Hi Neil, Ralph,
On 12/04/2014 16:52, Neil Brown wrote:
On 12 Apr 2014, at 16:32, Ralph Corderoy <[email protected]> wrote:
If I buy a tome from my corner bookshop, thinking it to be printed by
the publisher, and with a pittance going to the author, only to realise
once home that it's been knocked up behind the counter without
permission of the copyright holder, what recourse do I have in England?
Interesting question.
You might be able to argue that there is a Sale of Goods Act issue here, in
that the product is not of satisfactory quality but, if, to all intents and
purposes, the only difference between the official copy and the unofficial copy
was the lack of a licence to the publisher / printer, I have a feeling that
this might be a difficult case to bring. I'm not aware of any authority on this
point, but it is interesting.
It feels slightly different to the situation in which someone buys a book
bearing an autograph, and is told that the autograph is that of famous person x
when, in fact, it has been applied by the store owner out the back — aside from
advertising issues, I would suspect that this could be pursued criminally as
fraud. However, the similarity which is coming to mind is that, in both cases,
the purchaser derives value from the authenticity of the text / autograph, as
much if not more so than the physical pages, binding etc.
I'm wondering if there is some parallel with counterfeit software/ movie
dvds?
Consider if I buy a copy of MS Office, and it turns out not to have a
valid license code - there must be some recourse under the Sales of
Goods Act. In the GPL cases we normally discuss, the main difference I
see is that the GPL software only forms a component of the product
rather than the entire product, but it is still unlicensed software.
Potentially trading standards could also take an interest, but this
would require finding a trading standards officer that understood the
issue and wasn't busy dealing with easier to prosecute cases.
Joseph
