Political Theory

Re: Disney uses it's IP protectionism to sue over Winnie the Pooh.

fsk — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:39:00 GMT

I noticed another huge defect in copyright/trademark law. There's the concept of "statutory damages".

If you violate someone's copyright or trademark, the owner doesn't have to prove that they were injured. They may instead claim "statutory damages", which is according to an arbitrary punishment scale that's irrlevant to whether they were injured or not.

For example, suppose I write a nice "Winnie the Pooh" story and it leads to increased sales of Disney's products. I could still be sued for statutory damages, even if I didn't injure the copyright/trademark owner.

Re: Disney uses it's IP protectionism to sue over Winnie the Pooh.

fsk — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:30:05 GMT

Intellectual property isn't a valid form of property.

It's silly that characters developed over 50 years ago aren't in the public domain. I should be able to write a "Winnie the Pooh" story if I want to.

Re: Disney uses it's IP protectionism to sue over Winnie the Pooh.

Anonymous Coward — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:19:56 GMT

Yeah, too bad Disney doesn't actually own the copyright.

Disney uses it's IP protectionism to sue over Winnie the Pooh.

Telpeurion — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:49:36 GMT

http://micechat.com/forums/showthread.php/disney_sues_couple_one_million-99937.html

Sick.

Could someone send this along to Stephan Kinsella, I know he is a IP lawyer and hopefully he could represent those poor people.