A guy I know has been having a very public conversation. This is a gay.com. He tells how he cheats on his boyfriend and what a sucker he is etc.
Well someone took this conversation verbatum and put it on the rants section at Craigslist. Under the head line Dave1975 is a cheater (not the real screen name)
Just out of curiosity I emailed craigslist.
They said basically it’s in the rant section, so it’s posted in the right forum, and as long as the person isn’t able to be identified or the email isn’t identified they won’t care. They said if enough people flag it it will be taken off
Ok
I was wondering what are the legal implications if any? Is a public conversation in a chatroom copywrited? If so by who? gay.com? the spearkers? Craigslist?
Obviously since Dave1975 could be anyone and more than one must cheat, it’s not really idenifying anyone except to those who frequent that chat rooms
In practice, I’d say you have about as much of an expectation of privacy in an internet chat room as you do while talking on a loudspeaker at the Super Bowl.
It’s copyrighted. And yes, it is. By the writer. Anything you write is immediately and automatically copyrighted under the law.
Now you keep saying conversation, but you also keep mentioning web sites. This confuses the issue.
Your spoken conversation is not copyrighted. Your written chat rooms conversations are. If somebody transcribed a spoken conversation, you might have a violation of privacy case, but not a copyright case.
If you are taking a conversation that appears on screen and copying it from one website to another, then it is certainly a copyright issue. Whoever Dave1975 is has along with the others in the conversation, the right to complain to craigslist to get the transcript removed. Failing that, they can sue craigslist and the poster.
He said the conversation originated on a chat room, not on a website. In a chat room, anyone who happens to be in the room at the time something is typed can see it, but a person who comes in later cannot (unless one of the people who was there at the time happened to have logged it). I would therefore question whether something said in a chat room can be said to be “fixed in a tangible medium”, or whatever the criterion is for copyright, and it seems to me that it would be in the same category as something spoken out loud. Apparently what happened in this case was that someone else in the chat room who was present at the time logged the chat, and then posted that log onto a web site (where anyone could read it at any time).
What is the distinction between that and my writing something on a piece of paper, tossing it into the wastebasket, and having somebody else retrieve and publish it? I don’t lose my copyright just because I haven’t preserved it for the ages.
I doubt that case law exists on the subject, but I still don’t see how this is the equivalent of oral conversation.
The distinction I see is that with a chat room, it’s not saved in any way unless someone goes out of their way to save it. It’s possible for someone to walk into a (non-computerized) room with a tape recorder, and save the oral conversation in that room, but unless someone does that, the conversation is ephemeral. Therefore oral conversations are not copyrighted. Similarly, it’s possible to log an Internet chat room, but like bringing a tape recorder, someone would have to go out of their way to do so, and if they don’t, the words aren’t stored. At least, so I would rule, were I a judge, but I’m not, and I don’t know if any actual judges have ever ruled on this question.
Chronus brings up an interesting point. The one thing I can add it gay.com also affilates with another chat client. This chat client has an interesting feature that most people don’t realize, it allows you to record all conversations in all chat rooms whenever you are signed in. You can sign in and it records this. People who have internet connections that never sign off clued me in on it. So they can see what anyone says by doing a CTR+F and search to find a person if he’s been on it.
I notice AOL messengers (AIM) has that feature as well that records your AIM conversations
Let me try adding this. Supposing somene didn’t copy the conversation verbatum. Let’s just say this Dave person is bragging how he’s cheating and someone goes to the rant section on Craigslist and says “Dave on gay.com is bragging how he’s cheating again.”
Now the copywrited issue is gone.
This also brings to mind another site I saw on ABC News. It’s about a website where on if you have bad date, or the person lies to you. Let’s say your date said he was 25 but then he turns out to be 35. The girl could post a "review’ of the date. And this site will let you review any dating site
The only about this site is they allow the person being review to post a rebuttle or his side of it.
ABC News closed the report by saying some people have threatend lawsuits over this, but nothing so far. I realize you can sue anyone for any reason, doesn’t mean you’re gonna win.
I would say that due to practical concerns, copyright in this case is a non-issue. First, the copyright holder would have to identify the poster and then sue him/her in civil court. The copyright holder would have to prove that they are, indeed, the real person behind the screen name and they would also have to prove that about the person they are suing. No court or police department is going to assist them in doing this because it is a civil matter, not a criminal matter. In other words, yeah, there is maybe a technical violation of copyright. Good luck proving it and/or doing anything about it. Oh yeah, in matters like this, if you are the copyright holder and the court finds against you, have fun paying court costs and if the guy you are suing has a decent attorney, you’ll probably end up paying his legal fees too. Risk/benefit analysis = forget it.
I know we’ve moved on, but regarding the copyright issue:
The fact that the original “conversation” was written on a messageboard or chatroom owned by a company could make a big difference. For example, from only a few inches down –
““The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams” is a registered trademark of Chicago Reader, Inc. Contents of the Straight Dope Message Board and the Straight Dope Web site are copyright 1984-2006 by the Chicago Reader, Inc. All rights reserved. By posting on this board you grant the Chicago Reader, Inc., and its successors and assigns a nonexclusive irrevocable right to re-use your posting in any manner it or they see fit without notice or compensation to you. No material contained in this site may be republished or reposted without express written consent of the Chicago Reader, Inc., except that message board users retain the right to republish or repost their own work.”
Imagine the same conversation occurred here rather than gay.com. It’s pretty clear that a random person would NOT be allowed to republish the text on craigslist.