MLB Refuses To Give Permission To Guy To Describe Game To A Friend

from the expressed-written-permission dept

A couple years ago, law professor Wendy Seltzer used the NFL as an example of sports leagues performing copyfraud, by claiming copyright control beyond what is allowed by law. Specifically, she was talking about the warning mentioned at some point during every game. For the NFL it was: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent, is prohibited." In Seltzer's case, amazingly, the NFL sent a DMCA takedown of her posting that clip to YouTube -- giving her another "teachable moment" on copyright abuse.

And yet, sports leagues still continue the copyfraud. One of the fine folks over at Consumerist, Phil Villarreal, found the wording of Major League Baseball's warning quite questionable:

"Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited,"

Unlike the NFL one, at least it didn't say "descriptions," but "account" is pretty close. So, Villarreal contacted MLB to request "express written consent" to provide an "account" of the game he had watched to a friend. To its credit, MLB responded and asked him to call someone in its business development department... who (perhaps reasonably) thought it was a joke and did not provide the written consent (and stopped responding to calls and emails).

Now, obviously, this is a bit of a joke (and a funny one), but it does highlight a rather serious problem. Copyright holders are pretty regularly claiming significantly more rights than they actually hold over content, and many people simply assume that they can do this. This leads to them to think that they don't have basic rights concerning not just "fair use" but stuff that is obviously not covered by copyright, such as an "account of this game." There really should be sanctions against such copyfraud.

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Gartner Tells Reporter: You're Not Allowed To Mention Gartner Research Without Our Permission

from the copyright-gone-insane dept

Rich Kulawiec alerts us to the news that Gartner (which absolutely should know better) sent a legal nastygram to a Network World blogger, Larry Chaffin, for the mortal sin of mentioning Gartner without Gartner's permission. Specifically, Gartner is claiming full control over its research reports, and saying that a reporter cannot quote them. Gartner is almost certainly wrong about this. If the information is newsworthy (and it sounds like it was), then a reporter absolutely has the right to post it. Also, Gartner seems confused about how all of this works. It first claims that posting such info was a violation of its own policy... but it's a policy that Chaffin had not agreed to. Perhaps Gartner had a claim against the vendor who gave Chaffin the report, but that doesn't preclude posting the information. On top of that (of course) Gartner is pulling a bit of copyfraud, by claiming that copyright gives it many more rights than it really does:

Gartner's published research is proprietary intellectual property of Gartner, Inc., and is protected by the copyright laws of the United States and other countries. Your company's mention of our research in your material does not comply with our Copyright and Quote Policy (available at the link below) and so this is an infringement of our copyrights. I ask that you take immediate and effective steps to remove this blog posting and also any other unauthorized mention of Gartner's research in any other venue which you control.

There's just one (big) problem with that. Copyright law doesn't really give a hoot what Gartner's own "Quote Policy" is. Copyright law has built in exceptions that can't just be written away like that.

Chaffin actually did take down the posts after being threatened, claiming that in doing so he's showing how meaningless Gartner is. He also promises never to post about any Gartner reports ever again in the future -- but did talk up Gartner's ridiculous policies and demands (amusingly referring to the company as Gar-ner).

Beyond just being of questionable legality, Gartner's actions also seem incredibly short-sighted (especially for a firm that's supposed to be known for being forward looking). Everyone knows the real value in a Gartner report is not in any actual analysis, but in the PR it might generate for companies that find their way into the infamous (and silly) "magic quadrant." By forcing reporters not to talk about who's in that magic quadrant, Gartner has just made its reports significantly less valuable. Now that's foresight.

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B&N Claims It Must DRM Public Domain Books To Protect The Copyright On Them

from the say-what-now? dept

Now, it's no surprise that plenty of people don't quite "get" the public domain or why it's important (though, if you are interested, you should read James Boyle's excellent book on the subject, which you can also order -- signed -- as a part of the Techdirt Book Club). And we've seen more than a few instances where people falsely claim copyright on public domain material. However, none of that really explains Barnes & Noble's bizarre and contradictory response to someone's question about why public domain ebooks were locked up with DRM (thanks Mark for sending this in). B&N is apparently offering a promotion for "free" ebooks, but it turns out that all of them are in the public domain (meaning most are already available for free online). But, oddly, these books were locked up by DRM, and someone decided to ask why. The original question goes a bit too far in claiming that the DRM "infringes" on the "right to print the works" (there's no such right, and B&N has no requirement to allow you to print), but that's no excuse for the way B&N "explains" why the public domain books its giving away "free" are protected by DRM:

We selected public domain titles as our free eBooks because these books are traditionally among our customers' favorite works of literature.... Also, for copyright protection purposes, these files are encrypted and cannot be converted or printed.

So, they recognize that the works are in the public domain... but they encrypt them with DRM to protect the copyright that doesn't exist on those works. That's convincing.

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Should There Be A Penalty For Falsely Claiming Copyright Over Public Domain Material?

from the happy-birthday... dept

Slashdot and The Register point us to a new paper by Jason Mazzone about "copyfraud" -- or the ability of someone to claim copyright on something that is in the public domain. The issue, Mazzone points out, is that there's no penalty for falsely claiming copyright on something, so there's plenty of incentive to claim something is still covered even if it's not. Remember the story of "Happy Birthday"? While the common wisdom is that the copyright is owned by Time Warner, there's a lot of evidence that this is not the case at all, and the song is in the public domain. Oh, and that could be true of Mickey Mouse as well. But, of course, neither Disney nor Time Warner risks any punishment in claiming that they still hold the copyright to each of those... so who's going to challenge it?

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