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Keighsie
Newbie
Joined: 05 June 2008 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1 |
![]() Topic: Copyright laws?Posted: 05 June 2008 at 12:43pm |
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www.learnamharicnow.com Is selling this "language program" that I bought, and spent hours downloading, and finally listened to only to find it is the same as the Amharic tapes on here! I am wondering if this is legal or not? I am obviously going to try to get a refund, but didn't know much about the copyright or Public Domain on these tapes.
Thank you all for your help |
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Chung
Contributor
Joined: 23 May 2006 Online Status: Offline Posts: 143 |
![]() Posted: 05 June 2008 at 1:40pm |
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It seems legal. The principle is that if an item is in the public domain, one can do whatever he or she wants to that item. Not only does it mean that one could copy it and pass it off as his/her own, it also means that he/she could distribute it for a profit (or not).
I wouldn't get my hopes up for a refund because it seems like a case of "buyer beware" and the reseller may have set up the transaction as a final sale thus making it difficult if not impossible to get a refund. In any case, the reseller isn't obliged to tell you that he/she acquired inventory from this website for free. I've posted before that it is a little sneaky and maybe even bad customer service, but it's legal and I've read comments here that there may be a slight unintended benefit from others reselling at a token price (e.g. $10 per course) since people going to those sites reduce traffic here and keep this site from crashing even more often because of the traffic overload. If you look for previous posts in the forum, others have come across resellers on Ebay doing the same thing with FSI courses. The dead give-away for their source material is if they offer material that is as incomplete as the stuff here. (I recently noticed that a reseller was selling FSI Hungarian Graded Reader and added in the description that its audio included up to the 24th selection - just the same as posted on this website) |
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DemiPuppet
Administrator
Joined: 27 May 2006 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 163 |
![]() Posted: 11 June 2008 at 8:25pm |
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I see that the site selling the material is based in California. You could politely ask them if they are familiar with California Penal Code 653h:
(a) Every person is guilty of a public offense punishable as Several states have identical restrictions on people who copy |
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