This letter is ten days old.

Reported here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/15/labour-probe-grant-shapps-company

Mark: reported it was going to be sent, then, but it is not published in full anywhere.

Yes. And reading it, it’s not hard to see why not.

Troll mark spinning for the scum as usual.

This guy will make an excellent tory chairman. He is as straight as a double glazing salesman. Just the right material for the tory party.

Plagiarising content from another website is not copyright theft. The information does not have copyright protection because it is not literary, dramatic, artistic or musical work. Copying designs and trade marks would be an offence because they are patented. You can’t just write an order of words on a website and claim copyright over them.

@ 5 Richard

Hang on. Business reports can go for 5-figure sums. Are you saying that, if I had a business report worth £20,000 behind a paywall, you copied it and sold it on wholesale, it’d be completely legal? Sounds unlikely.

6. Chaise Guevara

” Hang on. Business reports can go for 5-figure sums. Are you saying that, if I had a business report worth £20,000 behind a paywall, you copied it and sold it on wholesale, it’d be completely legal? Sounds unlikely. ”

Putting something behind a paywall does not confer the information any extra legal standing as far as I am aware. What you are describing would be theft and not particularly copyright theft. Maybe some of our resident overpaid legal folks on here could clarify the law. I am going on what I remember from taking some classes years ago that covered the difficulties associated with patents and copyright. From what I remember it is really difficult if not impossible to copyright text that is outwith literary and artistic works. The business report you describe would be a technical article and they are not subject to copyright protection. Hacking into a computer to obtain the report would probably be a different offence.

The law for covering most of this stuff in addition to EU directives would be:

The Registered Designs Act 1949
The Patents Act 1977
The Trade Marks Act 1994
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

The last one would be the most relevant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright,_Designs_and_Patents_Act_1988

#5
Shapps’ company used copyrighted software code, and worst of all he used open source software, which in offline terms equates to scamming food banks to supply a swanky restaurant. Might be worth floating this story on slashdot or reddit as there is bound to be more “reuse” and others won’t be as soft a touch as google.

@7. Richard W: “I am going on what I remember from taking some classes years ago that covered the difficulties associated with patents and copyright. From what I remember it is really difficult if not impossible to copyright text that is outwith literary and artistic works.”

I have had internet articles ripped off by scrapers that copy content. The ripped off articles contained information that I obtained by “proper” research and which was unavailable (in a convenient package) before I compiled it. The rip off artists had used search engine analytics to determine key words that delivered a small result and then copied my work verbatim.

I’ve had very pleasant discussions with mainstream publishers and journalists about some unusual articles. I provided them with a few pointers to make new stories or a different photograph. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

Another thing I’ve done is to make something up and look at who steals it. I made up a story that was published (without attribution) by the Daily Mail and Independent; to their credit, The Times sent a journalist from London to California to check it out.

—
I think you are being overly literal about the term literary. In copyright law, my understanding is that “literary” is something that has been written down. It means that you can borrow an idea or argument (something that is not protected by patent or trade mark) and develop it.

Verbatim copying or paraphrasing is forbidden if the intent is to deny recognition of the literary owner. Paraphrasing or quotes can only be used to establish a new work. Copying five paragraphs without attribution is theft.

In UK law, IIRC, there is an unusual case where royal correspondence (A) to subject (B) was stolen. Legal courts determined that personal letters were literary and that copyright (and determination on publication) was held by A.

A lot of people make money (honestly) by publishing content online and monetizing it with affiliate links and advertising. If you look at many blogs or sites, you will see they have copyright notices. Copying online content is covered in the US by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). I don’t know whether there is a similar law in the UK, but Michael Green aka the Tory Chair earned the majority of his money from his software in the States.