Subject:
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Re: Plagiarism again (Was: Can we say, "Plagiarism"?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Thu, 27 Jan 2000 17:35:34 GMT
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Viewed:
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1061 times
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Mike Poindexter wrote in message ...
> A gorilla may resort to violence to get its way, but you don't go that • route
> against it because you can't win a fight with a gorilla. Any large
> corporation can be viewed as such an animal. It is just the way it is. • The
> only weapon you have against a large corporation is bad publicity, and that
> usually comes in your behalf after they sue you. The general public hates
> to see individuals or small companies sued by multi-national mega-corps.
> Look at the outcry over Etoy being sued by eToys. The way I figure it, • just
> ignore them. For the most part, it is either a bluff, or they want to push
> you as far as they can without giving you your real weapon - publicity.
>
> Of course, when you have to go after them, it is virtually impossible. • Just
> because you (as the AFOL community as a whole) roll over whenever they come
> after you with a statement from their legal department, don't expect them • to
> do the same for you. It is not an equal relationship.
Actually, I think if you had a good solid case (which I think this
particular instance is), I think you'd find you would do quite well. I don't
know about other large companies, but you should see the legalese IBM goes
through when dealing with other's IP. Why? Think of the bad publicity if
some little company goes to court suing IBM because big bad IBM stole their
idea. The larger you are, the more careful you have to be (and one of these
days, eBay is going to find that it needs to respond to peoples claims that
an auction is selling counterfeit or pirated materials, and do the
investigation and remove the auction, not wait for the entity whose IP is
being violated to come to them).
What may be needed is for an actual lawyer to get involved (I remember a
friend in college once had a problem because his checkbook had been stolen,
and reported which checks were stolen, yet they cashed some of the stolen
checks, and then tried to weasel out of responsibility. My friend had his
father's lawyer [who probably wasn't even licensed to practice in the state
since he was out of state] call the bank. The bank immediately changed it's
tune). One thing that must be remembered is that there are penalties for
willful violations. Once copyright infringement has been brought to your
attention, continuing to violate the copyright is willful violation, and the
penalties can far exceed actual damages (which in this case are not large,
though if the "model of the month" caries a prize of any monetary amount,
that is definitely actual damages).
The only reason I could see TLC being a little cautious in this case is that
they don't want the bad publicity of errantly coming down hard on a kid
(though I wonder if the submitter is actually a kid).
Frank
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Plagiarism again (Was: Can we say, "Plagiarism"?)
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| Mookie <Mookie1@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message news:38905CA0.1E3284...att.net... (...) I would say not. Is a single AFOL going to sue TLC? No way! They already have lawyers on salary, so it isn't going to run up their bills as fast as the (...) (24 years ago, 27-Jan-00, to lugnet.general)
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