More Copyright Information: The No Electronic Theft Act of 1997
Bill Clinton signed into law the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act after it was
passed unanimously by both houses of Congress. NET permits the Justice Department to pursue midemeanor or felony cases against those willfully participate in, but do not profit from, large-scale illegal distribution of copyrighted works. It also extended the statute of limitations and increased the punishments for copyright infringement. Enforcement of the law has mainly been targeted at software piracy, but the case of Jason Spatafore is more apropos to the issue in this newsgroup. He posted parts of one of the Star Wars prequels to the internet. He pled guilty to one count and received probation and a fine. Copyrights exist for a very good reason: to protect the economic value of one's creativity. Some authors permit others to use their works in various ways, some don't -- that is the copyright holder's right, not an infringer's. One does not have a right or duty to perform an "advertising service" for an author or performer by violating copyright laws and putting the author's or performer's copyrighted work(s) into the public domain. If one wants to advertise copyrighted works, one can obtain permission from the copyright holder, provide a review of the work(s), or link to a site which already has permission to present the copyrighted work(s) in whole or in part (as in this case, the publisher's website offers five sample recipes; the author's website also has sample recipes). http://www.cybercrime.gov/netsum.htm http://eric_goldman.tripod.com/articles/nljnetact.htm |
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