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What does the law say about putting a license on use of things like this "Embedding this content into your site without written permission from the author will

What does the law say about putting a license on use of things like this "Embedding this content into your site without written permission from the author will involve a £100000 fee for it's use. You agree by embedding this content that you abide by these terms." Is something like this enforceable?

saganus 11y ago
I think the problem with this, like with most routes that involve a lawyer, is that this isn't about being enforceable or not, but whether you can actually pay in time and money to try to enforce it. That's why typically only companies try to enforce licenses. The author said that even writing the blog post was hard because he had not much time to spare. Imagine what it would cost if you sue and demand a newspaper like The Daily Mail.
- andy_ppp 11y ago
  Ah yes; it's almost as if we live in some sort of serfdom where all the laws are set up to benefit only those who already have wealth, influence and power.
  - jwatte 11y ago
    Almost...
- samstave 11y ago
  What if you just start invoicing their AP department?
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    I bet you if you sourced it well, made it look formal, and referenced the relevant articles, visualizations, etc. they might pay it rather than fight you if the price was reasonable. Otherwise, you can always send them to collections for non-payment and/or hire a lawyer.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    Oh, that's interesting. What if included in the site, article, and as a comment surrounding the "poop. stolen." alert, were the licensing terms for those not granted explicit permission? Say, a $0.01 a view, or some such? Your compensation for their stealing your article might be quite handsome, likely enough at least to get a lawyer involved based on a shared percentage of recouped licensing fees. I imagine it would be fairly easy to prove, given all the locations the licensing information was available, including right next to the manual editing the employee had to do to get it to work on their site.
  - esquivalience 11y ago
    I'm a lawyer in the UK. Here, you can start your own claim online in a few minutes.
    - andy_ppp 11y ago
      Yes, if it's under £5000 as I understand it?
- easytiger 11y ago
  if a lawyer gets a percentage then it is hardly any work at all
  - saganus 11y ago
    Maybe, but there's also the cost of time, of actually finding that lawyer, convincing him of this, etc. One of the things money seems to buy, which makes wealthy people/entities able to tackle problems that must of us realistically can't, is time. I believe that in the end, the so-called rat-race is just a race to be free to have time, to do whatever you like to. Sure, some chains you will never be free of, but if you can shed enough chains off of you, you will have enough time to do other, more meaningful stuff, like defending your rights/intellectual property/privacy, etc. In this case at least, it seems like the author finds it very hard to pursue this path, because in the end, what's in there for him? Maaaaaybe some money, after a long a emotionally tiring fight. On the other hand, you will lose time and money and potentially your health (since I don't see this route being stress-free). In the end, like for most things, it ends up being a kind of personal-ROI thing. The return he sees is probably to low to be worth going after it, and the investment and risk too high. And that's unfortunate, because in the end the abusive guys with money and time end up winning most battles :(
- wuliwong 11y ago
  I haven't thought much about this but I wonder if a possible way around the problem is for multiple victims to pull resources and combine their cases against a single offender. Someone would have to invest the time to create some structure to help the victims find each other but it should cost little to no money. A lawyer might even find it lucrative to do this? It's like the advertisements I see asking if I've ever taken some drug or something if so I can join a class action law suit.
  - ska 11y ago
    That is pretty much what a class action suit is, but there has to be some realistic expectation of money at the end (or a deep principle the lawyers care about) for anyone to take it on. Finding each other is cheap, structuring such a case isn't.
    - wuliwong 11y ago
      I guess if it is lucrative, a lawyer will figure it out some day.
- mesozoic 11y ago
  Daily Mail has lots of money I expect so there's probably plenty of lawyers who would do it on spec.
Silhouette 11y ago
Is something like this enforceable? We'd better hope the general principle isn't, because otherwise every search engine, social networking site, traffic aggregator and directory service on the web is about to spend the rest of its very short existence fighting off lawsuits.
- andy_ppp 11y ago
  I suppose, maybe if you don't have a licence on things it's fair game, but I know the Daily Mail has ripped off Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial Licenced works.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    On the contrary: if you don't have a licence on things, the default assumption should be that the copyright holder has given no permission, just as when the author of the article here didn't respond to a question sent in the middle of the night, that was not a grant of permission to do whatever the person asking wanted. The complication with web sites is that there is inevitably some level of implied consent: if you put a site up and someone visits it normally, they are technically making various copies of your work along the way, without necessarily having any explicit permission from the rightsholder to do so. This is where lawyers argue technicalities about everything from hot-linking to uploading or downloading the latest Hollywood movie.
    - jahewson 11y ago
      The copies made during visiting a website are treated as "incidental" copies under the law. What matters is that the author has decided to publish their work and that you are viewing their publication. Of course if you start duplicating their publication for your own ends, then it stops being incidental.
      - Silhouette 11y ago
        Careful: The law in this area isn't necessarily the same in all jurisdictions. Even within the EU there have been relatively few test cases so far and unless I've missed something recent the position with temporary copies is still not entirely clear. Sadly, the past few years have seen lawyers argue the minutiae of EU directives and national IP laws to the extent that any original intention or moral or economic justification for copyright has long been forgotten. Basically, this has become exactly the kind of area that gets lawyers and legal systems a bad reputation, where sometimes quite significant amounts of power are being assigned based on obscure technicalities in how laws at different levels of government have been drafted.
jahewson 11y ago
> Is something like this enforceable? No, it's not, because 1) the user never agreed to the license, 2) a license by definition cannot cover unlicensed uses. Unlicensed uses are dealt with by statute, not by a licence agreement, so it would be up to a court to decide how much to reward you. Note that for 1) without a written agreement you can't specify additional license terms beyond the usual statutory rights. Licenses and contracts have very different requirements for what makes them valid, the bar is set much higher for licenses.
dbbolton 11y ago
It sounds like you are describing elements of both piracy/theft (in which the offender fails to obtain or adhere to a license) and a compulsory license (in which there is a predetermined usage fee but no consent is required). With a compulsory license, the fee is pre-determined by law or arbitration. However, in the US they are basically only applicable to music and similar works involving royalties. In cases of piracy, damages are sought through civil suit and ultimately determined by the court, not the plaintiff. Essentially your warning amounts to "I'll sue you for X amount if you steal this". There's no guarantee that the court would find in your favor or award the full damages sought. I say "warning" because I doubt many courts would consider this a valid EULA to begin with. Contracts of adhesion are generally enforceable only if the terms conform to the reasonable expectations of the signatory (who has no control over the terms). But even if it were valid, and you were allowed to set your own violation fee, you would still have to go through the court to enforce it.
slavik81 11y ago
I am not a lawyer, but one reason you can't do that is because you can't set punitive damages in a contract. The court would instead consider how much the unauthorised actions actually cost you and decide what damages are owed.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  In other words, show monetary damages or GTFO. Count up how many cents in server bandwidth they used and bill them.
  - jwatte 11y ago
    Copyright infringement is in the criminal code. They actually downloaded and modified the files. That's not just server fees!
ska 11y ago
Unlikely (IANAL) because it would be hard to argue the fee is reasonable. You can specify that it is not available (but good luck seeing anything from a case about violating the license). You might be able to do this with something like £100, though, and just invoice them. I'd guess staff lawyers would say just pay it.
andy_ppp 11y ago
So what about a community like Hacker News that combines community, karma, money and action. Think of it like crowd sourced lawyers to even up egregious abusers of the public commons. The community can somehow [1] filter actions up to the top and then automatically start a crowd funding campaign to take legal action based upon such things. Might work against patent trolls and other organisations that we all feel are acting badly but we feel powerless to do anything about. I'd put £100 down now toward a class action lawsuit against the Daily Mail for constantly stealing peoples content. [1] technical term meaning I haven't thought this through properly

saganus 11y ago

I think the problem with this, like with most routes that involve a lawyer, is that this isn't about being enforceable or not, but whether you can actually pay in time and money to try to enforce it. That's why typically only companies try to enforce licenses. The author said that even writing the blog post was hard because he had not much time to spare. Imagine what it would cost if you sue and demand a newspaper like The Daily Mail.

andy_ppp 11y ago
Ah yes; it's almost as if we live in some sort of serfdom where all the laws are set up to benefit only those who already have wealth, influence and power.
- jwatte 11y ago
  Almost...
samstave 11y ago
What if you just start invoicing their AP department?
- fweespeech 11y ago
  I bet you if you sourced it well, made it look formal, and referenced the relevant articles, visualizations, etc. they might pay it rather than fight you if the price was reasonable. Otherwise, you can always send them to collections for non-payment and/or hire a lawyer.
- kbenson 11y ago
  Oh, that's interesting. What if included in the site, article, and as a comment surrounding the "poop. stolen." alert, were the licensing terms for those not granted explicit permission? Say, a $0.01 a view, or some such? Your compensation for their stealing your article might be quite handsome, likely enough at least to get a lawyer involved based on a shared percentage of recouped licensing fees. I imagine it would be fairly easy to prove, given all the locations the licensing information was available, including right next to the manual editing the employee had to do to get it to work on their site.
- esquivalience 11y ago
  I'm a lawyer in the UK. Here, you can start your own claim online in a few minutes.
  - andy_ppp 11y ago
    Yes, if it's under £5000 as I understand it?
easytiger 11y ago
if a lawyer gets a percentage then it is hardly any work at all
- saganus 11y ago
  Maybe, but there's also the cost of time, of actually finding that lawyer, convincing him of this, etc. One of the things money seems to buy, which makes wealthy people/entities able to tackle problems that must of us realistically can't, is time. I believe that in the end, the so-called rat-race is just a race to be free to have time, to do whatever you like to. Sure, some chains you will never be free of, but if you can shed enough chains off of you, you will have enough time to do other, more meaningful stuff, like defending your rights/intellectual property/privacy, etc. In this case at least, it seems like the author finds it very hard to pursue this path, because in the end, what's in there for him? Maaaaaybe some money, after a long a emotionally tiring fight. On the other hand, you will lose time and money and potentially your health (since I don't see this route being stress-free). In the end, like for most things, it ends up being a kind of personal-ROI thing. The return he sees is probably to low to be worth going after it, and the investment and risk too high. And that's unfortunate, because in the end the abusive guys with money and time end up winning most battles :(
wuliwong 11y ago
I haven't thought much about this but I wonder if a possible way around the problem is for multiple victims to pull resources and combine their cases against a single offender. Someone would have to invest the time to create some structure to help the victims find each other but it should cost little to no money. A lawyer might even find it lucrative to do this? It's like the advertisements I see asking if I've ever taken some drug or something if so I can join a class action law suit.
- ska 11y ago
  That is pretty much what a class action suit is, but there has to be some realistic expectation of money at the end (or a deep principle the lawyers care about) for anyone to take it on. Finding each other is cheap, structuring such a case isn't.
  - wuliwong 11y ago
    I guess if it is lucrative, a lawyer will figure it out some day.
mesozoic 11y ago
Daily Mail has lots of money I expect so there's probably plenty of lawyers who would do it on spec.

Silhouette 11y ago

Is something like this enforceable? We'd better hope the general principle isn't, because otherwise every search engine, social networking site, traffic aggregator and directory service on the web is about to spend the rest of its very short existence fighting off lawsuits.

andy_ppp 11y ago
I suppose, maybe if you don't have a licence on things it's fair game, but I know the Daily Mail has ripped off Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial Licenced works.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  On the contrary: if you don't have a licence on things, the default assumption should be that the copyright holder has given no permission, just as when the author of the article here didn't respond to a question sent in the middle of the night, that was not a grant of permission to do whatever the person asking wanted. The complication with web sites is that there is inevitably some level of implied consent: if you put a site up and someone visits it normally, they are technically making various copies of your work along the way, without necessarily having any explicit permission from the rightsholder to do so. This is where lawyers argue technicalities about everything from hot-linking to uploading or downloading the latest Hollywood movie.
  - jahewson 11y ago
    The copies made during visiting a website are treated as "incidental" copies under the law. What matters is that the author has decided to publish their work and that you are viewing their publication. Of course if you start duplicating their publication for your own ends, then it stops being incidental.
    - Silhouette 11y ago
      Careful: The law in this area isn't necessarily the same in all jurisdictions. Even within the EU there have been relatively few test cases so far and unless I've missed something recent the position with temporary copies is still not entirely clear. Sadly, the past few years have seen lawyers argue the minutiae of EU directives and national IP laws to the extent that any original intention or moral or economic justification for copyright has long been forgotten. Basically, this has become exactly the kind of area that gets lawyers and legal systems a bad reputation, where sometimes quite significant amounts of power are being assigned based on obscure technicalities in how laws at different levels of government have been drafted.

jahewson 11y ago

> Is something like this enforceable? No, it's not, because 1) the user never agreed to the license, 2) a license by definition cannot cover unlicensed uses. Unlicensed uses are dealt with by statute, not by a licence agreement, so it would be up to a court to decide how much to reward you. Note that for 1) without a written agreement you can't specify additional license terms beyond the usual statutory rights. Licenses and contracts have very different requirements for what makes them valid, the bar is set much higher for licenses.

dbbolton 11y ago

It sounds like you are describing elements of both piracy/theft (in which the offender fails to obtain or adhere to a license) and a compulsory license (in which there is a predetermined usage fee but no consent is required). With a compulsory license, the fee is pre-determined by law or arbitration. However, in the US they are basically only applicable to music and similar works involving royalties. In cases of piracy, damages are sought through civil suit and ultimately determined by the court, not the plaintiff. Essentially your warning amounts to "I'll sue you for X amount if you steal this". There's no guarantee that the court would find in your favor or award the full damages sought. I say "warning" because I doubt many courts would consider this a valid EULA to begin with. Contracts of adhesion are generally enforceable only if the terms conform to the reasonable expectations of the signatory (who has no control over the terms). But even if it were valid, and you were allowed to set your own violation fee, you would still have to go through the court to enforce it.

slavik81 11y ago

I am not a lawyer, but one reason you can't do that is because you can't set punitive damages in a contract. The court would instead consider how much the unauthorised actions actually cost you and decide what damages are owed.

ryandrake 11y ago
In other words, show monetary damages or GTFO. Count up how many cents in server bandwidth they used and bill them.
- jwatte 11y ago
  Copyright infringement is in the criminal code. They actually downloaded and modified the files. That's not just server fees!

ska 11y ago

Unlikely (IANAL) because it would be hard to argue the fee is reasonable. You can specify that it is not available (but good luck seeing anything from a case about violating the license). You might be able to do this with something like £100, though, and just invoice them. I'd guess staff lawyers would say just pay it.

andy_ppp 11y ago

So what about a community like Hacker News that combines community, karma, money and action. Think of it like crowd sourced lawyers to even up egregious abusers of the public commons. The community can somehow [1] filter actions up to the top and then automatically start a crowd funding campaign to take legal action based upon such things. Might work against patent trolls and other organisations that we all feel are acting badly but we feel powerless to do anything about. I'd put £100 down now toward a class action lawsuit against the Daily Mail for constantly stealing peoples content. [1] technical term meaning I haven't thought this through properly