The Butterfly-Amazon Open-Source Saga Continues

[misiu_mp]

In Australia copyright is automatic; ie no registration is necessary or even possible:

Also any country that has signed the Berne Convention are required to uphold the copyright from any country that has also signed it.

The USA probably has that registration system. Interestingly enough there's a (rather misleading) company called Copyright Australia that sells International Copyright Registration. It's not affiliated with the Australian Copyright Office

Copyright is automatic basically everywhere. USA has this registration on top of that. For some reason the lawmakers there consider it superior and encourage it by making it easier to collect damages for infringement of registered works.

[prophet5]

Not true. You can sue, but to encourage registration statutory damages are restricted for registered copyright owners. You can still sue for lost profits, the profits made by the infringer and get the court to cease the activities of the infringer.
http://www.articlesfactory.com/artic...e-registr.html

In Australia copyright is automatic; ie no registration is necessary or even possible:

There is no system of registration for copyright protection in Australia. Copyright protection does not depend on publication, a copyright notice, or any other procedure. Copyright protection is free and automatic from the moment your work is on paper, or disk, or otherwise put into ?material form?.

http://www.copyright.org.au/find-an-answer/faq-details/id/844/

Also any country that has signed the Berne Convention are required to uphold the copyright from any country that has also signed it.

The USA probably has that registration system. Interestingly enough there's a (rather misleading) company called Copyright Australia that sells International Copyright Registration. It's not affiliated with the Australian Copyright Office

[Lestibournes]

They say that this Photo Suit or whatever is a collection of multiple open-source programs that compete with Adobe, not that it's one program or that it is an Adobe product. Their lies are 2: They changed the names of the programs, and they claim that the open-source competitors are available "at a fraction of the price" of Adobe products, as if Scribus, Inkspcape, etc can't be had for free.

[yogi_berra]

meh, its been done before: http://bit.ly/fxymWq

[SciFiDude79]

Not true. You can sue, but to encourage registration statutory damages are restricted for registered copyright owners. You can still sue for lost profits, the profits made by the infringer and get the court to cease the activities of the infringer.
http://www.articlesfactory.com/artic...e-registr.html

I stand corrected, then (really, I'm sitting but that's beside the point.) The last time I read up on copyright law was over a year ago, I probably messed up some of my facts.

[misiu_mp]

You're going to have a tough sale with that one. I saw no copyright notices on any of those websites. No copyright = no infringement. I know there's the "if it exists, it's copyrighted" law but that law is a catch-22. Only registered copyright owners have the right to sue for copyright infringement. So, it's copyrighted but there's nothing you can do about it.

Not true. You can sue, but to encourage registration statutory damages are restricted for registered copyright owners. You can still sue for lost profits, the profits made by the infringer and get the court to cease the activities of the infringer.

http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/law/derek-andrew-v-poof-apparel-no-statutory-damages-for-copyright-infringement-that-began-pre-registr.html

[devius]

What? They still haven't begun selling Ubuntu as "Mac OS Y: Black Leopard"?

[SciFiDude79]

You're going to have a tough sale with that one. I saw no copyright notices on any of those websites. No copyright = no infringement. I know there's the "if it exists, it's copyrighted" law but that law is a catch-22. Only registered copyright owners have the right to sue for copyright infringement. So, it's copyrighted but there's nothing you can do about it. Besides, I don't even think Butterfly Media is based in the US. As for other licenses, everything is released under the GPL which basically states that you can use it for whatever purposes you want. You can rebrand and sell it.

That's the legal side. Now, stepping back from legalities: it's just plain wrong!!

I've been using open source software for years, even before I started using Linux. Inkscape is my favorite vector graphics drawing suite. Flight Gear is just plain awesome. Rebranding and selling these titles (and Scribus, even though I don't use it) without even the courtesy of admitting that it's rebranded open source software is just as wrong as you can get. I'm sure a company as slippery as this one has it mentioned somewhere, probably in small print in accompanying literature but nobody looking at this on Amazon is going to know the difference unless they read the user reviews. Shame on this company for taking great open source products and making a profit off of them.

[misiu_mp]

Not legal.

They are violating the licence for the artwork (which allows only non-commercial re-use).
So technically they are simply violating and according to the US law, liable to additional profits of the infringer or to statutory damages of up to 150000$ per infringement (i.e. per piece of artwork in each sale).

[thefirstm]

Even if it is technically legal, they should still be convicted of mass douchebaggery...