discuss: EIN advantages (was" LDP can't get non-profit status ...)
Subject:
Re: [discuss] EIN advantages (was" LDP can't get non-profit status ...)
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
19 Apr 2007 21:46:04 -0000
Message-Id: <20070419214601.GK18750@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting David Lawyer ####@####.####
[What's the liability concern?]
> Suppose that someone gets a copy of SCO documentation, claims it's a
> HOWTO and gets it on our websites. Then SCO sues LDP for billions of
> dollars like they did IBM. They might try to claim that everyone on
> our mailing list is a defendant. The guilty party is really the one
> who got it from SCO and claimed it to be a HOWTO but SCO could claim
> that LDP is to blame.
1. You immediately file with the court a "motion to drop" LDP personnel
as [co-]defendants, pointing out their lack of involvement in the
alleged copyright infringement, and given LDP's good-faith reliance on
the submitter's implied claim of title.
2. SCO (what remains of it) would actually have vanishingly little
motive to attempt such a lawsuit. Lawsuits cost money; they therefore
tend to be brought in matters where significant dollars are at stake.
3. In your hypothetical, SCO would be far, far more likely to, instead,
simply send a 17 USC ยง512(c)(3) takedown notice (that's DMCA) -- with
which LDP would then comply by removing the offending materials. Done.
(Why bring civil litigation when you can just send an e-mail?)
4. If LDP immediately removed the allegedly infringing materials upon
request, in order to then prevail in copyright litigation against LDP and
win monetary damages, SCO would have to show:
(a) that it had registered the copyright on that documentation with the
Library of Congress in a timely fashion. (This is vanishingly unlikely.)
(b) that it had suffered actual monetary damanges from the infringement.
Absent those two conditions[1], a copyright lawsuit can accomplish only
forcing the alleged infringement to cease -- which would be stupid and
pointless because LDP would have already done so.
[1] Please also see: http://www.catb.org/~esr/Licensing-HOWTO.html
