Another Court Recognizes Site Owners Aren't Liable For Site Comments

Captain Copyright Caught Copying His Entire Concept?

from the gee,-that-sounds-familiar dept

Tue, Jun 6th 2006 2:41am — Mike Masnick

The amazing adventures of Captain Copyright just keep getting more bizarre. This is the Canadian superhero (or, maybe not, since superheroes may be owned by Marvel) that is supposed to be ~~brainwashing~~ teaching young children about copyrights, mostly from the point of view of the big content companies who are more interested in protecting a business model than actually looking at the real issues related to copyright. It didn't take long, though, for Captain Copyright to come under all sorts of criticism for his ridiculous linking policy to his misuse of copyrighted material to his ridiculous ban on cutting and pasting any content from the site. While the folks behind Captain Copyright haven't publicly said anything while this discussion has gone on, they have been caught repeatedly fiddling with the content that is being made fun of online. Even worse though, is that some are pointing out that there's already a different Captain Copyright and (you guessed it), this new one might be infringing on the rights of the old one (so far, no one has confirmed if the folks behind the Canadian Captain Copyright cleared the rights with the Singaporean Captain Copyright). Wonder how they'll edit that on their site? Of course, they could use this as a chance to teach students how silly it is to overly protect some concepts, and how derivative works can be original in their own right without needing to pay everyone who came before. Somehow, that seems unlikely to happen.

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5 Comments

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Brad, 6 Jun 2006 @ 2:54am

No, they won't. They'll point to a non-european country, say "they stole it from us" complain how there are no copyrights overseas, and end it all with a pat on their lawyer's backs.

You'd think someone trying to push through support for copyright might have bothered to do a google search? I suppose "right" and "my way" are defined differently for a reason.
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Jezsik, 6 Jun 2006 @ 4:58am

Has anyone checked out who exactly is behind this site? I mean, someone is paying for this rubish ... I'm curious as to who.
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Loraan, 6 Jun 2006 @ 6:37am

"Superhero" owned by Marvel
BoingBoing suggests "underwear perverts" instead of "superhero" to avoid using Marvel's claimed term.
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Keybored, 6 Jun 2006 @ 8:15am

Re: "Superhero" owned by Marvel
Loraan that is hilarious!!

...I checked out the site, didn't really see too much one sidedness, thought it was okay.
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Sam Erb, 6 Jun 2006 @ 8:16am

ca whois lookup
If you go to a ca whois database you will get (such as http://whois.cira.ca/public):

Domain captaincopyright.ca
Registrant Name The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency Corp.
Registrar In2net Network Inc.
Renewal Date 2007/11/02
Date approved 2005/11/02
Last changed 2006/02/02
Description in development
Registrar Number 571481
Registrant Number 1350002
Domain Number 1350002
DNS1
pri1.dns.ca.telus.com
DNS2
pri2.dns.ca.telus.com

Administrative Contact
Name Judy Mark
Job Title
Postal Address The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency 1 Yonge Street Toronto ON M5E 1E5 Canada
Phone +1.4168681620
Fax +1.4168681621
Email itadmin@accesscopyright.ca

Technical Contact
Name Domain Hostmaster
Job Title
Postal Address Doteasy Technology Inc. Suite 210 - 3602 Gilmore Way Burnaby BC V5G 4W9 Canada
Phone (604) 434-4307
Fax (604) 608-6832
Email hostmaster@doteasy.com

If you take a trip to http://doteasy.com/Terms/index.cfm?T=TAC&bodyClass=pageCenter#13

you can view the "Prohibited Content" of doteasy.com which include:
-Content that infringes or violates any copyright, patent, trademark, service mark, trade name, trade secret, or other intellectual property right of any third party.
And at a strech:
-Content that is grossly offensive to the community, including blatant expressions for bigotry, prejudice, racism, hatred or excessive profanity, or to post any obscene, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectable material.
...you could make a case for this... but that would be limiting freedom of speech... and they wouldn't want that now... :D
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