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Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Apr 12th 2005 1:39pm





How Dare You Share The Public Domain! You're Fired!

from the so-this-is-what-they-call-free-speech dept

It appears that, once again, the entertainment industry's efforts to educate everyone on their distorted view of intellectual property law is causing some problems. According to Copyfight, a radio host was recently fired for airing materials he had recorded off C-SPAN. C-SPAN, of course, makes no claim to the copyright on the audio they broadcast from Congress as it is, in fact, in the public domain. However, the radio station didn't seem to care, and assumed that it was a misuse of the material and promptly fired the radio host. And some wonder why there are people afraid of the ever-disappearing public domain.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    And I assume that host's first step was...

    identicon
    Michael Vilain, Apr 12th, 2005 @ 6:48pm

    was to file a wrongful termination complaint with his local labor board. Failing that, I'm sure an enterprising attorney is just ready to educate the company, a judge, and jury on the definition of "public domain"

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Re: And I assume that host's first step was...

    identicon
    acb, Apr 13th, 2005 @ 3:58am

    There is no such thing as "public domain". The idea that such a thing exists is Communist propaganda.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Chomper, Apr 13th, 2005 @ 6:31am

    No, we're just more afraid of stupid people like the managers of that radio station.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Re: And I assume that host's first step was...

    identicon
    muse, Apr 13th, 2005 @ 3:01pm

    For the person that thinks there is no such thing as "public domain", explain that concept to the 65 yr old retiree who just had his boyhood home "stolen" from him because the "public" needs more airport runway space (or highway lanes, for that matter) to connect their "domains" together.
    Capitalism and Democracy are opposites just as 'private' and 'public' pretend to be.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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