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BGonline.org Forums
what is copyrightable?
Posted By: Albert Steg In Response To: what is copyrightable? (Stick)
Date: Friday, 10 July 2015, at 11:43 p.m.
Ah! That makes sense. Just showing off my blithe ignorance of major online backgammon resources that I should be subscribing to.
To shuttle back over to the legal-eagle angle, the copyright question should also be weighed from a 'damages' angle. The question for the copyright holder isn't just "Will we win?" but "What will we win?" While everything is automatically copyrighted by being fixed in physical form (smudged on toilet paper would count), complainants only stand to win 'actual damages' unless they have taken the extra step of affirmatively registering their copyright with the government, in which they also become eligible for 'statutory damages' -- which can be big ($150K) in the case of really egregious "willful infringement" -- or a tiny $200 for "innocent" infringements.
So, if Jeremy was found guilty of infringing in this case, the big questions would be "what did it cost Gammon Village" and "How much did Jeremy profit?" Both would be recovered by a successful lawsuit. The latter is zero, since Jeremy hasn't earned any revenue from his freely disseminated article. So, GV would need to demonstrate how much revenue they were deprived of due to the publication of Jeremy's article. A reasonable approach might be to quantify the interest in Stick's article as a % of GV's total content and multiply that by the average revenues brought in by the site over the few years before Jeremy's article was made available.
It should go without saying: the big winners here would be the lawyers.
Jeremy might also be in a position to claim that the free dissemination of his article, far from depriving GV of revenue, actually enhanced it. In linking to Stick's article, he is driving readers to the GV site! I think one really productive gesture Jeremy might make to acknowledge Stick's work and the site that generated it, is to add a few enthusiastic sentences promoting GV or even a logo linking to that site.
I just clicked through to GV myself and was surprised to discover I set up an account there years ago for some reason I don't even recall.
Only $125 for a lifetime membership? Done! I've given up more in a single badly played game in the box.
Albert
PS: I'm not any more of a lawyer than Marty is -- most of my understanding comes from some sessions on copyright law with regard to moving-image materials in my film preservation studies.
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