Quentin Tarantino is suing Gawker for posting a link to the script of his film | Hacker News Reader

Quentin Tarantino is suing Gawker for posting a link to the script of his film

bbc.co.uk

40 pointsb3n46 comments

Here's a link to the Gawker post: http://defamer.gawker.com/here-are-plot-details-from-quentin...

and in case it gets taken down, here is the script they link to: https://anonfiles.com/file/ba77fe6f664d451a4725fbcca0846f67

I'm glad to see Gawker fighting this instead of being intimidated by Tarantino's lawyers.

It seems to me Tarantino's case is not _obviously_ without merit, unless you reject the idea of copyright altogether.

I'm still not sure what the legal rationale is for treating link publication as copyright violation. When you publish a link, you are not copying anything, the person following the link is.

By analogy, a person who told people that Tarantino's script was under a box behind a grocery store would be violating copyright.

First encouraging the copyright infringement, then profiting from it, does not speak in Gawker's favour.

In my (European) country a kid was convicted and fined for copyright infringement for maintaining a list of links to pirated movies. It all depends on details and interpretations, and the analogy and logic you provide may not apply in a court of law.

I think the biggest deal is the profit aspect of the situation. If there was a person earning money for every person that he tells where Tarantino's script (in some fashion analogous to Gawker's add revenue from site hits) is your analogy sounds a lot worse. Publishing that link wasn't any kind of public service, they were using Tarantino's unreleased work to make a profit and he has grounds to sue for that.

But is it illegal, or is this simply a civil thing?

As the law stands it looks like it is illegal (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html section 3 subsection D [or search for link]). It looks like the linker is only protected if they don't have knowledge that the link is infringement and doesn't receive any financial benefit from the action.

There is a fine line. The argument often goes that linking for informations sake is fine.

However, the whole post is written in a fashion that shows how proud Gawker is of their scoop and that they can show the script. This would mean that the encourage others to follow and download it, which is - without question - copyright infringement. An argument can be made that encouraging people to follow a link that _you definitely know_ is infringing copyright is illegal.

If you rejected the idea of copyright don't you therefore also reject the idea of open source licenses (aren't all software licenses based on the idea of copyright)?

Civil Law systems (e.g. much of continental Europe) make no distinction between licences and contracts, so the licences would still be enforceable under contract law in the absence of copyright law. This of course leaves the glaring exceptions of Common Law systems, such as the US, UK, India and Australia. IANAL, so I have no idea if it would be feasible to rewrite e.g. the GPL to work under Common Law contract law.

IANAL either (although married to one!) - what about the matter of consideration as a requirement for a contract in some jurisdictions (although apparently not my native Scotland).

i.e. Might there not be a requirement to pay a nominal fee to enter into a contract-based "license" in some places? Which would seem odd.... :-)

  It can take the form of money, physical objects, services, promised actions, abstinence from a future action, and much more. [1]

Sounds like the things GPL (etc) prohibit/promise themselves might count.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration

Yes, but the only reason you need a license is because copyright law prevents you from copying the work without one. Without copyright, you don't need to subscribe to any license or contract to copy and redistribute the work.

Under US law, consideration has long been a specter haunting the enforceability of open source licenses--specifically enforcement by the user against the copyright holder.

Here's the problem: If the copyright holder gains nothing in the transaction that the license governs, then the license is not an enforceable contract. Thus, the user cannot enforce the terms of the license against the copyright holder. The copyright holder could, for example, revoke the license at any time and demand everyone stop using the open source software.

I've always wondered: Could an open source license create consideration by referring to the copyright holder's business or career interest in the software enjoying widespread use and acclaim? As a software developer, I could stand to gain financially from the success of my open source project. For example, I could leverage my notoriety into a well-compensated position. Or I could hire myself out as a consultant to users of the open source software. Or I could start a business, and piggyback off the prominence of the open source software to promote my business.

There are also theories whereby promissory estoppel would protect users against copyright holders. I won't comment on these theories except to say that they're pretty much untested.

This area of law is mostly unsettled. There's far too little case law for anyone to make a definitive pronouncement yet.

I reject copyright because I believe users should be able to modify their software and redistribute their improvements. Open source licenses are a tool I employ to give more users that right, not an end in themselves.

Software and a film script are a bit different though. If source becomes available, anyone can compile and use it. I'm not sure it's fair to the developer if he wrote that code with the intention of selling it and now it's available for free, but at least it's still available. Producing a movie, on the other hand, is well outside of most people's financial capability, and this leak might prevent people who would be capable of turning the script into a film from doing so.

I think even small groups of people with limited resources will find interesting, creative things to with a well-written film script. And as equipment becomes cheaper this will become much more so - compare with how much more effective the home music studio has become over the last few years.

Open source licenses are a form of copyright.

Why is copyright bad? Because it makes it harder for people to improve their stuff and share those improvements, or write new works based on existing works.

Why are open source licenses good? Because they make it easier for people to improve their stuff and share those improvements, or write new works based on existing works.

Also you can think of it just the opposite:

Copyright incentivizes many authors to undertake works they normally might not due to the protections copyright provides. Many authors (who freely publish their books under copyright) probably wouldn't be able to spend 3 years researching and writing a book if they weren't able to get advance money from their publisher.

One is free to use a liberal license or a more restrictive license, both are out there and available to creators.

Isn’t it obvious why a director would be pissed off by his script getting public before the movie is released? Now why act like a jerk and help spreading the script? This doesn’t have to be a philosophical debate, it’s just common courtesy.

It looks like both anonfiles.com and scribd.com have taken the script down. Good on them at least.

Intimidated? And rightly bloody so.

Posting the script to the film is clearly not "making people aware of news and information about which they are curious".

The US has had rulings that linking can itself be illegal, notably in Universal v. Reimerdes and Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry.

The lawsuit is without merit, but it's a bummer that QT is considering dropping the film altogether:

http://www.deadline.com/2014/01/quentin-tarantino-hateful-ei...

It sounds like a good concept, and hopefully a better homage to spaghetti Westerns than Django was. I think it's amusingly ironic that he knows for sure that Tim Roth isn't the betrayer, given Roth's history with QT (mild spoiler).

Also worth noting in that Deadline piece: the agency that QT accuses of dispersing the script counters that QT did not do the basic precautionary step of watermarking the script, implying that QT wanted it to be leaked without repercussion (suing Gawker is definitely a way to bring notoriety to the project, though QT has enough notoriety to not resort to stunts)

Personally I don't see how referencing Roth's history with QT is a spoiler, but isn't it kind of assumed that you should warn of a spoiler before the reader has already, you know... read it?

Gawker is profiting from Tarantino's work: every page view is more advertising revenue.

Anyone counted the "homages" yet? ...

I wish there would be another Jackie Brown.

I love this because it should decide once and for all whether linking to "infringing content" is actually a crime or not. Right now it's already being treated like one, so the downside can't be any worse. But the upside could be that MPAA & friends can't get away with using DMCA to takedown links to infringing content anymore, which means Google will be able to reject all the mass-takedown of links in its search engine, too.

>I love this because it should decide once and for all whether linking to "infringing content" is actually a crime or not.

That's already been decided, multitudes of times over many cases. Adding indirection to infringing material does not shield you from liability.

Soooo...HN (or whoever posted this) is now also infringing, since it's just more indirection? And anyone now linking to HN is also infringing? I think that eventually encompasses the whole of WWW.

Be serious. Courts usually take a very pragmatic view on this and take intent and context into account. HN linking to the Gawker story is seen differently than piratebay posting magnet links, even though the level of indirection is higher in the latter case.

But you find the exact same links that Gawker posted in this very thread.

Does that make HN guilty of copyright infringement or not?

From the POV of a court, bits are coloured [0]. Just because two links are exactly equal, it does not mean that either both of them infringe or both don't.

[0] http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

That link was super interesting. I found this concept frustratingly hard to explain to people, so I think I'll try this explanation next time.

I think (and the article also suggests) that it is especially hard to explain to people who come from a CS background. We often get too caught up in our own way of seeing the world that does not, for better or worse, correspond to how most people see it.

You should read up on DMCA Safe Harbor. It's a very important concept that you should understand.

To answer your question, no.

Did you consider taking that position to its logical end before proposing it?

It doesn't look to me like macspoofing is proposing this- just saying it's what the courts have decided.

Why should I? Courts don't. As I wrote in another post, courts have a more pragmatic view than you give them credit for and take intent and context into account. This is why torrent files and magnet links and other levels of indirection won't shield piratebay and other such sites from liability, and also why HN linking to a Gawker story (which links to copyrighted material) isn't going to cause problems for HN.

Sorry, sarcasm detector fail

Though experiment: if someone writes on his blog, "this guy's house is at this address, and he has valuables there you can get", can he be sued?

I'm sure it can, but it is all about context.

Kids are getting arrested for online bullying which has driven other kids to commit suicide, so just because something is online that could incite crime doesn't give you a pass.

IANAL and this is a legit question but isn't this inciting lawless behaviour and thus not protected speech?

As another reply said, context is everything. To elaborate:

If you phrase it exactly as you said, I can imagine a lawsuit being successful. The comment--specifically, the phrase "you can get"--evidences a reckless disregard for the possible consequences. Arguably, a break-in is a reasonably foreseeable consequence. One might even argue that the commenter intended to cause a break-in.

I suspect there could be multiple theories of liability here, with all or most being torts. Naturally, the available causes of action would be a function of whether anybody acted on the suggestion and broke into the house.

On the other hand, if you phrased it differently, you might be safe. For example, it seems grossly unjust to punish expression along the lines of: "John Smith is internationally famous for the extensive Picasso collection in his home gallery." Almost any fact could conceivably be abused in the wrong hands. If a speaker were unconditionally liable for any subsequent abuse of his/her speech, regardless of the character or intent of the speech, nearly all factual speech would entail extremely burdensome legal risks.

So what determines whether a public comment about someone's valuables is actionable? Again, context. What did you say about the valuables? (Did you suggest stealing them?) Where was the comment published? (Was it on a burglary forum?) What was said elsewhere in the same article or conversation? (Was it part of a discussion about how to become a better burglar?) These are not necessarily the only factors. They're just examples of the types of factors a court might consider.

Check out Eugene Volokh's excellent article on this fascinating topic:

http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/facilitating.pdf

Go quentin!

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