©ollectanea

I read the story of United States v. Chalupnik, that's right, a criminal prosecution for misdemeanor copyright infringement, for a dumpster diver who came up with thrown away, by their owner, CDs and who was prosecuted for selling them. Selling trashed CDs. OMG. Patry is appalled. So am I. Here's his retelling of the tale: The Patry Copyright Blog: The Crime of Selling Abandoned Copies.

The thing that so shocks Patry is that there is actual copyright infringement here, the necessary finding for the in depth discussion of how to measure the harm to the copyright owner (most of the discussion in the case is about the proper measurement of harm). Unlike most personal property, copyrights apparently can't be thrown away. The right to distribute to the public, even a copy that has been legally thrown in the dumpster, still entitles the copyright owner to damages if someone retrieves the owner's trashed disk and sells it.

This elevation of copyrights to the exalted pedestal they apparently stand upon is out of line with my sense of justice. This case reminds me of one of the stories Lessig told in Free Culture, the one about the relative legal statuses of handguns and circumvention equipment (p. 160):

The obvious point of Conrad’s cartoon is the weirdness of a world where guns are legal, despite the harm they can do, while VCRs (and circumvention technologies) are illegal. Flash: No one ever died from copyright circumvention. Yet the law bans circumvention technologies absolutely, despite the potential that they might do some good, but permits guns, despite the obvious and tragic harm they do.

If you want to see Conrad's cartoon, follow the link above to Lessig's book and the page number, but of course, if you haven't read this book, I highly recommend it. It's a real eye-opener.