Saturday, May 29, 2010

That's Gotta Hurt The Library Defense

So, the man behind HTMLComics.com is now being sued into forfeiting the domain names he used for his many acts of copyright infringement. I imagine this is just one of the many steps along the way when it comes to dealing with Gregory Hart.

But I find something funny and puzzling:

He told (copyright holders) he designed the website, and although he did not personally own the comics being displayed, he received digital image files from people who scanned the comics and posted them on his website, the lawsuit says.
I remember him saying it in previous statements across the 'net, but to state this directly to the publishers is to put it on record for any legal proceedings, basically. A library owns at least one legal copy of everything in their library. Any donation to a library involves giving up the legitimate copy of a work. If publishers had legally available electronic copies and those donating individuals gave the files to the site and then wiped them from their own computers, maybe the library argument would make a bit more sense, whether it worked or not.

(hat tip to Kevin Melrose over on Robot6 for the news link used)

2 comments:

  1. I actually work for an organization with "Digital Library" in the name. I think my colleagues are going to enjoy watching this guy flail around a bit.

    He may have wanted to Google "Google Books book scanning debacle" or see that Google now describes its Library Project as a card catalog, not a comprehensive collection of books.

    http://books.google.com/googlebooks/library.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Hux,

    Go to Occasional Superheroine. Apparently one needs a supersecret password in order to get on the list to read posts.

    Odd.

    ReplyDelete

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