Comments on: Congressman who wrote SOPA is a copyright violator

By: Pjay (Patti) Pender

Pjay (Patti) Pender — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 07:36:00 +0000

No. If SOPA became law not only could Lamar Smith’s entire site be effectively removed from the internet (by blacklisting it in DNS), BoingBoing in it’s entirety could be as well for the above link to the infringing site.

By: Pjay (Patti) Pender

Pjay (Patti) Pender — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 07:24:00 +0000

“…which caused the enormous blinking holographic interrobang to appear over my head.”

Wow! You have one of those too? Awesome!

By: Cowicide

Cowicide — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 02:07:00 +0000

Sorry, it’s already set for 18th and everyone is joining in. Maybe another on the 23rd if the 18th doesn’t knock more people into shape?

By: ChristopherHalbersma

ChristopherHalbersma — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:33:00 +0000

quote of the day.

By: Robert Baruch

Robert Baruch — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:20:00 +0000

Well, there's nothing specifically about US courts upholding or denying Creative Commons licenses. But there is a US Federal case upholding an open source license (holding that "violations of open source and public licenses are enforceable through copyright infringement claims"), so that's good precedent for upholding similar licenses.

By: zornwil

zornwil — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:07:00 +0000

My point is not that the actual copyright rights, which are not forsaken through the CC license, are foregone. But my point is that the United States – last I knew and according to the creativecommons.org site itself a few years ago – was one of the few nations not recognizing the CC license itself. Yes of course your copyright rights are intact, I realize that’s the point. And the CC license MIGHT help you in court in the US – but most European nations and many nations around the world it WILL help you in court. That’s an important difference.

Again, last I knew. I know the US administration has itself invoked the CCL, but I am not aware of test cases in US courts. I could not find an update on the Creative Commons site as to which nations have recognized it .

I am not trying to say you are wrong. I am: a) clarifying my information; b) asking if you can please provide a reference that US law has begun to formally recognize such (either by Justice Department legal opinion or test case(s)). I have been searching the last 15 minutes and cannot find a contemporary citation. And my info does date back several years, as said (it may even have been under the 1.0 license days, when it first started; basically the list of countries served notice that your use of the CC would be respected in courts, and the US was the only holdout among Western developed nations).

By: danick

danick — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:16:00 +0000

What laws don’t I get that assumes guilt without evidence?

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:30:00 +0000

and not to take a side on this one, but in all fairness the whole story isn’t known yet. maybe the webmaster really messed up?

Do you not get that this whole story is about laws that assume guilt without evidence?

By: danick

danick — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:48:00 +0000

thanks rob

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:29:00 +0000

Link from the original source:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100819183728/http://www.texansforlamarsmith.com/

By: danick

danick — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:09:00 +0000

what’s the archive?

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:56:00 +0000

And if SOPA passed, is this fair use?

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:55:00 +0000

Interesting. Apparently Robots.txt has been modified to disallow the archive.

Does that count as evidence tampering?

By: danick

danick — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:18:00 +0000

i could be wrong but i think the guy who took the pic is an amateur photographer so the amount in damages wouldn’t make sense to sue for.
and not to take a side on this one, but in all fairness the whole story isn’t known yet. maybe the webmaster really messed up? i did look around the net to find more of the guys pics, there really are all over the place and can be downloaded for free from most sites, with or without giving a citation.

By: GaryT

GaryT — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:07:00 +0000

Interestingly, as of today at least, the Internet Archive is the only thing being blocked by http://www.texansforlamarsmith.com Apparently if you can’t be compliant, block anyone who might find out. Good example Mr. Lamar

Here’s the entirety of the site’s robots.txt file:

# See http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html for documentation on how to use the robots.txt file
#
# To ban all spiders from the entire site uncomment the next two lines:
# User-Agent: *
# Disallow: /
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

ref: http://texansforlamarsmith.com/robots.txt

By: Robert Baruch

Robert Baruch — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:52:00 +0000

Not disputing that. Just disputing the “US does not recognize CC” comment which caused the enormous blinking holographic interrobang to appear over my head.

By: mccrum

mccrum — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:47:00 +0000

What? Politicians don’t make a profit from government service! And they certainly wouldn’t take campaign donations to use as profit! That money goes directly to their hard working staff consisting of their immediate family.

By: Guest

Guest — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:19:00 +0000

If SOPA is a farce, this was fair use

By: Guest

Guest — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:19:00 +0000

Nice agenda you humorless…..

By: davelog

davelog — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:07:00 +0000

Cynicism is just a fancy word for pattern recognition.

By: weldeng

weldeng — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:22:00 +0000

As for making profit, you could claim that he’s getting campaign contributions based on his support of SOPA.

By: Martin Liebermann

Martin Liebermann — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:35:00 +0000

You don’t understand fair use. A background picture embellishing a website simply isn’t. Please read and understand the rules of fair use before you claim bullshit.

Also, author attribution is required for fair use, but not given here.

By: A Nonny Moose

A Nonny Moose — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:33:00 +0000

[Citation Needed]

By: SoItBegins

SoItBegins — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:51:00 +0000

You, sir, are a cynic.

By: McKinley H. Tabor

McKinley H. Tabor — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:50:00 +0000

Like most people in Government these days, the Congressmen thinks he is above the law.. sue the bastard.

By: Andrew Singleton

Andrew Singleton — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:35:00 +0000

Go support your local community. At least they’ll have to look you in the face while trying to cheat you.

By: Brian0505

Brian0505 — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:48:00 +0000

Let me use words the politician will understand. I vote. I am a real voter in zip code 78749. You are currently my congressman. I am the growing majority. I hate that you wrote SOPA. I will vote you out. I don’t care if you are in violation of a law or not. You make me sick and you make the Internet sick.

By: el dueno

el dueno — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:34:00 +0000

Law makers or law breakers, what’s the difference?

Anyway, I don’t think US Congressman Lamar Smith’s wrote the law, only introduced it. COOA (“Copyright Owners of America” probably wrote it as an attempt to monitize the web by scaring everyone else with lawsuits, etc.

By: Cefeida

Cefeida — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:22:00 +0000

It still needs to be attributed, and was not.

Additionally, if it’s used as a background, it doesn’t matter what portion is obscured by the website info- it’s still used in its entirety, and may be visible in its entirety depending on screen resolution, and may be loaded in a separate window by a savvy user. The whole thing is there, so you don’t even have the ‘small portion’ argument.

By: Robert Baruch

Robert Baruch — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:09:00 +0000

What? CC is based in US Copyright law. CC means that you put your work under copyright (and in the US, your work is automatically under copyright), and then it details under what circumstances you will allow your work to be licensed. For example, CC-BY means that the work is automatically licensed to you as long as you attribute the work. If you do not attribute the work, then the work was not automatically licensed to you, and you are in violation of US Copyright law.

Except, of course, in the case of fair use. Fair use is such a can of worms, that it’s better to just agree to the CC terms, since they are hardly onerous.