At 2:49 PM -0600 1/11/09, Noel Stoutenburg wrote:
Christopher Smith wrote:
I have seen many times companies putting out
reprints of century or centuries-old
manuscripts with no changes except for the
strongly-worded copyright notice threatening to
torture your first-born if you so much as think
about making a copy. There has to be a law
against fraudulent copyright notices, isn't
there?
There is, in the United States. 17 USC ยง 506 c provides
(c) * Fraudulent Copyright Notice.- * Any
person who, with fraudulent intent, places on
any article a notice of copyright or words of
the same purport that such person knows to be
false, or who, with fraudulent intent, publicly
distributes or imports for public distribution
any article bearing such notice or words that
such person knows to be false, shall be fined
not more than $2,500.
When I did a cursory review of case law some
years back, I could find no evidence that it had
ever been used.
That trumped us all, Noel!! Great research.
And of course if it ever WERE to be used, it
would very likely follow other copyright
infringement law (or would it?) under which the
penalty applies to each separate use, which would
mean every copy of such a work distributed. At
least that would probably be how a prosecutor
would argue. A defense attorney would certainly
argue otherwise.
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[email protected])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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