Fair Use?

[archerships]

Fair Use law generally allows one to quote short excerpts from a given work, for the purposes of criticism. What if several thousand people each quoted a different paragraph of a book in their blogs? You could then write a program that would spider each of the blogs, download the quotes, and reassemble the book.

Just a thought.

Comments

[discopete1.livejournal.com]

You be violating the copyright by compiling the quotes. Also, if you could demonstrate that the quotes were posted for the purpose of reassembly, you could probably go after the posters based on the intent of their action (especially those that purported to be criticizing mundane parts).

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Yes, but nobody's going to know that you've compiled the quotes.

Your second point is probably correct, but from the perspective of the copyright holder, a court battle is expensive. How much damage is someone with a single quote from their book going to have inflicted?

[discopete1.livejournal.com]

I'll bet it would be cheaper to buy the book than to run this scheme. It would only be worthwhile if large volumes of the copyrighted material were produced, in which case the potential damages would be greater. You're probably right though, the copyrighter would only pursue the compiler because there would be too many quoters and you'd have to prove that they weren't acting legitimately.

In the end, if you're going to try to get around copyright, the easiest thing to do is just scan in/photocopy the material in a quiet room. Getting so many people involved broadens the number of people in the know, dramatically increasing the likelyhood of being caught

[darkfader.livejournal.com]

That would amount to a retreival system, distributed or not, and give access to the entire work to anyone with the spider. So you'd have to be careful with who gets the spider, and would be a good idea, however tedious, to actually criticize each chapter in order to sneak in that loophole.

good idea, but seems a bit work intensive... maybe just work a little harder on http://www.freenet.org ?

[crasch.livejournal.com]

You could include an autocricizer -- sort of like ELIZA.

---

Yes, I'm a monthly donor to freenet.

[madbard.livejournal.com]

Why not just copy the entire book and claim you did it via the blog method? The end result would be the same.

(I don't think it would fly, for the reasons described in the post above.)

[crasch.livejournal.com]

If I had a copy of the book to copy, why download it from the internet? The idea is to be able to make the book available for free download, yet make it economically non-viable to legally prosecute the people making it available online.

[andysocial]

I'm gonna sick Orrin Hatch on you.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Aagh. What an evil little busy body.

[peggin.livejournal.com]

You can't save yourself by claiming that you, individually, didn't violate the "Fair Use" doctrine. Try convincing a jury that you had no idea that all those other people were also putting up quotes from the same book and that you were shocked to discover that, collectively, you all somehow magically managed to make the entire book available. The fact that all the works were linked together would be the real clincher. The whole bunch of you would end up going to jail for conspiracy.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're probably right that it would be difficult to deny intent. However, the question becomes, what damage is the copyright holder due? You, after all, only hosted 1/1500th of the book on your site. Would it still be economically viable to go after you?

[chronicfreetime.livejournal.com]

Heh, you'd need something like the reverse of a class-action lawsuit, where the defendants are the class.

[peggin.livejournal.com]

You'd need.... something like what the music industry has been doing, going after a bunch of teenagers who downloaded music over the internet.

[chronicfreetime.livejournal.com]

Not if, as crasch is hypothesizing, the individual damages would be less than the cost of litigation. The trick with what the RIAA is doing is that they get $750 statutory damages *per song*, plus legal fees (assuming they prevail). But crasch proposes infringing on only one work. Section 504 permits the court to raise the statutory damages to as much as $150k for willful infringement, but I think that must still be split among the 5000 hypothetical defendants. Is $300 a head worth it? If you couldn't pin the whole thing on a few ringleaders, I doubt it.

[h-postmortemus.livejournal.com]

Considering used books are as cheap as $5, why even bother? And of course there's the public library.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Most of the books I want are more likely in the $15 - $30.00 range. Moreover, I really don't want physical books. I want them online, so that I can access them anytime, anywhere, without the storage costs. Public libraries are great, but almost all of the books I want, I have to order via interlibrary loan, which takes 1 - 3 weeks.

[extremejessy.livejournal.com]

Holding this discussion already proves intent

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind, copyright infringement is now a terrorist act.

[chronicfreetime.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a good thing we got rid of that stupid Chinese wall inside the FBI. And I'm sure we can trust Ashcroft when he says he won't abuse any of the new powers we've given him.

[lds.livejournal.com]

I think darknets [warning: Microsoft DOC file] are a much simpler, more effective, and more secure way to accomplish what you want.

So, what books do you want, and do you have a GPG/PGP key? :)