Copyfraud: Poisoning The Public Domain

The public domain is the greatest resource in human history: eventually all knowledge will become part of it. Its riches serve all mankind, but it faces a new threat. Vast libraries of public domain works are being plundered by claims of "copyright". It's called copyfraud, and we'll discover how large corporations like Google, Yahoo, and Amazon have structured their businesses to assist it and profit from it.

theregister.co.uk • 6.27.09 @3:15AM

Hayden Frost while this is very interesting and dirty, there's nothing that i can think of that's actually illegal. there is no affirmative "fair use right" -- it's only a defense to infringement. if a book is in the public domain, and jimmy has the last copy left in the world, there's absolutely nothing you can legally do to prevent him from destroying that book. in other words, if some publisher has a "rare" copy of a public domain work, and you want just want a digital copy of it, the publisher is completely allowed to demand $300. however, there's nearly nothing he can do to prevent you from making and distributing more copies of that book. 6.27.09 @3:16AM