Asking the government to act

In 2007, the Computer and Communications Industry Association decided to stir the pot a bit on such copyright notices. CCIA's in-house lawyer Matt Schruers drafted a complaint and sent it along to the Federal Trade Commission, arguing that over-broad copyright warnings violated Section 5 ofnfl throwback jerseys
the FTC Act by "misrepresenting consumers' rights to use copyrighted works and by threatening sanctions for lawful uses of those copyrighted works."

Groups representing 139,000 US libraries soon supported the complaint.

Those paid by big copyright holders to argue for their positions found CCIA's complaint unfounded. Patrick Ross, who heads the Copyright Alliance, went to the CCIA press conference announcing the complaint. His response: "CCIA President Ed Black ridiculed a number of copyright warnings—you know the type, they say unauthorized use could result in fines or jail. Ed says the warnings don’t stipulate fair use. Well, using the word 'unauthorized' would seem to address that, because fair use under Sec. 107 of the Copyright Act would be authorized."

This argument is true only in the broadest sense: that fair use is indeed written into copyright law. But fair use does not "authorize" particular uses of works and can only be decided on an after-the-fact basis by a judge. No permission in advance is even possible on fair use; the best one can get is good advice from a lawyer.

As the Copyright Office itself states, "the distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission... The Copyright Office can neither determine if a certain use may be considered fair nor advise on possible copyright violations. If there is any doubt, it is advisable to consult an attorney." More important, however, this argument doesn't even apply to some of the most common copyright notices. It applies to the "FBI warning" found on many movies, but the NFL's own notice is unambiguous: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited."

Baseball is just as clear: "This copyrighted telecast is presented by authority of the Office of the Commissioner ofnfl jerseys
Baseball. It may not be reproduced or retransmitted in any form, and the accounts and descriptions of this game may not be disseminated, without express written consent."

Both are quite obviously ridiculous—descriptions of baseball and football games may in fact be disseminated without written consent (and are every day around the water cooler and in newspapers and in Wikipedia).

And the less said about books, the better; many say things like, "no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or in any means... without permission in writing from the publisher." Again, not true. While plenty of sites, including Ars, covered the CCIA complaint, it never went anywhere. What happened to it? We checked in with Schruers, who still works for CCIA, and he passed along the FTC's response from December 6, 2007.

In a six-page letter, the FTC declined to move forward on an investigation because it determined that the omissions in such warnings were not "material to consumers." (In comparison, Sony BMG's misguided decision to slap rootkit-style DRM on audio CDs and then not tell consumers was material, and it did result in an FTC consent order.)

In the agency's view, no one would see such warnings and actually believe them as complete statements of their own rights. "We do not have a sufficient basis to conclude that consumers would view those brief warnings as complete statements of their rights with respect to the works," the letter said.

Still, there was some comfort to CCIA. While FTC declined to act, they did "encourage" copyright owners to "be accurate in their characterizations ofcheap nfl jerseys
their rights." If they post misleading information for too long, Bad Things could happen:

"If consumers routinely confront exaggerated and inaccurate copyright warnings they may tend to disregard them altogether, to the detriment of consumers and copyright owners alike."