Great points Liugeaux, I would like to point out that anything of legal nature is job security for a lawyer. I think there are plenty lawyers who go through the motions just to pay the mortgage. Whether they like to sue or not only holds so much merit. The firm decides what course of action to take based on clients wishes. This isn't personal, it's business. The comics industry, over time, has had plenty of issues arise and precedents set based on this thread's topic. One could say there is a history of beating up the little guy.
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Originally Posted by liugeaux
(Post 1233106)
To print it for personal use is legal, printing and selling it for a profit is definitely not legal. But printing something that was initially free, to make it available to more people and not turning a profit is more of a grey area.
In the end, it really depends on the copyright holder's stance on the issue.
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Not to be anything more than devil's advocate and make sure anyone and everyone knows what this is, the last comment above is the most important. Easily enough, and he may have already seen this, NateCM would probably be the best person to discern what the lawyers would and wouldn't do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by liugeaux
(Post 1234369)
The thing about Lawyers is they don't like to sue people that don't have money. The only real exception is when the recording industry thought they would get hundreds of thousands of dollars out of soccer mom's.
I would assume that most people on this board don't have, "let's go after that guy", kinds of money. Also, while yes, Viacom does own the rights to all characters and art and blah blah blah. The original release was offered free of charge, and currently no party, Laird nor Viacom, is attempting to net a profit from the sale of the book.
That's where the fat Grey area comes in. I know for a fact, that if this was available for purchase somewhere this thread wouldn't be happening and we would all be buying a legit release. This isn't gross aggressive, business hurting copyright infringement. The amount of people this would benefit is so small that it would hardly be worth cease and desist letter the paralegals will draw up.
In summary, can they sue? Probably. Will they sue? Not a chance. Besides, most of the legal responsibility would fall on the printing house that you were to get to do the print run. Absolute worst case scenario, you get a C&D and then we can just take the release underground by only communicating through trusted email accounts.
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In summary, Viacom absolutely has the right to C&D and that's 99.9% the greatest probability. A good point you made was the printing house. Though I've never dealt with mass publication, I imagine there is paperwork required when requesting printed material be made that may cover any potential infringement issues, fine print type stuff ya know. Azrael would best be suited to answer that as it would be his printer. I can't speak to his previous print counts or whether this potential count would significantly greater. I would say it's a very good idea some of these issues and concerns be mitigated before moving forward. That's the CYA that really needs attention paid to it. Just as much as the printer could be held liable, the printer could pass the buck along, or counter claim Azrael for not making the copyright issues known before hand.
My point is:
Yes it's all grey and circumstantial, yes more likely than not there will be no repercussions, yes we are over-thinking this WAY TOO MUCH. It's not my intention to be Debbie Downer, I would love to see this happen if PL forwent it. I just operate better knowing as much as possible, at the cost of stress..., and feel all parties involved would benefit from this sort of thing being publicly discussed. Even though it's quite unlikely to ever go that far, if this were to actually come about, everybody who paid for a comic would assume partial liability too. And considering there would be a good amount of electronic transactions that would act completely against our favor, that is something to consider. These are no longer the days of Zap Comix or Vaughn Bode. The "underground" is different and much less forgiving.
Snail mailing MO's would most likely be the smartest thing...
P.S. Roseangelo makes quite the valid point too. The
RESOLUTION is not great, but C'est la vie...
