

Sky News Infringed My Copyright - philjones88
http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2012/01/sky-news-infringed-my-copyright/

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ck2
"infringed my copyright" is way too calm and level headed of a charge

You should scream "piracy", "stealing jobs", and since they have a history of
ignoring copyright and profiting from it, they need to be arrested, extradited
and prosecuted as if they were murderers.

~~~
pyre
He's losing more money than exists in the world _every millisecond_!

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CWuestefeld
Sky is quoted as saying

 _There is no authority that an infringement in these circumstances attracts
four times the usual licence fee. To the contrary, the usual measure is what
the reasonable cost of licensing would have been._

I find this hard to believe. If it's true, then the best course of action for
any actor is to just screw the copyrights and use whatever the heck you want.
For those copyright owners who catch you, you'd be out no more than if you'd
paid them the standard fee up front. And for those who don't catch you, you've
gotten a free ride.

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jarrett
Hypothetically, if I ever ran a business that accidentally infringed a
copyright, I'd be happy to settle for £1500 (roughly $2350 as of today).
Suppose my attorneys cost a meager $250/hour. In less than ten billable
attorney hours, I've burned through the cost of the proposed settlement. In
those ten hours, my attorneys probably haven't been able to make the problem
go away. So now I'm out the amount of the settlement, and I still have to
somehow resolve the original claim. I'd think it much better just to cut the
check (after a 15-minute conversation with counsel, of course).

~~~
sbarre
In-house counsel (which I assume they have) is getting paid a salary
regardless of whether or not they are busy, so I doubt there was a billable
cost to deciding on their offer internally at Sky News..

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Tim-Boss
I can't see Sky's lawyers taking very long to settle out of court, £1500 is a
miserly sum compared to what the lawyers will cost them in the first place!
Sky took his copyrighted video and broadcast it to the world et al., everyone
could have recorded it and might be watching it back repeatedly at their
leisure, removing any chance of Mr Eden ever monetizing it (at least that's
what his lawyers should say!).

Interesting note: would this be a single copyright breach, or would it have
been breached for every person who 'illegally' received (their terminolgy:
stole) it?

~~~
dotBen
_everyone could have recorded it and might be watching it back repeatedly at
their leisure, removing any chance of Mr Eden ever monetizing it_

Technically those some members of the public could have done that from the
original video on YouTube too. The overall point is valid, but that's not the
issue to assert.

And no, it would only be a single copyright breach because (to use your
terminology) each person who 'illegally received' the video didn't steal it
individually.

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radicalbyte
IMHO you'd have been better off dragging them to small claims court.

You'd have received a bigger settlement AND it would cost Sky more if they'd
bothered sending a representative.

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heliostatic
The most galling line in the response from their lawyers is:

"May I also stress that when you are relating this issue to third parties on
whatever platform I would consider it unfair if you did not relay the fact
that we immediately acknowledged your copyright and sought to bring redress."

The implication being that when discussing being wronged, you must for
represent the other party's perspective as well. Is that something we can ask
of Sky as well?

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k-mcgrady
Would it not classify as fair use? (I don't mean to defend Sky but I thought
using media for the purpose of news was considered fair use).

~~~
alextgordon
I'm not a lawyer, but judging from the wikipedia article, it seems unlikely.
This isn't a video _of_ an "event", it's a video _describing_ an event. Sky
could have perfectly well made their own video.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing_in_United_Kingdom_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing_in_United_Kingdom_law#Reporting_of_current_events)

In particular

    
    
        Photographs are excluded, however; Cornish, Llewelyn and
        Aplin write that this is "in order to preserve the full
        value of holding a unique visual record of some person
        or event".
    

Does a video count as "photographs"?

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VMG
I'm not quite sure if this is serious or some sort a stunt to display "their"
hypocrisy.

To me, the situation is in the same category as pirating movies from
thepiratebay.org - except that those are more expensive to create.

So either they using youtube videos without the creators permission and
downloading movies are both okay or not.

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TheAmazingIdiot
Well, corporations are people (egomaniacal and sociopathic, but hey, whos
counting) too. So let's cut the Internet off this 'person'.

What? You can't survive if we do that?? Aww shucks, should have thought about
that before you pirated somebody's video..

~~~
koenigdavidmj
What `corporations are people' means is that corporations are a legal term
called `persons', which is different from `humans'.

A person is simply an entity that can sue or be sued.

A natural person is a person who also happens to be a human.

~~~
stonemetal
Yes, but are they person enough to be subject to three strikes laws that some
members of the EU have? It seems like it should put them at risk. I believe
this is what GP is referring to.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
That is precisely my point. We're seeing this 3 strikes junk all around
Europe, and its soon before it hits the US.

If these companies violate copyright, should they not also follow the rule of
law? What makes them exempt, aside the fact they helped write it?

(and honestly, legally shutting down a faux news channel by killing it's
Internet would be funny)

