5 ms·

Would an effective way to forestall this be to set up a website and start suing anyone who visits it from the UK for copyright infringment? I would expect that

by sorbus 15y ago

Would an effective way to forestall this be to set up a website and start suing anyone who visits it from the UK for copyright infringment? I would expect that such lawsuits would be laughed out of court, or strongly ruled in favor of the defendant, especially if you started out by suing fairly powerful or influential people. (Also, is it legal to read books in the UK? The brain and eyes make a temporary copy of any inputs, and memory could be considered to be a derivative work.)

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
pbhjpbhj 15y ago
I don't think your comparison with reading is a good one. A cache copy persists and can be used, reused or passed on if desired whilst a visual appearance in your brain can not ... until we get really good at reading brain waves!
- sorbus 15y ago
  If I read a book I can pass on my memories of it, and someone with a more reliable memory might be able to recreate it. Admittedly, it would have a much larger rate of errors than copies recovered from cache, but there are plenty of things you can do with books that would have a similar rate of errors while still being violations of copyright.
iuhyghjkl 15y ago
There is already lots of precedent that viewing a web page is making a copy. The law on child pornography is that it's only an offense to produce an image - since it's assumed that the person making the image is the one harming the child and banning reading/viewing something would have freedom of speech implications. There have been many convictions of people viewing images where the prosecution made the case that the browser had created an image (albeit a copy)
- lotharbot 15y ago
  > "The law on child pornography is that it's only an offense to produce an image" In the UK, "simple possession of indecent photographs of children" is a criminal offense [0]. US law is fairly similar [1]. [0] http://www.rogerdarlington.co.uk/sexonnet.html#UKlaw http://www.rogerdarlington.co.uk/sexonnet.html#UKlaw -- see Criminal Justice Act of 1988 [1] http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=1476 http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?L... -- part (b) of the first cited law
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    But the difference between possession and creation is very large.
- sorbus 15y ago
  The UK doesn't quite have a concept of freedom of speech, legally speaking. Freedom of expression is guaranteed by their Human Rights Act, but it has lots of limitations (incitement to racial/religious hatred, defamation), and there is illegal literature (mostly stuff relating to terrorism, but also "material that tend to deprave and corrupt those reading or viewing it")[1]. Therefor, I suspect that your mentions of legality may be specific to the USA; of course, if I'm wrong, I would love to be enlightened. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#Un...

by sorbus 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

pbhjpbhj 15y ago

I don't think your comparison with reading is a good one. A cache copy persists and can be used, reused or passed on if desired whilst a visual appearance in your brain can not ... until we get really good at reading brain waves!

sorbus 15y ago
If I read a book I can pass on my memories of it, and someone with a more reliable memory might be able to recreate it. Admittedly, it would have a much larger rate of errors than copies recovered from cache, but there are plenty of things you can do with books that would have a similar rate of errors while still being violations of copyright.

iuhyghjkl 15y ago

There is already lots of precedent that viewing a web page is making a copy. The law on child pornography is that it's only an offense to produce an image - since it's assumed that the person making the image is the one harming the child and banning reading/viewing something would have freedom of speech implications. There have been many convictions of people viewing images where the prosecution made the case that the browser had created an image (albeit a copy)

lotharbot 15y ago
> "The law on child pornography is that it's only an offense to produce an image" In the UK, "simple possession of indecent photographs of children" is a criminal offense [0]. US law is fairly similar [1]. [0] http://www.rogerdarlington.co.uk/sexonnet.html#UKlaw http://www.rogerdarlington.co.uk/sexonnet.html#UKlaw -- see Criminal Justice Act of 1988 [1] http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=1476 http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?L... -- part (b) of the first cited law
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  But the difference between possession and creation is very large.
sorbus 15y ago
The UK doesn't quite have a concept of freedom of speech, legally speaking. Freedom of expression is guaranteed by their Human Rights Act, but it has lots of limitations (incitement to racial/religious hatred, defamation), and there is illegal literature (mostly stuff relating to terrorism, but also "material that tend to deprave and corrupt those reading or viewing it")[1]. Therefor, I suspect that your mentions of legality may be specific to the USA; of course, if I'm wrong, I would love to be enlightened. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#Un...