don't care that much. But when material posted here moves in any direction toward appearing in an offline publication, especially one with a price tag on it, and of course at the extreme a widely-read one --- that's when I'd be likely to get uncomfortable. Because there's a significant change in context happening.

yeah, they probably wear trucker hats too.

Obvious answer: it ain't.

x-post, sue me.

Any precedent here means absolutely nothing. It's unenforceable, legally or socially. When it happens again, at best that you'll just be rehashing the same arguments. And if it happened in a commercial context as you've suggested, then whatever people say here would be even less relevant.

"Set a precedent" all you want, but you still haven't shown what difference it makes. I maintain that unless a precedent has some enforcement behind it - again, not just legally, but socially or otherwise - then you're just spinning your wheels to make yourself feel better. "Oh, we really took care of that. No ILX posters will be publishing compilations now!"

Precedent minus authority or force equals an example. So if this ever happens again, you'll have a really good example to show, but that's it.

Your dog-piss analogy is off. If rubbing my dog's face in urine wasn't going to stop him from peeing on the rug again, then what's the point? If the ILX precedent isn't going to stop someone from making a book again, then what's the point?

we have these people here at ILX called moderators. And we have this thing called an FAQ (soon to be revised). So I would argue that many aspects of ILX activity are enforced. Have you never seen any locked threads? General derision of trolls? Death threats towards established posters?

ps. I got my hysterical and imaginary lawyers workin' on the cease-and-desist post.

xpost yes most definitely, mr. mole. the cluster 14(c) ritual flogging stick is ready and waiting. of course, ILX would have to adequately compensate us, but you can't really put a price on the protection of your intellectual property.

Classic.

ILX didn't enforce ILX with cafepress, individuals who had their copyrights violated took up the issue. As a group entity, ILX has no standing, and even incorporated wouldn't have standing (as the FAQ explicity renders copyright back to individual posters).

Nabisco, that's fine and good, but it's got nothing to do with precedent. And that's what I was responding to.

I disagree, they can indirectly influence things as well.

ILX didn't enforce ILX with cafepress, individuals who had their copyrights violated took up the issue. As a group entity, ILX has no standing, and even incorporated wouldn't have standing (as the FAQ explicity renders copyright back to individual posters).

Technically as Andrew owns the servers, I would think he owns ILX. So I'd imagine that he could've referred to himself legally as ILX in his letter to cafepress.

I swear to God I'm letting this one go now, I'm turning into annoying 2002-nabisco.

And yes, Andrew could refer to himself as ILX - but ILX doesn't have standing to actually complain, because ILX didn't have its copyrights violated, individuals did.

And no, I'm not. But precedent has a fairly strict meaning to me, especially in a rhetorical context and referring to copyright issues.

ever hear of behavioral influence?

How do the mods stop someone from going to da Capo?

They don't. Da Capo's lawyers advise da Capo to get permission and promise payment. Then da Capo's accounts payable people screw ILXors from here to infinity.

And yes, Andrew could refer to himself as ILX - but ILX doesn't have standing to actually complain, because ILX didn't have its copyrights violated, individuals did.

Andrew had his copyright violated by both his posts being included and things being taken from his server without his permission (I don't believe the image linking thing would apply here as it's basically impossible - as far as I can tell - to prevent text theft in a technical webmaster-y way, obv. claiming copyright is non-technical).

Clearly milo's not a lawyer. I'm not one either, but just a cursory glance at current copyright laws (jumbled and misguided as they are) makes this stuff seem pretty obvious, at least to me.

Bottom line: I do believe the current ILX copyright notice needs to be expanded on.

maybe only if the site doesn't already have policies (or precedents, if you will) that copyrights belong to individual posters, as ILX does.

Anyone who posts a photo of themselves should be aware of the consequences, even moreso than their written posts. I know I thought about it before posting mine.

(x-post)

spittle, I don't know the answer to this. There might be some implied copyright or property there, I dunno.

Andrew had his copyright violated by both his posts being included and things being taken from his server without his permission (I don't believe the image linking thing would apply here as it's basically impossible - as far as I can tell - to prevent text theft in a technical webmaster-y way, obv. claiming copyright is non-technical).
Right, Andrew had his copyright violated, he had standing to complain (as did others). (I'm using standing in a semi-legal sense - anyone could, of course, write to cafepress and inform them of a copyright violation, but the only people who could actually take Mark/daCapo/cafepress to court would be the violated) Andrew wouldn't have standing as the Owner/Wizard of ILX.

He didn't have anything taken "from his servers" from the impression I got - the book was a collection of posts owned by individuals, without any ILX-owned material (which would be the FAQ and other information, I guess?). The posts are hosted on ILX's server, but ILX's guidelines forfeit any copyright claims.

(if C@llum posts one of his things and a moderator edits it - who owns the copyright to that post?)

Milo, could the individual copyright owners not sue the infringers of their copyright? Wouldn't that make a clean-cut class-action civil case? I can't imagine how somebody could argue these posts are in the public domain when it is stated clearly on this site that they are, in fact, not.
Absolutely, individuals could sue, so long as they were violated.

(The more I think about it, the more curious I am about the nature of posts to an Internet forum. Are they assumed by the courts to be similar to speaking in public, where anyone could quote you? Or are they treated as written articles? Has a court ever ruled on a case like the "selected conversations" idea?)

I've wondered about this myself

do i need copyright permission to fuckiong quote someone on a thread? i mean, for fucks sake.

just calm down. no one is buying this shitty book. cafepress wont make money. this is no different from me printing copies for myself and handing them out to friends.

no one is going to put lawsuits up... or no one should because it is a complete waste of motherfucking time.

christ. this is making me angry. just fucking chill out.

i still agree with trayce, milo and tep fwiw.

i hate you all for making me read this rubbish.

die.

Right, at least that's what the fair use doctrine says. But in a case like this, where the individual posts are, theoretically, all owned by the individual posters, then each post constitutes a separate document, constituting a "whole" unto itself, so that a quote of a single post is actually the same as wholesale copying. Except that I can't imagine that argument flying in a legal setting -- it would be like CBS alleging that every pixel of every image in every frame of a broadcast constituted a separate document.

seriously. everyone just calm the fuck down.

its a motherfucking internet message board. its supposed to be fun.

once again. die.

wouldnt that be nice?

Also this is an area of the law that makes me glad I quit lawyering.

I think there has been some massive overreation on this thread, but I guess I kind of understand why. I have no real comment on that.

He's asked me upthread not to talk about his previous attempt to do this, but honestly, from the amount of ruck caused by 3 or 4 people, he could perhaps have guessed a least a fraction of the controversy it would cause? The only person who objected to the former exercise was a known troll, so, I don't know. Who knows.

(Please note: the explanation he gave for why he tried it before was that he wanted to try out CafePress as a practice or sample for work purposes, and needed a large sample of text to be published, to assess their quality. A particular thread on ILX provided this opportunity.)

Anyway, I'm putting words in his mouth at this point, but I'm sure that he will log back on when his work is slow, make an apology and sort things out.

I shall read this thread and contact those who I have seriously pissed off.

Later.

Good luck. If you manage it you'll be doing better than me.

xpost - even better: print up what you think is funny at work without your boss seeing!

That's exactly why I did the book. (continuing)

Basically, it all boils down to two issues.

1) The copyright issue. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't pretend to know the in's and out's of international copyright law.

Shit happens all the time that I'm not entirely happy about, but you know, I'm more bothered by things like record companies putting out my songs and then "forgetting" to pay the mechanicals. If you're quotable, you get quoted. If I had a dime for every meme or phrase I've actually coined... I could buy a yacht off the royalties! Try googling a phrase which you have coined or used repeatedly - I did yesterday, and was amazed by how far some of my "trademarks" had got. Some people quote and attribute. Ironically, the person who used raised the biggest stink in the previous debate used my words and phrases without attributing.

Fair enough, if you're a writer and you make your living off your words, then you want to protect those words. But where do you draw the line? During my brief spell as a critic, I can't count the number of times I would see my quotes ending up in press releases. That's someone else - a band - trying to make money off my words. Am I OK with that?

2) The privacy issue. This is something above and beyond the copyright issue. There's been a lot of talk about "oh, this is just private and casual chatter with my friends".

The intimacy and familiarity of ILX *does* lull you into a false sense of security, that this is somehow a private place, outside of the real world. IT'S NOT. I had my peace of mind regarding ILX shattered quite rudely last year, but ultimately it did teach me an important lesson The internet is not private, and ILX is not "safe" and everyone should learn to police their *own* behaviour accordingly.

The great thing about ILX is that people feel free to speak without thinking. The terrible thing about ILX is that people feel free to speak without thinking. Freedom of speech implies a responsibility as well as a right.

I learned the hard way, don't write anything on ILX that you would not be comfortable with your mom, your ex-boyfriends, your internet stalker, your label boss, random music journalists reading. That might be an unintentional lesson which is perhaps more important than the ins and outs of international copyright law.

Seriously, thanks for all your opinions, anti, pro and support/defensive. You are all cool.

As hstencil said, I printed one
1) for me
2) to read away from work
3) to test out the 'book publishing' service.

I did do this a while ago, but the book came out at 67 pages, so was really just a big pamphlet. This one is much bigger and should show me what quality you can expect with smaller type/wider spine/etc. I did let the major contributors to the first know, privately. All were cool apart from one who was not cool and that was OK too. This was 'available' for about a month, withdrawn when I got the objection, and only 1 copy was produced.

As this one had a larger number of contributors, it would have been unfeasible to contact everybody. So, I posted this question yesterday morning. By the end of the day, 50 posts and no outright objections.

I had one e-mail to me personally, amater!st, who wished his contribs to be removed. I agreed obv.

I logged on and saw the general opinion was to withdraw the availability of the item. This I have done.

I shall contact J*hn D personally.

I apologise to all who feel they have been insulted, violated, or just plain rubbed up the wrong way. I thank the many erudite supporters and/or defenders, I don't feel 'ganged up' on, and that's thanks to you. I also dont feel 'guo' as even the vociferous anti people were still for the most part fair and good about it (If i've had real bile and/or insults I missed it)

My only regret is upsetting JD as much as I seem to have.

For what it's worth, I don't think any more than my one copy will get produced.

It may seem obvious, but I will not be doing any more books like this. In actal fact, I was not going to anyway. But that's beside the point I know.

Anyway, see you around.

What I always liked about ILX was that all the things I can say have some sort of permanence, and I have never said anything I don't believe, either here or anywhere else. (I haven't told any major lies either, life is a weird thing already)