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I have the Association of Libertarian Feminists page added on Facebook (which if you are wondering about female libertarian figures in history and have a Facebook, add/like that page), and this was posted a day or two ago:
ALF, Lynn Kinsky and I have been the victims of copyright infringement and defamation by association. Our ALF article appeared in a book titled “Extremism in America” along with material by the KKK and Aryan Brotherhood. Sharon Presley has contacted her lawyer and has asked him ot take appropriate action. This puts us all in a very bad light and is an outrage.
I figure they are taking action because it puts them in a bad light, but I just commented about it and IP, so I wonder what they’ll respond with.
Ideas are copyrighted automatically. It’s not a crime to point out who that automatically assigned owner is. So a copyright statement by itself is not enough to say that they’ll pursue government enforcement, although if nothing else is stated it is a clue.
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Marc Faber does it too. The entire first page of his Monthly Market Commentary is one huge copyright notice.
In their defense, I think that, instead of copyright, they would simply have a contract that says, “Me send you PDF, and you no redistribute content without my permission.” (Bad grammar intended.)
Not only are ideas not copyrighted automatically, they are not copyrighted at all. Under U.S. law, copyright protects expression–how something is said–not idea. Patent law protects something closer to an idea.
What is true is that expression is copyrighted automatically. One you write something, “fix it” in a medium, it is protected by copyright law. Registering the copyright is not necessary, although it gives you some additional rights against an infringer.
Note that I am saying nothing at all about what the law ought to be, which is a much more complicated subject, merely pointing out what it is.
When I said “ideas are copyrighted automatically..”, I meant: “There are ideas that are copyrighted automatically, so a statement about who the copyrightholder is does not mean this protection was pursued”.
I can’t speak for all of ALF but speaking for myself (Sharon), no. The idea that anyone can come along and profit from my hard work without any permission from me or compensation to me is simply unacceptable and IMO immoral. I am well aware… that the big music companies are abusing copyright (and the musicians are not getting that money) but so what? What does that have to do with my intellectual inventions, as it were? It is my property just as surely as my TV or my books. If I were an inventor, would it be OK to rip off my invention? I created the words in my books; I put a lot of hard work into them. Taking them without permission and using them for one’s own profit is theft.
My short reply:
Well, on the issue of IP, there is no theft, as nothing was physically taken, only duplicated. The theft of someone’s property must be the loss of something, and there is no loss of property. Someone could say their idea was stolen, but that’s an abstract concept, and no one can hold patent to an idea, or that someone else may not duplicate something else.
That’s not what I’m reading. He says you can’t reprint his work. The only thing you can do with his website is read it, or print it out to read on your couch and even then it must have all the copyright statements intact.
Oh. You may be right. I didn’t look very carefully. But I’m also going on the fact that he actually puts youtube videos that use his content without permission in his “favorites” list and thanks people who make them.