Watching Online

[JyV92]

AFAIK, there isn't anything illegal about [recording and sharing VHS tapes].

Recommended reading: 17 U.S.C. §§  106(1) and (3), 501(a)

What about fair use issues and what about the situation that no money is changing hands?

[JyV92]

Also, Jeopardy has never made a policy of allowing people to view old episodes through a pay wall. If they did, then it would be a serious issue here. But they don’t. You can buy a DVD of your own episode at a very high price, but that’s a different thing I think. In general, if I wanted to see a show from 2009 which didn’t have anyone particularly well known in it, there’s no way for me to get it from Jeopardy easily online. And even the Hulu/crackle/ Netflix/whatever streaming service has Jeopardy this week doesn’t make them available at large on demand.

[JyV92]

Also, Robert - I'm not a lawyer. But let's say Jeopardy does take action. They have to show damages and a loss to claim in what would be a civil suit, right? Unless this is something that falls under a District Attorney's or a DOJ purview.
And how have they suffered any loss if I share a regular season episode which is unavailable for viewing through their commercial ventures?

[AFRET CMS]

AFAIK, there isn't anything illegal about [recording and sharing VHS tapes].

Recommended reading: 17 U.S.C. §§  106(1) and (3), 501(a)

What about fair use issues and what about the situation that no money is changing hands?

Fair use applies to excerpts and short quotes for limited and specific uses. A teacher can copy a couple of paragraphs from Moby Dick for a class in creative writing, but could not photocopy the entire book to save his or her students from buying a copy -- even if no money changes hands.

Many copyright holders are fairly generous with permissions for limited public non-revenue use, but you still need need to ask. Our local Senior Center has a free movie night once a month, and the show ALWAYS is preceded by "Displayed with permission of XYZ."

[JyV92]

To a point.

Moby Dick is in public domain. If I have a book published say 1920 and I photocopy it and give it to my students (and even get reimbursed), the copyright on the 1920 edition is no longer valid, and the underlyhing material is not in copyright.

Who could sue me and how would they get any damages? the estate of Melville? they don't hold the copyright.

But waiting for Godot I think is still in copyright. ANd now the law is what - Robert, 50 years after death of the author? If there's a corporate author, it gets cloudy.

[opusthepenguin]

To a point.

Moby Dick is in public domain. If I have a book published say 1920 and I photocopy it and give it to my students (and even get reimbursed), the copyright on the 1920 edition is no longer valid, and the underlyhing material is not in copyright.

Who could sue me and how would they get any damages? the estate of Melville? they don't hold the copyright.

The text of Moby Dick is in the public domain, but is the typesetting? Would the publisher have a claim on lost revenue from that angle?

[talkingaway]

I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that rampant sharing of J! episodes online would devalue them when trying to sell them in syndication to, say, GSN. Granted, even the J! Archive can devalue that a little bit - if people want to bone up on old J! questions, it's much easier to use the archive than it is to wait a week to have just 5-20 episodes of clues, depending on how many different episodes they'd run a day.

There's also the "defend it or lose it" argument - that's why a lot of companies are aggressive when protecting copyrights. If you let one person encroach on your copyright, that may set a precedent for another person to encroach on it, perhaps in a more harmful manner. I know it's true of genericized trademarks - that's one reason that companies like Kleenex, Xerox, and Jacuzzi really want you to start using the terms "facial tissues", "copying machines", and "whirling hot tubs".

All that said, it's a little bit silly to me that in these days, almost everything isn't available on demand - even minor syndicated shows. Heck, wait a week if you want to placate affiliates and their advertisers. If I miss a J! episode because of preemption, I'd be more than happy to wait a week or two and watch it on the official J! site or via an official on demand option - but otherwise, I watch J! by DVRing my local affiliate (and, yes, blowing through their commercials anyway).

[triviawayne]

I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that rampant sharing of J! episodes online would devalue them when trying to sell them in syndication to, say, GSN. Granted, even the J! Archive can devalue that a little bit - if people want to bone up on old J! questions, it's much easier to use the archive than it is to wait a week to have just 5-20 episodes of clues, depending on how many different episodes they'd run a day.

There's also the "defend it or lose it" argument - that's why a lot of companies are aggressive when protecting copyrights. If you let one person encroach on your copyright, that may set a precedent for another person to encroach on it, perhaps in a more harmful manner. I know it's true of genericized trademarks - that's one reason that companies like Kleenex, Xerox, and Jacuzzi really want you to start using the terms "facial tissues", "copying machines", and "whirling hot tubs".

All that said, it's a little bit silly to me that in these days, almost everything isn't available on demand - even minor syndicated shows. Heck, wait a week if you want to placate affiliates and their advertisers. If I miss a J! episode because of preemption, I'd be more than happy to wait a week or two and watch it on the official J! site or via an official on demand option - but otherwise, I watch J! by DVRing my local affiliate (and, yes, blowing through their commercials anyway).

I would think the current syndication agreement doesn’t let Sony do it, but I’m hoping the next one allows Crackle or another way to stream.

[Robert K S]

There are a lot of questions here and I don't think it would be prudent to address any scenario in the specific. Suffice it to say, that which I will discuss comes with the standard disclaimer that it should not be relied on as legal advice, I'm not your lawyer, and nothing I say should be construed as creating a lawyer-client relationship.

As for a copyright plaintiff needing to prove damages, the Copyright Act provides for statutory damages (17 U.S.C. § 504) that can be up to $150,000 for each proven act of willful infringement. This is how people end up with $2 million judgments against them for sharing 24 songs on KaZaA (ultimately reduced to $220,000 under constitutional due process considerations). So, no, it is not required that actual damages be proven, just actual infringement.

The amount and substantiality of the portion used by the accused infringer in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole is a factor in determining whether the use was "fair" (17 U.S.C. § 107(3)), but it is a common misconception that any reproduction limited to a small portion of the work automatically qualifies for fair use, just as it is a common misconception that the reproduction must be limited to a small portion of the work in order to be fair use. Some fair uses can reproduce the whole work. Some reproductions are not fair use no matter how short.

The term of the copyright can be complicated, but in most cases it's the life of the author plus 70 years or 95 years from publication for a work-made-for-hire. A good rule of thumb is that you're not likely to outlive the copyright for any work created in your lifetime.

It is simply not true that "a lot of companies are aggressive when protecting copyrights" because of a "defend it or lose it" provision of the law. Such a provision applies to trademarks but not to copyrights or patents.

I seriously doubt that a court would find that, absent exceptional artistic merit to the layout, the typesetting of a public domain work would entail the amount of creative authorship necessary to secure a copyright on the new typesetting. See, e.g., page 3, "Layout and Design," of this Copyright Office circular (new layouts generally not copyrightable). Here's a 1992 law review article about the originality requirement.

Here's a short article from the DOJ about criminal copyright infringement.