Re: Archiving old magazines on website

[Lee Hart <leeahart@earthlink.net>]

Lee Hart wrote:
>> I've only had one case where someone stole my work without
>> permission and sought to make money from it. It eventually came
>> to lawyers, and I threatened to sue. Their lawyers advised their
>> client that they would certainly lose, and we settled out of
>> court for $10,000.

John Burns wrote:
> Glad you made this point Lee as many copyright cases are settled
> in such a way (out of court) and therefore obviously don't get any
> media attention. Hope you enjoyed spending the money :)

Actually, the company I worked for got it. I simplified the story to
keep it succinct. I was the tech writer that wrote the manual for a
microcomputer board based on the RCA 1802. A competitor copied this
manual, deleting our trademark and name and substituting their own. My
company threatened to sue, the other company backed down and settled out
of court for the $10,000.

> Publish and be damned is an old saying but when it involves copyright
> material it usually ends in (the publisher) being damned poor.

It's become a very complicated situation. The original intent of the
copyright laws has largely been defeated. We now have descendents of
Mark Twain recopyrighting his works, people with copyrights to the
"Happy Birthday" song and charging royalties, classic movies like
"Casablanca" colorized to make it a 'new work' and re-copyrighted,
companies like Microsoft keeping their old copyrights in force so they
can *prevent* their distribution to compete with current products, etc.
With enough money and lawyers, copyright are effectively immortal. 
--
"Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the
world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has!" -- Margaret Meade
--
Lee A. Hart  814 8th Ave N  Sartell MN 56377  leeahart_at_earthlink.net