Protecting Copyright Often Seems To Fly In The Face Of Good Business

from the bingo dept

Dave Title recently had a post on his My Media Musings blog, where he talks about a student "lip dub" music video, which he notes almost certainly violates copyright law, but that it would be really dumb for the copyright holder (in this case, whoever holds the copyright on music by the Black-Eyed Peas) to enforce. Then Title busts out a line that should be repeated often:
Protecting a copyright often seems to fly in the face of good business.
Bingo. This is an argument we've been making for over a decade. There are many in both business and law who seem to assume that because you can enforce a right, it means that it always makes business sense to enforce that right. And yet, as we see over and over and over again, it's quite often not the case at all. In an awful lot of cases, very strong arguments can be made that the reverse is true and that protecting your copyright actually does a lot more damage than good.
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Filed Under: business, copyright


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  1. icon
    Richard (profile), 7 Oct 2009 @ 3:27am

    Who makes the decision

    Probably these decisions are overly influenced by the legal department. It may not make business sense for the form overall - but it makes "business sense" for the legal department.

    Firms should set their policies such that

    "Total losses from Patent/copyright Infringment"= Legal Costs

    Anything else is clearly non-optimal.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Oct 2009 @ 4:08am

    copyright appears to be the right to copy online

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    David Canton, 7 Oct 2009 @ 4:35am

    protecting copyright vs good business

    That is absolutely correct. There are many legal issues where I view our jobs as lawyers is to put clients in the best legal position they can be in - which then gives them the most options from a business perspective.

    Another example is having e-commerce sites set up so if there is an error (such as monitor mistakenly advertised for $1.99 instead of $199.) the vendor can refuse to sell it for that price to those who have ordered and paid. At least that gives the vendor the option to decide from a business perspective whether it wants to refuse the sales - or allow the sales as a gesture of good will and promotion.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    ..., 7 Oct 2009 @ 5:05am

    Re: protecting copyright vs good business

    Bad example.
    That is not similar in any way to the topic at hand.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    ..., 7 Oct 2009 @ 5:06am

    Re:

    It has nothing to do with online, but you can probably patent the online part of it.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 7 Oct 2009 @ 7:18am

    Lobbying

    But of course it is good business sense to do what the laws allow. They're the ones that paid the lobbyists and politicians to write the laws!
    /sarcasm

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    DS, 7 Oct 2009 @ 8:53am

    Ugh

    Well, there's on copyright on the concept of bad music, that's for sure.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 7 Oct 2009 @ 9:29am

    Re: Lobbying

    "But of course it is good business sense to do what the laws allow."

    And that's the problem with having lawyers make business decisions.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Thomas, 7 Oct 2009 @ 10:36am

    Good Business sense...

    is an oxymoron in today's world.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Oct 2009 @ 3:26pm

    Protecting a copyright often seems to fly in the face of good business.

    More like protecting a copyright seems to go against people who want everything for nothing.

    I am not entirely sure how everything for nothing would be considered good business.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. icon
    another mike (profile), 7 Oct 2009 @ 4:17pm

    remember scrabulous

    I thought we already coined a term for this? When protecting your legal rights is a bad business decision. We were calling it the Scrabulous Effect in honor of that little Facebook game that Hasbro tried to crush but ended up having it blow up in their face.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2009 @ 9:24am

    Re:

    Look, a straw man. Stay away from fire.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 9 Oct 2009 @ 10:00pm

    Re:

    Try telling that to a best buy or circuit city that just made bank for the entire year because they drew in huge crowd with near-giveaways on 'black friday'

    link to this | view in thread ]


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