Comment by JakeAl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JakeAl | Hacker News Reader

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They are indeed making copies in the strictest sense, but the real problem is if the copyright holders don't enforce their copyrights in the strictest sense they can forfeit their copyright. For example, if I let the public use an image copyrighted by me long enough without strict guidelines and I try to take someone to court, the court can say yes well you let the horse out of the barn and now you are trying to put it back in after it's everywhere. The solution is always licensing, and licenses can be free. So IA and the copyright holders instead of playing hard lawyer ball can cooperate; the copyright holder can grant them a free license for works that would otherwise not be getting exposure of make them money which they can revoke at any time should they decide to try and make money off of a work again. They can also provide strict usage guidelines in that license for IA as well as IA's users so it's clear this is meant for a narrow use and using it outside those guidelines can result in legal/financial penalties. To me this is a win-win because it could open the door for companies like Spotify to subsequently license works that gain popularity from exposure for a fee.

As far as I can tell, in the United States you cannot lose your copyright, even if you don't defend it at all.

A cursory glance suggests that BYU asserts the opposite (see Myth #11) https://copyright.byu.edu/copyright-myths.

> suggests that BYU asserts the opposite

The page you've linked says: "Copyright protection is effectively never lost, unless explicitly given away or the copyright has expired. However, if you do not actively defend your copyright, there may be broader unauthorized uses than you would like."

How on earth did you read that and come to the conclusion that BYU 'asserts (sic) the opposite' ?

Suppose a copyright holder knows people are infringing their copyright and chooses to turn a blind eye to it - and then after many years of doing this, suddenly decides to assert its rights and sue the infringers (maybe the copyright has been acquired by a new owner who is desperate to make money from it, somehow, anyhow.) Is it possible that the defendants might raise estoppel as a defence? Or argue that the copyright holders failure to act on the infringement when it was widespread public knowledge constituted an implicit license?

I’m not saying those defences would actually work. Indeed, my non-lawyer gut-feel is they probably wouldn’t. But now I’m wondering if anyone has ever tried those arguments? And if nobody has ever tried them, I think there remains a chance they might succeed, even if that chance is small. And if they ever did succeed, that would effectively amount to “defend it or lose it”, although the owner technically would not have lost the copyright, just (some of) their ability to sue infringers.

Trademarks require enforcement (as others have noted), copyrights do not.

There is the doctrine of laches which might be applied in general to an excessive delay in asserting an equitable right, but there is no failure-of-defence loss of copyright under US or generally Berne Convention statutes globally. I've most frequently seen laches raised in the context of patent enforcement. <https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/laches>

This is rampantly false and misleading information.

My understanding is that trademarks require enforcement (i.e. why we can 'xerox' a page) but copyright is more vague and does not require immediate action?

All sound like great reasons to not license and flout the law.

Just a side note/addendum, I worked with entertainment lawyers A LOT in the early days of the web on copyrighted images and while they start from a rigorous position what one simply has to do is find out what the guidelines are that alleviate any issues. For example, with an image or a video clip it often only requires explicit attribution (so every image at the bottom must carry the legal/copyright line, and likewise with a video clip) to satisfy the lawyers. They almost never tell you that, though. That's a tip for YouTubers who get copystruck for movie clips. Run the copyright/legal line at the bottom of every clip while they are on screen and you are covered 99% of the time. That's why when you watch the news and they show a clip you see the line at the bottom of the clip. They know what the legal requirements are.

Your two responses in this thread are awful: awfully confident while awfully misinformed. Even calling them misleading would be an understatement. You are spreading outright bad information here. Please stop.

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