from Amazon
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Copyright
There is an interesting site for card collectors, but I had to smile when I read this:
These images are provided free of charge, without a lot of hassles, so please respect my intellectual property, as well as that of the other site contributors. NOTE—All images and accompanying text on scanned cards are copyrighted by the respective companies that produced the sets. No ownership of this information is implied by the author of this site.
What intellectual property is the site owner asserting? You have copyright, trademark, and patents. He’s obviously asserting copyright, but to what exactly? Copyright applies to originality in expression of ideas, like an artist, musician, or writer. An ordered list of cards doesn’t qualify. The sweat of the brow is not a reason to assert copyright. A bigger problem is that the site owner himself may be infringing on the companies’ copyrights. He might be claiming fair use, in which case, anyone else wishing to display such copyrighted work on his site can do the same.
P.S. I’m not a lawyer, and only play one here.