An innacurate "disclaimer"

It's been brought to my attention that a certain Yahoo group whose pirating activities I have personally SEEN evidence of, has a new disclaimer that comes with every message.  I guess they THINK this is going to absolve them of their illegal activity.  Here's what it says:

DISCLAIMER: We do not claim to have made all of the items that we are sending to this list. They come from a wide variety of web sources & are therefore deemed to be public domain. As far as we are aware they are licensed for personal use only and are copyrighted by their respective owners. Each member is responsible for their own sends and owner of said group will not take responsibility for group members actions, may they be in question.  Any infringement of said copyright is non intentional & will be rectified upon notice & proof of ownership.

It's a nice try.  But here's a clue, people.

First, to the group members --

if it wasn't PERSONALLY created by YOU, or unless you have a license to distribute a designers works, IT IS ILLEGAL TO SHARE.  If you download a copyrighted work from anyone other than the creator or a person with a distribution license, you are also guilty of piracy.

To the group leaders and moderators:

The whole point of a moderator is to observe and moderate the actions of a group.  You see every message that is sent.  If you allow a member to share the works of a designer that is clearly not their own work, by not putting an immediate stop to it, you are tolerating and even encouraging the activity.  When the zipped shared files have a DESIGNER'S NAME clearly in the file, does that not clue you in that maybe it's a pirated copy?  Worse yet, the links that hotlink to the designer's site and steal their bandwidth.  You shouldn't wait for a designer to be notified of the infringement and for them to personally contact you to resolve the issue.  It should be resolved IMMEDIATELY when a message is sent, and that group member should be given a warning.  If you allow pirating in your group you are just as guilty as the ones pirating.

Here's more from Fhung:

"As far as we are aware they are licensed for personal use only and are copyrighted by their respective owners."
That's right. You are AWARE that they are copyrighted and licensed for personal use only. Know what these mean? It means NO BODY has the right to re-distribute them in ANY way without expressed permission by the owners! It means sharing it with other people be it by emails or over a group is WRONG and a VIOLATION to the copyrights law!

"They come from a wide variety of web sources & are therefore deemed to be public domain."
WRONG again.  Educate yourself with copyrights knowledge. Get this from the US Govt. Copyrights site:

Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution. Anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages up to $30,000 for each work infringed and, if willful infringement is proven by the copyright owner, that amount may be increased up to $150, 000 for each work infringed. In addition, an infringer of a work may also be liable for the attorney's fees incurred by the copyright owner to enforce his or her rights.   Whether or not a particular work is being made available under the authority of the copyright owner is a question of fact. But since any original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium (including a computer file) is protected by federal copyright law upon creation,in the absence of clear information to the contrary, most works may be assumed to be protected by federal copyright law.

Being available from the web doesn't mean they're in public domain - therefore they are not necessarily copyright free.  Not everything on a website is free for the taking! Freely obtained does not mean free to or redistribute!

Comments

[GBGames]

While I agree that the disclaimer is pretty flimsy as a defense ("They come from a wide variety of web sources & are therefore deemed to be public domain. As far as we are aware they are licensed for personal use only and are copyrighted by their respective owners" seems contradictory to me), I think that you should clarify that it is only illegal to share freely available content if the author doesn't give you permission to share it. Freeware and shareware usually says in the terms of use that you are free to redistribute at least some parts.

[Lucy]

You are NEVER to assume that anything is permissible to share on the web ever. YOu didn't make it then you better make the move to ask permission. NEVER ASSUME anything!
Nothing needs claification. Thieves just need to get it through their heads that "if you did not create it, it is not yours to do with as you please. If you want to do something, how about taking the time to ask permission first"
Most problems can be resolved with a simple kind asking permission email. How hard is that to do? NOT hard at all.

[hollyann]

It's sometimes really hard and upsetting when you want to use something and every contact for the site bounces or if you do get thru, you get ignored. You send and re-send and they ignore you. I was a victim of piracy when I used an image I had purchased from a site for $4.95, and got permission from that girl to use it in digital scrapbooking as long as it was offered as a freebie - no profit. Only to find out later she stole it from PC Crafter's website and illegally gave me permission to use it. It was the whole foundation of my kit, so parts of the kit had to be pulled. Not to mention the nasty emails from a couple of readers and then the owner of PC Crafter. PC Crafter in no way apologized to me for the nastiness after I had pulled the image from my kit and explained to her where I got it from. I even had asked for permission to use the bear - no repsonse. With a heavy heart, not wanting to have PC Crafter make a profit after being so mean to me in all of this, I still sent my readers to her site to purchase the bear if they wanted it. I still used the bear in my own layout. I feel after all of this I earned the right to use it for personal use in my layout. No one from PCC said I couldn't still use the image for my own webpages and layouts. Pay Pal couldn't help me in locating this girl for PCC because she had closed her account with them and for privacy reasons couldn't give me anymore information. Not sure if PCC followed up with Pay Pal. Like I said, once I sent them all the proof, I got ignored.

Be cautious out there designers! Keep all email permissions you get FOREVER. And any other identifying information on the person who gave you permission.