LiveJournal is ganking my copyright?

[pyesetz]

Today, LiveJournal changed the profile page.  Now it says at the bottom that they own a copyright (presumptively, for all text on the page) and that they have retroactively owned said copyright since 1999.  Has anyone read the terms of service recently?  brad (back when he owned the company) said that people who post things own the stuff they post (which is why he was always a little iffy about the copyright on comments—are you gifting the recipient with your copyright or merely granting him permission to host your words on "his" page?).  Other social-networking sites have occasionally claimed ownership of user-contributed text, but generally they back down when they realize how much customers dislike that.  Remember customers?  You know, the animated wallets who keep the site running?

Thankfully there's nothing on the profile page that I really care about, except the dog-photo.  I own the copyright on that photo.  I inherited that copyright from my late brother, who captured this image of our family pet many years ago.  The image is "too small for copyright protection" in the United States, but what is its status in Russia, home of our new LJ overlords?

Comments

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

You gave me a WTF moment there. But it seems you must be joking.

"LiveJournal claims no ownership or control over any Content posted by its users. The author retains all patent, trademark, and copyright to all Content posted within available fields, and is responsible for protecting those rights, but is not entitled to the help of the LiveJournal staff in protecting such Content. The user posting any Content represents that it has all rights necessary to post such Content (and for LiveJournal to serve such Content) without violation of any intellectual property or other rights of third parties, or any laws or regulations;"

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

They cannot reserve a right they don't have in the first place. I wouldn't worry about it. Really, no TOS or EULA is truly enforcable as all the terms are dictated by one party and one party alone, which the courts ruled in Bragg Vs Linden Labs was "unconciousable". So if they try to enforce such a thing in the future, they'll be shocked to find that they cannot trump US law simply by adding a few words to a TOS.

[pyesetz]

LiveJournal's TOS is inconsistent with their copyright notice on my pages.  Lawyers like inconsistency because it gives them wiggle room to argue whichever angle is most beneficial to their client.

[pyesetz]

Rights don't actually come from law, but from cultural expectation.  The law merely codifies rights.  To gain a new right, you must first convince people that you deserve it (such as women's sufferage) then change the law to match.

While unilateral rights grabs are unconscionable, courts do not always rule so—such as the recent ruling from the Supremes that the fourth amendment does not prohibit the use of illegal evidence that was obtained "accidentally".  So if a cop searches your house without a warrent, all he has to do is say "Oopsie!" and then whatever he found is admissible in court.

Also, if you can convince people to act as if you have a right, then the fact that you can't enforce your right in court isn't such a big deal.  My old employer once bought a Syquest drive that came with a label on the drive door, claiming that inserting any disk not made by Syquest would terminate your licence to use the software inside the drive.  Can they do that?  Absolutely not!  But if you think they can and so you buy their overpriced disks, the fact that they can't actually take you to court is irrelevant.

I think it ought to be a crime for a lawyer to give his sign-off to a claim of right that is not legally enforceable, but the lawyers' guild disagrees with me.

SCO had absolutely no case whatsoever against IBM.  Did that stop them?  Did any of the lawyers involved in that blatant act of barratry get disbarred?  No.