> Well, no. Registration allows you to collect at least $500 and at most
> $100,000 as the judge deems is just. In fact the ceiling is usually
> $20,000, unless you can show that the infringement was willful.
Thanks for that correction. Yes, $100K is the max for each
violation, not the minimum, as I had suggested. I meant that
a plaintiff could demonstrate multiple infringements,
claiming a judgment for each.
> As a practical matter, most statutory
> awards will be in the neighborhood of a good estimate of the actual
> damages (i.e., your loss or the infringer's profit), unless punitive
> damages are deemed appropriate.
If that's so, what is the point of registering? A plaintiff
may collect actual damages without registration. A FAQ
author suffers virtually no provable financial loss from
infringement. Without statutory damages, the plaintiff can
gain hardly more than a non-monetary judgment, like an
injunction against the infringer.
The legal costs of bringing suit in a Federal court make
such action available only to the very wealthy.
> As a final kicker, neither statutory damages nor attorney's fees are
> available to the copyright owner if the work was not registered before
> the complained-of infringement occurred. So it's too late for Lani to
> take advantage of this.
Well, there is a grace period of a month, but the courts
prefer that registration occur before infringement was even
contemplated. The plaintiff should not appear to have
registered for the purpose of bringing suit. Registration
should have occurred for its own sake, without consideration
of a court action.
> All that being said, it's still not a bad idea to register a copyright in
> a FAQ. A search of the Copyright Office records will turn up this:
>
> +1. TX-3-908-677: Frequently asked questions about Copyright (v.1.1.3)
> + CLNA: acTerrence J. Carroll , 1960-
>
> Further resources for copyright:
>
> My FAQ: http://www.aimnet.com/~carroll/copyright/faq-home.html
> The Copyright Office: http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/
I support reform of Copyright Law to repeal Sections 411(a)
and 412, which reward registration of unpublished documents
with statutory damages for infringement. The purpose of
those sections was to encourage contributions to the
manuscript collection of the Library of Congress.
In fact it does not work. The owners of truly valuable
documents do not register them, as the statutory damages are
trivial compared to retaining physical control of the
paper. Those sections merely punish writers of modest income
for failure to register their work.
I support allowing statutory damages for any infringement,
whether the document is registered or not.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vicki Richman vicric@panix.com National Writers Union
Bedford, Brooklyn NY PGP 2.6 UAW Local 1981, AFL/CIO
"Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen."
-Woody Guthrie
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