… That is, if you’re the one being infringed.
Disclaimer: I am neither advocating that you rip off anyone else’s content nor recommending that you sit idly by should it happen to you. But sometimes, it can work to your advantage… especially if the people using it are “fans,” where at least some form of atttribution is made to you.
That’s what Sandra Aistars, Time Warner Cable’s assistant general counsel, intimated at a recent digital rights management conference in New York City, reported in Mediapost’s Just an Online Minute. Especially when the use of the content is in the form of parody or other fair use or commentary, it may be in your interest to refrain from bringing an infringement lawsuit if the restraint helps foster a more robust fan base.
But it’s not always easy to tell which uses will be to your benefit. So make sure you consult with an attorney who knows this area.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 9:28 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.2 Responses to “When Copyright Infringement Isn’t Entirely A Bad Thing”
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April 11th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
The idea of “infringement” being beneficial is one that is starting to take hold, but there is an interesting paradox here, if the use if a fair use of the content, then it isn’t an infringement in the first place. You could bring forth a copyright suit, but you would most likely lose.
Still, even acts that might be seen as infringement in another light can be beneficial. That is the whole notion Creative Commons was founded on and why so many people, myself included, license their work under it.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Actually, it’s not that “fair use” isn’t necessarily a form of infringement — it is. But it’s a permitted exception. Fair use is also not a cut-and-dried concept. Like obscenity, the courts “know it when they see it,” and use several factors to weigh whether an infringing use is fair or not.