I second waht pretty much everyone else here said: It was a very bad idea to send that e-mail.
In fact, I think they showed you a great deal of leniency and will to cooperate in sending you this e-mail. It’s evident that you were infringing their rights, not the other way round, so they gave you a fair chance to settle the question without much ado when they sent you the e-mail; essentially, they told you “We’re right and you’re wrong, and we could beat you up for what you’ve already done, but if you quietly stop doing it, then we’ll forget about the whole thing.” (Yes, I know, that e-mail they sent you didn’t waive their rights arising from the prior infringements, so they could still go after you for that; but I think the wording of the mail expresses a sincere will on their part not to do anything further if you do what they say.)
Now, they gave you a fair chance to put an end to the story, and your reaction is to piss them off. I really don’t think there’s another word to put it. This is bound to provoke them take measures to enforce their rights (they’re right, remember?) against you. It was really not a strategically very wise move.
The idea that the e-mail was fake and that it came from some impostor trying to pass off as CBS is, in my view, very far-fetched; why would somebody do something like this?
All CBS has to do is have one of their lawyers file action in FEDERAL court.
Last I heard, it cost about $10,000 just to respond.
I used to be active in collecting old WB cartoons - some of which actually are in Public Domain (they didn’t bother to copyright a few) - some collectors are quite adamant in publishing their ideas about copyright, fair use, and research.
They are wrong.
I know of one person who put a very sensitive (withdrawn from circulation 1968) WB cartoons on ebay.
WB notified ebay, who promptly shut down that user id.
You are attempting to play a hand you DO NOT have.
If you want real fun, try distributing Song of the South - Disney is famous for its sense of humor. They shut down a 1 person bakery because she would decorate children’s birthday cakes with Mickey drawn in the icing.
I actually have legal copies of Song - it was distributed in UK (VHS PAL) and Japan (Laserdisc).
The laser is amusing - the dialog is not sub-titled, but “Zip-a-Dee-Dah” is subtitled.
I went with the UK version.
That’s the part of the OP I don’t understand. Was there something flaky about the headers on the email? A cursory examination of the full headers would be enough to ascertain that the email is actually from CBS.
There’s probably still time to send a follow-up email blaming the first one on a cat or teenager, and assure them of your compliance with the takedown notice.
Occam’s razor, what is more likely, that some intern at CBS found your videos and sent them to Legal, or that someone random decided to engineer a fake CBS email to stop you from selling a tiny number of ancient videos?
Since you’ve already taken them down, just leave it that way, and let this legal issue die.
Get your local small town paper to do a story. “Area Man Plays Hardball With Network” can be the headline; “Area Rookie Can’t Hit Curveball, Sent To Minors” the follow up.
The from: field can be easily spoofed, but the headers can not. The are put on automatically by each computer that handles the email.
But since the OP was selling copyrighted material, he should have expected from the start that the copyright holder would object, and that was far more likely than anyh other explanation.
Since he took down the material, he probably is fine right now; it’t not illegal to write a nasty reply to the notice. But if it goes back up, the he can expect more than an email. CBS will be checking his site every day.
When somebody points a gun at you, it’s possible they didn’t put bullets in the gun. But it’s a bad idea to insist they pull the trigger in order to prove the gun is loaded.
I"m just curious…is what you were offering available anywhere else as legal, authorized material? That is, could the claim be made (assuming it’s a legitimate claim) that you are depriving the rightful owner(s) of income?
I’m not saying this is a valid legal defense, just asking.
You should promptly send an email that repudiates your first one, explains that you will carefully comply with the terms of their email, and apologizes for any trouble you may have caused.
The goal of this is to be something that, in the now likely event of legal action by CBS, you can show to the judge by way of explaining that you quickly came to your senses and plan to sin no more.
It would be very easy for CBS to claim they haven’t released those movies in order to create a demand for them when they are ready to release them. That’s what Disney does with a lot of their movies.
No. I do have scruples, believe it or not. The only reason I digitized those movies was because they were frustratingly unavailable. I even approached someone about buying the rights to one of them – it was a 1970 TV movie – but I was told that first I would have to pay a lawyer $3000 JUST TO SEE IF IT COULD BE DONE.
So . . . it was out of frustration that I searched the Internet (back in 1999) for a good copy of the film on VHS. It took hundreds of dollars and a couple of years, but I finally found a copy that was good enough to put on a DVD and not feel guilty.
I think I put a disclaimer on my website saying “Oh, and by the way, as soon as XXX decides to put this on a DVD, I am going to stop selling anything.” Which I did, for a movie called “Robinson Crusoe on Mars.” It was in such high demand, and people were almost screaming for it to be put on DVD (see IMDB forums) that I went out, bought a LaserDisc player, bought two LaserDisc versions of it, bought a special, $1,000 analog-to-digital converter, and made a DVD out of it, complete with subtitles copied from the LD and my own commentary throughout.
I did it for the people who were screaming for it, as well as for myself. I thought that perhaps I deserved a little compensation for my efforts. Whoever owned the rights was just sitting on it, and there was no light at the end of the tunnel, so thousands of fans were left, twiddling thumbs, waiting for the powers that were to put it on DVD. How many people have a LaserDisc player? I just filled in for the meantime, and as soon as it came out on DVD I stopped selling it. People even came to my website and paid for it, but I refunded their money and said “Go to Amazon – you’ll get a much better copy.”
Trust me on this: it was an altruistic decision. I never made any money off these things – it was just a hobby and basically all I wanted was some money back to cover time and expenses. Some people who bought a particular film were so grateful that it was available on DVD that they practically cried when they sent emails saying they had watched it. And I cursed the various rights owners and said to myself, Why the hell don’t they just put this out on DVD? There are SO MANY PEOPLE clamoring for it – it would be a slam dunk.
To my knowledge, CBS has STILL not put this enormously popular cult movie on DVD – yet they come after me anyway, even though it’s out there from dozens of other sources, and as I said, has been on YouTube in its entirety.
And as I said – if I had been doing it for the money, I would be very, very poor. “Well, why not just give it away – at least you wouldn’t be breaking any laws,” you say. Well, uh, I’m not THAT rich. And if hundreds, if not thousands of others were also disseminating the movie, which was extremely obscure and unlikely to ever be released on DVD – think a movie with Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors broadcast in 1971 as a “Movie of the week” – then you’ll see that I wasn’t trying to offer “Inferno IIV” or anything like that.
People deserve to get paid for their efforts. But Bill Shatner, to whom I personally wrote for permission to digitize a movie, never wrote back. I realize he has no obligation to do so. But if in a drought, dozens of farmers are sitting on hoards of crops that are just rotting away in warehouses, refusing to sell anything to the “common folk,” well, if you had a vegetable patch, what would YOU do? I didn’t gouge anyone, just parted with the discs for what I thought was fair.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t actually matter for shit in the US. The holders of the rights are under no obligation to disburse their material, and can happily sit on it for ever and ever amen while thumbing off all the poor suckers who have the misfortune to like what they have, and it’s still totally and completely illegal for anyone *else *to distribute it.
Now, if you want to take those episodes and record them with a nice scholarly commentary track, or to make a parody or a spoof - you might have the smallest bit of a chance. Actually just *selling *their shit because they won’t do it? Nah, bra, you’re screwed.
ETA that I totally sympathize. I’m a librarian, and the same issue happens with us, frustratingly regularly - things go out of print, and people still expect the library to magically be able to get them a copy. It’s horrid.
I also have been a cult fan, and have done more than my fair share of taking old, out of print books and painstakingly copying them page by page on an old xerox or even transcribing them in wordperfect, just so I’d have a frigging hardcopy of the thing I loved.
I also understand the frustrations of spending time and effort on something that you and others feel passionate about, and wanting to get a bit of your investment back for all the time and energy spent.
I do get it. I sympathize.
None of that emotional and situational stuff makes the slightest bit of difference to how very very totally illegal all that activity is.