Colombian Grad Student Finally Cleared Of Criminal Charges For Posting Academic Article Online
from the copyright-gone-mad dept
Three years ago, we brought you the horrifying story of Diego Gomez, a grad student in Colombia. While working on his own research, he relied on and cited a paper that he couldn't find anywhere else online. As was common practice in Colombia, Gomez uploaded that paper to Scribd so that others could follow his own work and understand his citation. As a research practice, this is a really good idea. Under copyright law, however, it gets stupidly problematic. And it was made much more stupidly problematic by the insane copyright law passed in Colombia -- under pressure from the US -- which made this a criminal act for which Gomez faced up to 8 years in prison along with monetary fines.
Again, he absolutely did upload someone else's paper to the internet -- but this was an academic paper, it wasn't for Gomez's own profit, but for perfectly reasonable academic purposes, to make sure people were better informed. Not only that, but as soon as he found out the paper's author was unhappy, he deleted the paper from Scribd. And yet he's spent the past few years dealing with criminal charges over it. Thankfully, just this week Gomez was cleared of any wrongdoing. It just cost him four years of absolute hell. And it's not totally over yet. While the judge has given a "not guilty" verdict, the prosecutor has already announced plans to appeal.
"I have been cleared. I am innocent," a delighted Gómez said after the verdict. "When I received the news, after 4 years with so much uncertainty, which is an obstacle in personal and professional life, that was a great happiness. However, knowing that the prosecutor appealed brings uncertainty back."
EFF has been heavily involved in this case, and note that it shows one of the many problems with countries ratcheting up punishments for copyright infringement often under the guise of "complying with international agreements.":
Diego’s story also demonstrates what can go wrong when nations enact severe penalties for copyright infringement. Even if all academic research were published freely and openly, researchers would still need to use and share copyrighted materials for educational purposes. With severe prison sentences on the line for copyright infringement, freedom of expression and intellectual freedom suffer.
Diego’s story also serves as a cautionary tale of what can happen when copyright law is broadened through international agreements. The law Diego was prosecuted under was enacted as part of a trade agreement with the United States. But as is often the case when trade agreements are used to expand copyright law, the agreement only exported the U.S.’ extreme criminal penalties; it didn’t export our broad fair use provisions. When copyright law becomes more restrictive with no account for freedom of expression, people like Diego suffer.
Indeed. I know that we get a fair amount of pushback from some in the copyright industry whenever we talk about the free speech or chilling effects impact of overzealous copyright enforcement. Time and time again we're told that these are "anomalies" or that such things are impossible, because why would anyone ever use copyright to stifle someone's speech. However, I can't even imagine the horror that Gomez has gone through for the past four years, in which he was literally facing being locked up for years and fines for being a good academic. That's insane -- and so is any copyright law that would allow this to happen.
The fact that Colombian prosecutors aren't yet willing to drop this case is even more upsetting and concerning. What possible reason do they have for thinking that this case is worth pushing forward like this?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: academic research, colombia, copyright, diego gomez
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So let me get this straight:
...
......
...I'm not sure words exist to express my feelings on this. It's not like Gomez tried to bring about the apocalypse, he just shared one document in a culturally normal way, he did his best to fix things after being sued (and who sues as a first resort, anyway?), and yet these prosecutors still want to imprison him for...what? I can't understand their motives at all.
Do they just think that having a law that gives them an excuse means they're allowed to hurt innocent people?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: So let me get this straight:
Someone might have been able to make some money from the document if it hadn't been shared. Or, at least that's possible in their mind. The fact that he only shared it because he couldn't find a legal source is neither here nor there.
Or, if that wasn't possible in this case, they want to ensure that people actually making profit or costing revenue think twice by making this guy an example.
"Do they just think that having a law that gives them an excuse means they're allowed to hurt innocent people?"
Yes, they do. Maximalists never care who gets in their way so long as they can imagine they're protecting some profit. Ordinary people are just collateral damage on their quest for imagined profits.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: So let me get this straight:
Mr Gomez was criminally prosecuted, and was facing a longer prison sentence than some people get in the US for killing someone!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Don't worry, it's a *trade* agreement. We've been exporting our extreme criminal penalties, so soon we'll be *importing* restrictions on fair use. The USTR will be ecstatic about having that kind of balance...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I sure hope they have appropriate levy's on these imports and exports. I wonder how much Government makes off that tax on an annual basis?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The Berne Convention - drafted in 1886, signed by the US in 1988(!) - was a really big nail in Public Domain's coffin. I don't doubt that Big Media will use trade agreements as you say, to extend copyright terms, restrictions on fair use, etcetera, to the least common denominator of international law.
... and as Big Media has more influence in some countries than others, that least common denominator will be theirs to control.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Original author...
What was that line about bad publicity?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The code and algorithms used in said software, of course, are 'proprietary' so they aren't allowed to be looked at by defense lawyers to see if they actually do anything.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Grad students are always in danger
While we can always speculate how great everything was if the copyright rules were removed, that isn't currently the case, and there's global requirements to follow the rules. Ordinary people need to follow the rules on global scale. Authors need to be extreamly strict on copyright rules. Grad students are expected to be accurate enough that they never make a mistake in this kind of issues.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Grad students are always in danger
Authors of academic papers should be strict on attribution, not copyright. I have never heard of an academic becoming rich from their academic works. Books that use their research maybe, but the written description of their research, never.
In the mean time, organizations like Elsivier take the copyrights from academics, for their own enrichment, not the academics.
Try again.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Grad students are always in danger
So they are expected to follow the copyright rules more accurately than other people on the planet
Right... it's up to grad students to be at the top of the "who can follow copyright law the best" game. And not the companies that actually enforce copyright, because why else would they rip off images from other websites and image creators for their webpage design?
This amount of leeway you keep giving to the likes of the RIAA is bloody ridiculous, Mr. I-Think-The-Public-Domain-is_Illegal.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Grad students are always in danger
[ link to this | view in chronology ]