Copyright Infringement

[auntella]

I did not find a post for this, so I am posting it. If you live in the USA you should look this over. The Congress has before them right now legislation that will allow our government to shut down websites at the slightest accusation of copyright infringement.There are two proposed laws called the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. (SOPA and PIPA). The laws will force sites like You Tube to go to new lengths to police users' contributions, and put people in prison for streaming certain content online.
Copyright law says that you can in no way, shape or form copy any copyrighted material. Actually, we are probably not supposed to take pictures of the books, records or anything that is copyrighted and post to our stores. This could really hurt sales. If you live in the USA, go to www.stopcensorship.org and sign the petition if you are against this law.

[suesjools]

I did not find a post for this, so I am posting it. If you live in the USA you should look this over. The Congress has before them right now legislation that will allow our government to shut down websites at the slightest accusation of copyright infringement.There are two proposed laws called the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. (SOPA and PIPA). The laws will force sites like You Tube to go to new lengths to police users' contributions, and put people in prison for streaming certain content online.
Copyright law says that you can in no way, shape or form copy any copyrighted material. Actually, we are probably not supposed to take pictures of the books, records or anything that is copyrighted and post to our stores. This could really hurt sales. If you live in the USA, go to www.stopcensorship.org and sign the petition if you are against this law.

Excellent post and very good info.. I already signed a similar petition on MoveOn.org, but will sign this one also.

Posted this info. and the MoveOn.org link on my blog earlier today, but wasn't sure about posting here, glad you did though.

Oh and welcome to eBid.

Best wishes for many sales to all,

[bykimbo]

Actually, we are probably not supposed to take pictures of the books, records or anything that is copyrighted and post to our stores.

I don't believe that's the case; photographing something for the purpose of selling it should be fine. There's one example of discussion of photos of copyright works here, that explains the various areas rather well in my opinion.

[terry5732]

"Copyright law says that you can in no way, shape or form copy any copyrighted material. "

Wrong. They say you cannot sell copies of it. You can copy for personal use or not for profit distribution. youtube already goes well beyond what the law calls for.

[billsstamps]

What is behind copyright law is preventing people behaving as if they were the copyright owner.

When I sell a book with a picture I do not pretend to be the publisher, I am visualising a second hand book and doing a service to the author and publisher in passing their book on to someone else.

[auntella]

I understand what everyone is saying. I just posted the link so those who wanted to sign it could. Thanks for the comments.

[JaBek1]

Here is where you need to look for the skinny on US Copyright law.


US Copyright Office

[auntella]

It is not what people think is legal now, but what will it be and how far will they carry the law if passed. I found this article very interesting about downloaded e-books and digital material.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/...buy-an-e-book/

I looked at the US Copyright and it is too legalistic for me , but I found their Q and A page and it easy to understand. A lot I didn't know.

http://copyright.gov/help/faq/

[daysailer55]

I for one am extremely tired of all the people ripping off my writing and posting it on their splogs (spam blogs). It directly steals money out of my pocket which I can never recover. Google also penalizes for duplicate content on the internet so they tank my articles Google rankings too.

Tracking down and enforcing the copyright on my articles takes loads of time. The sploggers don't care and will ignore your requests to take it down (they knew what they were doing when they stole it - mainly for backlinking purposes for one of their clients). Finding the splog hosting site takes time - lots of time. I'm not getting paid while writing and sending out DMCA's. I usually wait till I find 5 stolen articles by the same person. I file all DMCA's at once to their hoster and get their account suspended or cancelled. It's very hard to get people in Vietnam, Malayasia, China, Africa, and former Soviet Block countries to comply with copyright law.

Just because it is posted on the internet does not mean it is free.

How to avoid copyright infringement: Don't be lazy - take your own pictures of items for sale and do your own description writing.

[darklisruthven]

How to avoid copyright infringement: Don't be lazy - take your own pictures of items for sale and do your own description writing.

Definitly. I never trust buying from sellers who only use an obvious "stock" photo anyway, so thats another reason to do your own information. On the other side a couple of years ago, I had a spate of people buying things then complaining that I had sent them the item in the photo rather than some different edition.
They just assumed that every item photo was a "stock" photo- even though its pretty easy to tell whats a seller-taen photo and what is a stock photo. Once I added the disclaimer "The item you are bidding on is the item in the photograph" to my listings, the problems stopped instantly.

I wonder what will happen to pre-filled information if say on here or the other side you input, say, a book ISBN and it loads pre-filled information to your listing?