Hilarious. I sent a DMCA notification to LiveJournal since one of the charming imbeciles from WORA decided to repost one of my posts from this journal to his lj. And wouldn’t you know, he sends a counter notification, claiming that its not copyright infringement. He claims that a) I have provided no proof—such as a registration—that the material is copyrighted, b) its fair use and c) I didn’t submit a proper DMCA notification. I’ve seen plenty of stupid stuff from the WORA crowd, but this one almost deserves an award. Maybe I should just have copied & pasted in his whole counter notification, since he seems to think that’s a good way to approach things. I am not, however, as impolite as to do that, given that it includes his full RL address and all. So, my recap will have to do.
Anyhow, as I have said a number of times during the course of all of this, you cannot register copyright in Sweden and when the US signed the Berne Convention they had to agree that registration of copyright would no longer being required for works produced in other countries, not even if someone wants to sue for infringement upon such a work in the US. Anything I create, no matter what it is, is copyrighted from the moment I fix it in a tangible form. I don’t even need a copyright notice. No proof is needed beyond the material’s existence on my website. And ... fair use? Right, I’ll just borrow a few exclusive articles wholesale from some on-line newspaper ... I am sure they won’t mind. It doesn’t matter that he’s making no money off it. He sure isn’t just quoting, and I am not seeing any educational usage either. Finally, if I hadn’t submitted a proper DMCA notification (which I most certainly did) , LiveJournal would not have acted on it at all.
I guess he’s not actually committed perjury by sending in the counter-notification if he really is delusional enough to believe that his usage is acceptable ... but I am pretty sure he’s displayed a criminal level of stupidity. You’d think some of his friends would be nice enough to inform him of this. To be honest, I find that part of this whole matter the most bothersome. I can’t imagine that everyone who gets involved in this on WORA is as stupid as they seem to be, and yet they constantly egg each other on with ludicrous, unsubstantiated statements, behaving much like a pack of rabid dogs. If one of them goes chasing after an approaching train, the others will yap encouragingly.
Clearly, getting your crazy spread to the world is /quite/ an educational experience. Seriously, what is your /problem/ with having your crazy spread around? And when did you become this crazy, anyway? You used to be quite sane on westeros.
I agree, quite educational. I’ve learned a lot about copyright law in the last few years.
I fully understand that some people don’t see why I insist on preventing my material from being used on other sites, but that’s a decision I’ve made and as far as possible, I am sticking by it. Especially when my material is used by people who behave as rudely as the WORA crowd.
However, I’ve said it before, and I don’t mind repeating it: they can, of course, link all they want and provide whatever commentary they like for the links. Perfectly acceptable, perfectly reasonable and they’d never have to hear from me again.
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