Originally Posted - October 12, 2006

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It has come to our attention that numerous individuals are again engaging in copyright infringement by republishing work, including exclusive articles and interviews which are the property of The North Country Gazette and its owner, at such web sites as BadCopNews.com, MoreBadCopNews.com, Policecrimes.com and at some Google Groups without permission or compensation.

The legal definition of copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of copyrighted material in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it.

Legally, the author has the right to seek payment for the unauthorized use of the material. It's a copyright violation and legally actionable. It's not "Fair Use", it's outright piracy. It doesn't make a difference if you give attribution or not, you've lifted the article without permission and are directing readers away from the original site of publication.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/060906NotFairUse.html

Is there something unclear about the notice that appears at the bottom of each article which is published at The North Country Gazette, marked
© 2006 North Country Gazette?

Is there something about this notice that you don't understand: "All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed by anyone without the express written permission of the publisher. This article is copyright protected and Fair Use is not applicable".

Apparently the people at policecrimes.com and badcopnews.com can't read or maybe it's because they don't think the law applies to them. They like to point the finger at bad cops but stealing other people's work for their forums is a larceny too.

The policecrimes blog and forum administrator, who hides behind anonymity and calls him/herself Watcher, has decided that our copyrighted work is their's to do with as they choose, directing traffic and income away from The North Country Gazette.

Mr/Ms Watcher not only engaged in the outright theft of the exclusive copyrighted article "Special Circumstances" but they gave absolutely no attribution, no link, no mention of where they stole it from, passing it off as their own so not only did they engage in copyright infringement and theft of intellectual property but also engaged in plagiarism. No, none of that is protected by the U.S. Constitution and no, lifting an entire article, especially without attribution, is not "Fair Use". It's a unlawful.

A jury just awarded $11.3 million for internet defamation. There's going to be some hefty awards down the road for theft of intellectual property too involving Internet publication as well there should be to send a loud and strong message that copyright infringement isn't tolerated, on the Internet or off.

The article lifted by policecrimes.com was an original piece of work, it was exclusive solely to The North Country Gazette and carried a byline as well as a stated notice that the newspaper and the author reserved all rights to control where that article appeared and how it was used.

We asked the moderator to remove the article from policecrimes as they did not request permission nor was permission granted for them to steal the article. They have an extremely loose knowledge of what they claim is the law. They refused to do so. We provided the law to them as a posting on their forum. They chose to remove the posting from their forum and continued to use our work without compensation.

Badnewscops and individuals at Google groups are stealing our exclusive Baumgartner work for their own use, without permission and compensation.

We have tried to make The North Country Gazette website available free to responsible users. However, the ongoing theft of our copyrighted work and our investigative reports has become so pervasive that we will be forced to make the entire website available only to subscribers.

The penalties for copyright infringement, the theft of original work, are very harsh. The court can award up to $150,000 for each separate act of willful infringement. Willful infringement means that you knew you were infringing and you did it anyway and that is applicable to policecrimes.com and the other violators as not only was the copyright notice plainly stated but even after they were advised that they did not have permission to use the material and asked to remove it, they ignored the request. That constitutes a willful infringement. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Even if you claim you didn't know that you were infringing and stealing protected intellectual property, you will still be liable for damages. And then of course there are the attorney fees. Not only will the thief have his/her own attorney fees to pay, they will be responsible for paying the attorney fees of the publication from where they stole the material.

U.S. Code, Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 106: Exclusive rights in copyrighted works:

Subject to sections 107 through 122, U.S.Code, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission

© 2006 North Country Gazette