[HN Gopher] A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled...
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A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled Copyleft
Trolls (2022)
Author : msk-lywenn
Score : 260 points
Date : 2024-03-05 23:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (doctorow.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (doctorow.medium.com)
| woliveirajr wrote:
| Clever. Since not obeying some item of a CC license implies that
| you're not covered by such license, "bad guys" might induce
| someone to infringe the CC and then violate the copyright
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| That is indeed the point that the article makes.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Seems a weird thing to level at CC licensing. You could
| entrap via a million different things, such scams are as old
| as the hills.
| blowski wrote:
| And yet. Why invent new scummy ways of making money if the
| old ones still work?
| noirscape wrote:
| Well in this case, Doctorow is one of the drafters of the
| CC license, so he's effectively criticizing what he sees as
| an abuse of his own creation here.
|
| Which he is rightfully doing - CC4.0 adds the "forced grace
| period" you find in a lot of other licenses, where there's
| basically a period of time between being in breach of the
| license and when the license gets revoked. Usually the way
| thats defined is that you have something like 30 days to
| "cure" the mistake once you're notified. Only after those
| 30 days do you lose the rights granted by the license
| itself.
|
| It specifically exists to avoid this kind of copyright
| trolling, where a lawyer uses the complicated demands in
| the text of the license to make a mess of the intent behind
| it. The actual viability of that type of trolling is
| questionable (German courts threw it out for example), but
| the threat of legal fees can be too costly for most so it
| works as an extortion mechanism.
|
| (The main notable variant of this is in pre-3.0 versions of
| the GPL, where the 30 days would start the moment you
| breached the license rather than being notified. 3.0 fixed
| that and I've seen people who prefer GPL2.0 often modify
| this term in specific to be more like GPL3.0 so they can
| avoid the headache.)
| notpushkin wrote:
| See also: GPL Cooperation Commitment
| https://gplcc.github.io/gplcc/
| htyden wrote:
| Alternative location: https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-
| in-early-creative-c...
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Thanks, that's much better than Medium.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| Talk about burying the lede:
|
| > The original version of the CC license stated that the license
| would "terminate automatically upon any breach." That meant that
| if you failed to live up to the license terms in any substantial
| way, you were no longer a licensed user of the copyrighted work.
| Any uses you had made of that work were no longer permitted under
| the license, so unless you had another basis for using it (for
| example, if your use qualified as "fair use"), then you were now
| infringing copyright. Recall that "willful" copyright
| infringement carries a statutory penalty of $150,000. [Copyleft
| trolls say:] we'll find people who made minor errors in their use
| of your Creative Commons works, and then send them a speculative
| invoice for a "license," on threat of a copyright lawsuit that
| could run them $150 grand plus legal fees.
| orlp wrote:
| Has it ever been successfully argued in a court of law that
| forgetting a minor detail of the CC license counts as
| "willfully infringement"?
| Tomte wrote:
| There have been rulings in Germany (I can find only one),
| that minor omissions when generally crediting the
| photographer, do not lead to damages: https://sos-
| recht.de/abmahnung/news/kein-schadensersatz-vero...
| bbarnett wrote:
| An invalidated license may not be that, I don't know, but
| once the license is clearly terminated, any use of that work
| would then be wilful.
|
| So if you have a bluray movie for sale, you'd have to pull
| copies, and reissue edited without the image. Art would have
| to be taken off the walls. Logos rebranded.
|
| Otherwise it would be wilful.
|
| And I believe it is per infringement?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This often doesn't matter. What they're looking for is
| something to sue you for that isn't so blatantly absurd it
| would get their lawyers disbarred for making the claim, not
| something they can necessarily win on the merits.
|
| Then they go to you and say hey, it'll cost you this many
| thousand dollars to hire a lawyer and defend against this
| lawsuit in court -- even if you win. Or, you can just pay a
| fraction of that right now and it will all go away.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| That's ultimately why the loser of a civil case should be
| on the hook for all attorneys fees and court costs. I'd
| actually go further and argue that a plaintiff who
| initiates a frivolous lawsuit should have to pay damages to
| the victim for the losses caused by having to defend such a
| case.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%2
| 7s_fee... (this name is deceptive as it is basically the
| "every western democracy except the USA" rule)
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Copyright in the US has an option for fee shifting.
| Usually it's loser pays, and there's limits on how much
| can be shifted, but there was a case where a zealously
| litigious photographer wound up being on the hook for the
| _loser 's_ attorney's fees because the loser had offered
| to settle the case for a reasonable amount early on, but
| the photographer thought they could get more money, which
| they didn't.
| mgaunard wrote:
| I hate articles that go on and on about some story before finally
| explaining what's in the title.
| MalphasWats wrote:
| You're complaining about a Writer writing?
| mgaunard wrote:
| I'm complaining about clickbait.
| croes wrote:
| If the article fits the title and isn't just to draw clicks
| it's not clickbait.
|
| To be overly verbose is neither.
| KingMob wrote:
| A light introduction that then segues into background
| material on a complicated legal topic is not clickbait.
| mgaunard wrote:
| The actual content I would expect is the following 3
| points.
|
| 1. What the old clause of the license was 2. What kind of
| unintended side effect it had 3. What the new clause
| addressing this is
|
| Summing up those 3 points results in a clear paragraph of
| maybe 5 to 10 lines. Meanwhile I challenge anyone who
| hasn't read it to extract that content from the article
| in less than 15 minutes.
| jamincan wrote:
| The article delivers what it promises. While it may not
| be concise, that doesn't make it clickbait.
| zulban wrote:
| The article was packed with interesting legal details. If you
| don't like it you can just downvote and move on.
| Timwi wrote:
| Or, hear me out, people seeing this constructive feedback
| here could take it to heart and do better next time.
| KingMob wrote:
| Cory Doctorow is an established and prolific author of over
| 20 years. Pretty sure he's not changing his writing style
| for people with short attention spans who mislabel things
| as clickbait.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| I feel that people who go on and on about 'clickbait'
| simply don't like reading... Feed the article to GPT if all
| you want is a bulleted list of points. Or just skim!
| Karliss wrote:
| I wonder does making a minor mistake in attribution really count
| as "wilful infringement"? As a layman, I would expect that any
| reasonable attempts to comply with license requirements should
| indicate that infringement was accidental. Sure, if it's a large
| company whose legal advisor instructs do x to avoid maximum
| penalty, with intention to infringe the copyright, that should
| probably still count as wilful infringement.
| toyg wrote:
| Spirit-of-the-law practice means most honest judges would
| quickly throw out this sort of technicality-based argument,
| particularly in the anglosphere.
|
| Sadly, depending on the specific country it happens in, a
| defendant might still have to pay significant legal fees just
| to reach a point where the judge can tell trolls to go away.
| And that's where the business model kicks in: the trolls will
| offer to go away on their own if defendant pays them
| $LikelyLegalFees / 2, making it cheaper than the alternative.
|
| It's like the Kevin Bridges bus-stop joke:
| https://youtu.be/8W_k7ybGBDg
| EasyMark wrote:
| THe US Federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals would like to
| have a word with you. Particularly the past decade or so they
| have been truly awful when considering cases; ignoring
| precedence, common sense, democracy, and practicality
| whenever possible.
| toyg wrote:
| That's why I said "most honest judges", perfection is not
| of this world. I reckon that even just the fact that you're
| familiar with _one specific set_ of people for being
| awkward, indicates that the overwhelming majority of other
| judges _are not_ - otherwise the US 5th Circuit wouldn 't
| even register, you'd just assume everyone does it.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| I don't think the troll actually intends to sue, though. You
| might be fine just ignoring them.
|
| (I am not a lawyer, this is not a legal advice.)
| toyg wrote:
| Absolutely, but it's not a certainty - after all, this scum
| is still made of law professionals, who file paperwork for
| a living. They know you know there is a slight risk they
| might be serious, and try to exploit it.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Spirit-of-the-law practice means most honest judges would
| quickly throw out this sort of technicality-based argument,
| particularly in the anglosphere.
|
| The intent of the law is a big part of what courts deal with
| in Roman law/civil law countries too. In Norway statutes are
| typically fairly general leaving precision to preparatory
| works, Supreme Court precedent, administrative regulations
| and the courts. So the spirit and intent of the law is
| certainly a big thing in at least some non-Anglosphere legal
| systems.
|
| See https://www.advokatforeningen.no/en/features-of-the-
| norwegia...
|
| And the Anglosphere is hardly uniform in this respect, in
| particular in recent decades there has been a proliferation
| of detailed strict liability laws in England which restrict
| the courts abilities to interpret the law.
| iinnPP wrote:
| Your example would still prove to be intent if those facts were
| provable.
|
| There's a concept known as "willful blindness" (at least in
| Canada) that covers what I believe you wanted as an example.
|
| Not a lawyer.
| freejazz wrote:
| In copyright, reckless behavior can satisfy the willfulness
| requirements.
| arcastroe wrote:
| The original email sent from Pixsy contained the following text,
| which the author ignored by publishing the email in entirety.
|
| > PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL. This e-mail, its contents, and
| attachments are private and confidential and is intended for the
| recipient only. Any disclosure, copying or unauthorized use of
| such information is prohibited.
|
| Can someone with knowledge comment on this practice? Are these
| just empty words? Or is it legally enforceable to send an email
| and forbid "copying" or publishing/disclosing the contents?
| colde wrote:
| That likely depends on where you are and what the content
| actually is. In Denmark where i am located, it would definitely
| not apply in most cases. Of course, if you are a lawyer
| communicating with your client it would be protected, but that
| would be the case even without the disclaimer.
| reaperman wrote:
| > Are these just empty words?
|
| Yes. Without some kind of existing contract in place, they're
| meaningless.
|
| > Or is it legally enforceable to send an email and forbid
| "copying" or publishing/disclosing the contents?
|
| Only in extremely rare circumstances. It can be legally useful
| to put a note saying "Hey, this email contains trade secrets.
| If it was accidentally sent to you, you might want to think
| twice about further disseminating or selling these trade
| secrets." But the case law on this is quite weak, and putting
| the disclaimer on every email even if they don't contain trade
| secrets may be counter-productive by diluting the claim even in
| cases where it actually would apply. It's debatable but many
| legal scholars would assume similarly for a disclaimer on every
| single email saying "This is attorney-client privileged."
| unless _maybe_ your business is a law firm.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| In the USA, this law exists for physical mail:
|
| https://about.usps.com/publications/pub300a/pub300a_v04_revi.
| ..
|
| I'm not sure that it has been applied to email, but that
| would make for some very interesting cases. (Is Intellectual
| Property merchandise? Rights assigned to the content of the
| message?)
| zulban wrote:
| To add to what reaperman said about no existing contract: I
| can't just send a random stranger an email saying "you agree to
| give me 50$". There is no existing legal relationship to make
| that claim.
|
| IANAL. However I find that with law, you can just imagine how
| sociopaths would abuse a system. If you don't see that
| happening, then that's not how the system works.
| imron wrote:
| Unfortunately for them Cory Doctorow's email signature is:
|
| > READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf
| of your employer, to release me from all obligations and
| waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements,
| licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap,
| confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use
| policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with
| your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in
| perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and
| privileges. You further represent that you have the authority
| to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your
| employer.
|
| So if such signatures are enforceable then his signature is
| too, which nullifies the whole thing.
| okwhateverdude wrote:
| This signature is hilarious. It is the moral equivalent of
| "I'm rubber, you're glue..."
| dspillett wrote:
| I may have to tweak my disclaimer in that direction too.
| Anywhere I deliberately list my contact details I always try
| to include text the effect that "Please note that any
| communication sent to these addresses/numbers will be
| accepted as a gift which I own and condo with anything I
| please, including but not limited to publicly publishing it
| and ridiculing you for my amusement should I feel the need or
| the want. If you are uncomfortable with this, feel free to
| refrain from contacting me. If you wish to negotiate some
| form of non-disclosure agreement, drop me a message stating
| just that, and I will ask my legal adviser to send you the
| relevant schedule of charges for the time that will require.
| Simply assuming such an agreement is in place, or
| unilaterally declaring one, in an email footer or elsewhere,
| is not sufficient.".
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > By reading this email, you agree
|
| I'd assume that's unenforceable. You agree something by
| agreeing it, not just by reading the text of the agreement.
| How can you agree something you haven't yet finished reading?
| sdenton4 wrote:
| See also: Every T&C page ever published.
| imron wrote:
| 100% agree - and that's the whole point.
|
| Anyone arguing that it is invalid and unenforceable is
| arguing to invalidate their own, equally unenforceable
| 'private and confidential' note at the bottom of their
| original emails.
|
| Heads I win, tails you lose.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I once got an email that had a disclaimer informing me I could
| not make decisions based off its contents. Even if I was the
| intended recipient
| anon373839 wrote:
| > Are these just empty words? Or is it legally enforceable
|
| Neither. The purpose of this language isn't to bind the
| recipient; it's to guard against claims that the sender waived
| privilege.
|
| > "inadvertent disclosure" of privileged material does not
| operate as a waiver so long as (i) the privilege holder took
| "reasonable steps to prevent disclosure"; and (ii) the
| privilege holder took "reasonable steps to rectify the error."
|
| https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/resources/bu...
| nkrisc wrote:
| Not a lawyer but it doesn't look like any legal claim to me.
| They're just telling you what they prohibit. I prohibit you
| from saying "balderdash", but if you still do there's not much
| I can do about it but stomp and pout.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Are these just empty words?
|
| If you send me an unsolicited email, you can't bind me legally
| by appending a stack of demands and requirements. Much the same
| would apply to printed correspondence sent by post. I am not
| bound by your demands unless I have signed a contract with you
| to that effect. Random lawyers can't impose conditions on me
| just by writing to me.
|
| So yes, they're empty words, like a lot of what lawyers write.
|
| /me not a lawyer.
| labster wrote:
| (2022)
|
| It's been two years since this was published, has it become a
| widespread problem? I haven't heard about copyleft trolls before
| so perhaps not?
| est wrote:
| and most importantly, has CC corrected that bug?
| trashburger wrote:
| According to TFA, upgrading to CC 4.0 closes this loophole.
| klez wrote:
| > It's been two years since this was published
|
| And so many links are already dead. Linkrot is so quick
| sometimes.
| ghaff wrote:
| Photography in particular is frustratingly easy to get wrong.
| Even if someone tries to be careful, there are a number of
| conditions that I'm guessing aren't met to the letter a lot of
| the time. Furthermore, when things like presentation slides are
| being reused and modified, attributions get separated from
| photographs _all the time_.
|
| Finally that doesn't even get into CC-non-commercial which no one
| can agree what it means and that Creative Commons itself punted
| on defining in the latest license iteration.
| wolrah wrote:
| > Photography in particular is frustratingly easy to get wrong.
|
| Not directly relevant but this reminded me of an article I
| probably saw linked here a few years ago where two
| photographers took nearly identical photos and people on the
| internet accused both of them of stealing the other's work.
|
| https://www.dpreview.com/articles/7338941576/how-two-photogr...
| ghaff wrote:
| I think I may have seen that at the time.
|
| In terms of writing, someone I know was mildly miffed years
| back that I had taken an observation from one of his columns
| and used it for my own. A mutual acquaintance pointed out
| that my column had actually appeared first :-)
| a_gnostic wrote:
| I'm a fan of the old BIPCOT (1) Licence. Let's see them discuss
| that in a ministerial setting...
|
| 1. https://bipcot.org/
| elicksaur wrote:
| The Pixsy website pretty clearly gives a California address as a
| business location. Was this info sent to the CA Bar? If an
| attorney is really not involved, that could be practicing law
| without a license.
| prerok wrote:
| Yeah, "XXXXX and YYYYY have also abused our trust. Terribly
| sorry for the inconvenience."
|
| Snark aside, I fully agree, the company should be held
| accountable. I just don't know how much if they just "sent an
| email". I mean, this is gross :(
| xbar wrote:
| A "bug" is a very generous term for how severely punitive CC 1.x,
| 2.x and 3.x were.
|
| It was flatly bad and wrong and did exactly the opposite of what
| it was promised to do--permit rights holders to let users share
| their work and attribute it. It tricked people into a legal trap
| of minutiae and put users at risk.
|
| It was broken for nearly two decades.
| lolc wrote:
| Yes "error" or "mistake" fits better than "bug". That's a
| general problem with the term though.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I originally thought bug was a strange term, but I could see
| how/why it might have been chosen.
|
| An error or mistake that results in
| incorrect/undesired/unforeseen results not caught by the
| compiler. s/compiler/(lawyer|judge)/
| prerok wrote:
| I actually find "bug" to be the most apt name for it. Their
| intent was to enable a feature, therefore writing it this
| way was not an error: it, however, did not take into
| account all the side-effects.
|
| They did err on the side of caution, to protect the
| contributor, but when doing so, they did not take into
| account that it might be abused as well.
|
| Just my two cents.
| dylan604 wrote:
| At what point do you differentiate a bug from a design
| flaw? This reads like different devs were provided
| conflicting requirements that had no discussion between
| devs. It wasn't until after the branches were merged that
| the problem existed as the unit tests from each dev
| worked as expected.
| ghaff wrote:
| > minutiae
|
| This is sort of my general issue with Creative Commons.
|
| First, it's not just about attribution as the term would be
| understood in many other contexts.
|
| And then you have the Chinese menu of no-commercial and no-
| derivatives to encourage people who might otherwise hesitate to
| use CC to do so. But then those terms are ill-defined and
| people widely disagree on them.
| mannykannot wrote:
| The first notice Cory received claimed to be a second notice, and
| he assumes he missed the first one, but I'm wondering if this was
| deliberate mischaracterization (by the sender) of what was
| actually a first notice, either in an attempt to establish that
| the recipient was willfully continuing the violation after a
| first notice, or in an attempt to induce the recipient to come to
| this conclusion themselves.
|
| For all I know, the law has effective sanctions against this
| practice, but I imagine there are ways of sending a first notice
| in a way that make it unlikely to be received - a typo in the
| address, or perhaps an email crafted so as to likely be
| classified as spam.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| "This is the second notice that your car warranty has expired"
| but more threatening
| CraigRo wrote:
| Clearly the next thing is to robosign grievances against lawyers.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| One thing I wonder about CC is whether you have to include
| attribution and license in the same page the work is embedded.
| It's common sense that this would be the case, but in Wikipedia,
| for example, CC works don't actually have attribution in the page
| they're shown, you have to click on them to see the attribution.
|
| I wish this was clarified. Like, why is Wikipedia allowed to do
| this? Is it because they're thumbnails?
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| "Another bunch went even further: they uploaded gay porn to the
| Pirate Bay, but labeled it as if it were top-40 music
| collections, then demanded huge payouts in exchange for not
| filing lawsuits that would permanently link their victims' names
| with extremely explicit gay porn video titles in online
| searches."
|
| Wow this is such an amazing and unethical scam. What do you do in
| a situation like this?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> What do you do in a situation like this?
|
| Make sure that when you are downloading or uploading anything,
| and I mean _anything_ from the internet that you do it though
| VPNs or other services that place some barrier between you and
| copyright trolls. You don 't need NSA-levels of security to
| avoid the trolls, just enough of a barrier that their automated
| tools cannot see you so easily.
|
| If you run a website, generate all your own content. Don't use
| stock photos. FYI, film and TV have been dealing with the same
| issue for decades. It is normal on a film/TV set for there to
| be zero tolerance for anything that might be subject to
| copyright. Any painting on a wall will either be blurred or the
| film will commission a new painting. That is a healthy policy
| for any website: if you want a little drawing of a mouse, pay
| someone to create one for you. Don't pay 5$ for a stock image
| that may or may not be appropriately licensed.
| jstarfish wrote:
| You missed the actual threat.
|
| Troll files _bad faith_ lawsuit on behalf of Falcon Ltd.
| claiming S. Andworm infringed upon their copyright on
| multiple gay porn titles uploaded to TorrentSite. This stuff
| gets picked up by sites scraping dockets and resold as
| "background check" services.
|
| You are now falsely associated with this content in an
| authoritative context. The suit will obviously fail but until
| then people will see a lawsuit was filed against you and by
| who. The scam works because nobody questions the legitimacy
| or sees it through to resolution.
|
| "Fake and gay" has never described something so aptly.
|
| There isn't much you can do about bad faith claims. Claimants
| either face no consequence for false reporting or are able to
| plausibly deny it.
| peteradio wrote:
| Stay away from the top-40s.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Don't use P2P.
|
| That includes PeerTube and other decentralized video platforms,
| at least not without turning off WebRTC swarming.
|
| The reason why this scam works is:
|
| - The defamatory nature of the content in question (which can't
| be fixed by law). In other words, a lot of people don't want it
| people thinking they watch gay porn
|
| - The up-to-$150k-per-infringement statutory damages authorized
| by the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages
| Improvement Act of 1999, which just barely makes copyright
| litigation a profitable enterprise
|
| - Inherent privacy vulnerabilities caused by P2P communications
| in a public swarm - i.e. the ability for anyone to obtain
| evidentiary proof that you downloaded the copyrighted fake gay
| porn
|
| All of these factors are integral to the scam and it would fall
| apart if any one of them were removed. Take away the stigma
| regarding gay porn and nobody would settle. Take away the
| statutory damages and downloaders are only liable for the cost
| of a copy, if that, making copyright litigation against curious
| individuals completely unprofitable. And if the scammers hosted
| the content themselves (to get IP addresses), anyone could
| easily use historical DNS archival records to prove that the
| scammers hosted the content. If a copyright owner deliberately
| uploads their own content, the downloaders have an implied
| license to download it.
|
| Or at least you could argue that as a credible legal defense.
| Remember that these scammers are only barely profitable because
| they encourage people to settle quickly. A lot of them would
| drop the case immediately if you even bothered to file a motion
| to dismiss. For this reason, the scammers would lie under
| penalty of perjury about the uploads being unauthorized, and
| once they got discovered they wound up going to jail for lying
| their ass off.
| bdowling wrote:
| > What do you do in a situation like this?
|
| If you are one of the attorneys in that case, then you are
| found guilty of fraud and extortion, are sent to jail, are
| disbarred from the practice of law, and are forced to repay all
| of your proceeds from your scheme.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law
| mock-possum wrote:
| Call their bluff. It's just porn, they'll look a lot worse for
| throwing a hissy fit over scamming and blackmailing you than
| you will for allegedly watching gay porn. Scamming attempts
| over the internet is a well-known phenomenon- no one's going to
| hold it against you if someone _attempts_ to blackmail you, and
| you refuse to let them.
| busterarm wrote:
| It's actually worse than described. One of the details of this
| never really made it into the lawsuit, but in my computer
| support business I encountered customers who were victims of
| this scam at the time.
|
| They didn't just upload gay porn in torrents, they
| intentionally infected those downloads with ransomware that
| would hold your whole computer hostage with legal threats
| demanding that you call the lawfirm and pay anywhere between
| $150,000 and $400,000. With the threatened alternative of
| releasing your name in public.
|
| I personally witnessed this about three times. They were
| absolute bastards.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > However, Titan Media's lawyer Gill Sperlein told TorrentFreak
| that this is absolutely not the case.
|
| > "This is not a scheme to make money. My clients are hurt
| immensely by copyright infringement and they are not going to
| make it worse by actually distributing their works on these
| networks," he told us.
|
| Yeah. Right. I guess mysterious strangers keep uploading that
| porn disguised as something else for no good reason. How did they
| find it themselves if it is mislabeled?
|
| Even if they didn't upload it themselves, going after people who
| clearly did not mean to download gay porn and trying to shame
| them into submission is absolutely despicable leech-like behavior
| deserving of every bit of contempt. I do not understand how these
| people are able to exist in society. If it was _my own father_
| doing that, we 'd have a falling out.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Forgot some context: I was commenting on a torrentfreak article
| (2011) that is linked in this article.
|
| https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-p2p-lawsuit-shows-signs-of-a-pi...
| Groxx wrote:
| So... I'm somewhere between "yes obviously CC is intending to
| facilitate reuse" and "yes obviously people who choose it often
| do so because they see others choosing it and don't read the fine
| details" and also "the majority of uses are probably acceptable
| by the creators"...
|
| ... and: if you wanted to _just allow reuse_ we have a
| fantastically well-tread license for that - Public Domain. CC
| requires attribution.
|
| _That means it requires attribution_. Among other things. That
| is arguably the main point of CC over Public Domain.
|
| So this is kinda working as intended? There are obviously literal
| malicious trolls (manipulative, or following the law but
| intentionally targeting the most vulnerable rather than the main
| violators), but the amount of companies flagrantly violating
| these licenses is _extreme_ and I don 't feel any sympathy for
| them. Grabbing images off Google without researching their
| license is a fast track to getting sued, and it should be. That's
| the crux of any "don't steal from artists" and "exposure is not
| payment" argument.
| ghaff wrote:
| The thing is that attribution as the term is normally used is
| insufficient. As Cory notes, all the CC licenses, except for
| CC0, actually require:
|
| Name the creator (either as identified on the work, or as noted
| in instructions to downstream users)
|
| Provide a URL for the work (either as identified on the work,
| or as noted in instructions to downstream users)
|
| Name the license
|
| Provide a URL for the license
|
| Note whether the work has been modified
|
| So a very normal photo credit like "CC photo by John Smith" is
| actually not appropriate Creative Commons attribution.
| Groxx wrote:
| Which goes right back to "yes, _but_... ".
|
| There's an enormous pattern of "it's okay to use X if I say
| it's not mine" both individually and commercially and it's
| _not okay_. The whole point of these licenses is to have a
| lever to turn that around and enforce payment, to try to keep
| the ecosystem as a whole healthy so individuals can live off
| it. Commercial entities that don 't hard-require every image
| posted to their blog to be either new or come from e.g. Getty
| are willingly playing fast and loose and hoping they don't
| get sued.
|
| _Not-for-profit individuals_ (e.g. personal blog posts)
| making an attempt at attribution: yeah I think the _vast_
| majority are entirely fine with that, but would lightly
| prefer _accurate_ attribution, and targeting them is a troll
| act.
|
| Is that a majority of violators and CC creators? ... I don't
| know. Possibly? Should trolls be targeting them? Heck no.
| Does the 30 day grace period allow companies to willingly
| violate this and only fix it after they've made their profit
| and have nothing to lose, and the creator nothing to gain?
| Yes absolutely.
|
| If you actually don't care about attribution, distribute
| under Public Domain and _ask_ for attribution when you think
| it 's worthwhile. Many will likely say yes - I've seen loads
| of public domain images used with attribution. People _like_
| public domain contributions.
|
| If you _do_ care, legal teeth are kinda required, and
| choosing CC means explicitly choosing legal teeth.
| ghaff wrote:
| >The whole point of these licenses is to have a lever to
| turn that around and enforce payment, to try to keep the
| ecosystem as a whole healthy so individuals can live off
| it.
|
| I mostly disagree. As I recall early discussions, it was
| more rooted in enabling remix culture while ensuring
| creatives received appropriate credit.
|
| If direct monetization is the main consideration, I don't
| know why you'd use Creative Commons at all.
| Groxx wrote:
| That remix culture is definitely what it turned into and
| possibly what it was intended for and tons of that is a
| great success... but then why have violation terms at
| all? Seems like that "remix, please attribute" is just
| signaling intent, and then there's no need for a license
| dictating how violations are handled. It'd just be public
| domain with an unofficial request tacked on.
|
| ---
|
| I should probably clarify that I think a lot of these are
| coming from people who want to do more of their art, and
| that requires money, and many of them have been tricked
| into exposure rather than payment and that leads to them
| _not_ doing more art because they 're too busy with other
| stuff that _does_ pay so they can live. It 's a time bomb
| that isn't generally recognized until it explodes, and it
| almost always does, and then they care _deeply_ and go
| looking for legal teeth.
|
| Exposure can be great. It's _overwhelmingly_ exploited by
| companies that are capable of paying but choose not to.
| Changing that is why licenses have terms like this,
| otherwise what 's the point of the license? Make it
| Public Domain.
| ghaff wrote:
| >tricked into exposure rather than payment
|
| Fully agree.
|
| In a prior stint as an IT industry analyst, we eventually
| started a non-paywall blog and (rarely) did free
| appearances at industry conferences. But people tried to
| get us to do free stuff _all the time_ for the
| "exposure."
|
| Especially starting out it can be really tempting. But
| you have to really keep it in check if you're running a
| business.
|
| >Seems like that "remix, please attribute" is just
| signaling intent, and then there's no need for a license
| dictating how violations are handled.
|
| Viewed from the distance of 20ish years the CC licenses
| (other than CC0) look way too complicated. And it's not
| like CC works are routinely credited, even if
| imperfectly, anyway. It's not even clear to me that the
| MIT license couldn't just have been used (or extended)
| for non-code use.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> if you wanted to just allow reuse we have a fantastically
| well-tread license for that - Public Domain_
|
| Public Domain isn't a license. It's a problematic legal
| concept. It's not clear whether you actually _can_ place
| something into the public domain if it isn 't in there
| automatically (for example being published pre-1922). Sure, you
| can _say_ "I place this work in the public domain", but will
| that actually have the legal effect you want? Basically you are
| saying you relinquish ownership of the work, but if you don't
| own it, you can't claim to control what other people do with it
| --including _claiming ownership_ of it under other legal
| concepts, such as the concept of "abandoned property"--if you
| find something lying around and nobody else claims ownership of
| it, _you_ can. "Public Domain" gives no shield whatever
| against such shenanigans.
| Groxx wrote:
| > _Public Domain isn 't a license. It's a problematic legal
| concept. ..._
|
| Fair. I'll keep that in mind and try to find details for the
| future :)
|
| > _[Under public domain] you can 't claim to control what
| other people do with it_
|
| Which is exactly what CC without actual legal threats
| achieves, yes. Which is why I say people _do_ care, so making
| it toothless seems to defeat the point.
|
| As far as I'm aware, the rest of that (mostly ownership) is
| covered by copyright, which is applied by default if you say
| nothing.
|
| So: saying nothing and distributing it however you like
| already achieves _more_ than CC-without-teeth because you can
| already sue people for using it or claiming it as theirs, and
| just choose not to.
|
| Which is why this whole change feels self-defeating to me.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> copyright, which is applied by default if you say
| nothing_
|
| But does not allow reuse. So it's irrelevant to a
| discussion of what to do if you _do_ want to allow reuse.
|
| _> you can already sue people for using it or claiming it
| as theirs, and just choose not to_
|
| But that puts anyone who wants to reuse your content in
| good faith at the mercy of your whim about whether or not
| to sue them. That is not a good basis for facilitating
| reuse.
|
| _> this whole change feels self-defeating to me_
|
| Meaning, fixing the attribution clauses in CC so that
| people have a reasonable time to cure violations before the
| $150K lawsuit threat? I don't see how that makes CC
| licenses any more or less "toothless" than they were
| before. It increases the difficulty of copyleft trolling,
| which was what it was intended to do. Yes, it means a 30
| day delay after you give notice before you can sue someone
| for violating your license--but anyone who fixes the
| violation within 30 days of you giving them notice is not
| someone you want to sue anyway, because they're a good
| faith user.
|
| If we're talking about individuals or small businesses,
| what makes _any_ license toothless in our current legal
| environment is the cost of a lawsuit. If you 're an
| individual or small business and large corporation X reuses
| your content without meeting the terms of your license,
| whether it's the original CC or the current one, and
| refuses to fix the violation (presumably because it would
| be bad for their business), you're basically SOL anyway:
| you will run out of money to keep a lawsuit going long
| before corporation X runs out of legal devices to delay or
| obstruct you. No amount of rejiggering of a license is
| going to change that. Nor, for that matter, will not giving
| any license and relying on copyright law: you're still in
| the same position.
| zengid wrote:
| TIL that Hal Abelson, nerd-famous for the programming book
| _Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs_ (SICP), was
| involved in creating Creative Commons. Amazing achievements!
| hbrav wrote:
| A lawyer I know once pointed out that a good first step one
| receipt of anything like this is to reply with "Please provide me
| with the full name and address of your counsel so I may know to
| whom I should address subsequent correspondence."
|
| If you do not receive an answer, you are not dealing with someone
| who is serious about taking you to court.
|
| If you do receive an answer, you should immediately check whether
| that person is actually licensed to practice law (you can usually
| check online). If not, report to the relevant bar association
| that [name] is presenting themselves as licensed to practice law
| (don't be spooky, send the full details to the bar association).
|
| Only if you are put in contact with an actual lawyer should you
| waste any energy thinking about this further.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >"Please provide me with the full name and address of your
| counsel so I may know to whom I should address subsequent
| correspondence."
|
| >If not, report to the relevant bar association that [name] is
| presenting themselves as licensed to practice law (don't be
| spooky, send the full details to the bar association).
|
| In the US, at least, are people not allowed to represent
| themselves as their own counsel?
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| In the US, you cannot say that you are an attorney if you are
| not actually an attorney. Doing so is a crime: fraud. This is
| important, because if you're paying money to someone to be
| your attorney, it's important that they actually know what
| they're doing :)
|
| In the US, to be an attorney, one needs to pass the state's
| bar in the relevant area of law that one would practice.
|
| > In the US, at least, are people not allowed to represent
| themselves as their own counsel?
|
| Sure they can. But they can't say "I'm an attorney." That's
| what OP is getting at.
|
| For more context -- In the US, anyone can sue anyone for any
| reason. However, that doesn't mean it's going to be a valid
| or even successful suit. Except in small claims court,
| representing yourself in a legal situation is an absolutely
| terrible idea. Not only will you most certainly loose the
| suit for not following the proper legal procedures (pesky
| things like having an actual legal argument, presenting valid
| evidence, citing relevant laws and case precedents,
| understanding the opposing counsel's legal argument,
| evidence, citations, etc.) you could easily get yourself into
| a situation where you'd be wasting so much time and resources
| by fucking up that you could be slapped with a fine yourself!
| Or, let's say you're in court, have no idea what you're
| doing, and get so frustrated you start becoming unreasonable
| -- contempt of court, put into jail until you calm down.
|
| tl;dr You can't say you're an attorney if you're not one,
| that's a crime (fraud). If you interact with the legal system
| without an attorney, you're going to get screwed. :)
| mhuffman wrote:
| >"Please provide me with the full name and address of your
| counsel so I may know to whom I should address subsequent
| correspondence."
|
| All true of course. However, that is not how I read it. It
| said put me in touch with your counsel. If their answer is
| "I am my own counsel" then your take is that this is a
| crime?
|
| Of course, I understand if they say "I am an attorney" and
| they are not. But that is not what is being said. It reads
| like a grimy way for a bigger business to try to "trap"
| people without as many resources.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| And if they are start preparing to represent yourself and how
| to write a submission to request summary judgement on the basis
| that you are now in compliance having been made aware of your
| technical non-compliance.
| atomicfiredoll wrote:
| For anybody that didn't read the whole article, I'll point
| attention to this section at the end:
|
| "It could get much, much worse. Rightsholder groups are backing a
| Copyright Office plan to make this kind of robosigning into law,
| forcing all online platforms to institute filters that
| automatically remove materials that an algorithm finds to be
| infringing, without human oversight or judgement."
|
| Here's a link to that document in the Federal Register [0].
| Public comments apparently closed on Feb. 8th, but it may be
| worth keeping an eye on.
|
| [0]
| https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/12/22/2021-27...
| melagonster wrote:
| >Like, I've repeated emailed the contact address for "Fintech
| Zoom" to request that they fix the attribution on this photo and
| all I get is crickets.
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