I have read many stories this week about Mygazines.com a website that allows people to copy and upload popular magazines that are currently on newsstands.
Visitors can read high quality digital copies of dozens of current titles, including People, Sports Illustrated, Men’s Health and The Economist, just to name a few, in their entirety.
The site, with some 16,000 registered users, is a “flagrant” violation of copyright laws, according to legal experts but it is run by an offshore company making it difficult to shut down.
“It’s pretty hard to see how it’s anything other than a straightforward set of copyright violations,” said Jeffrey Cunard, an intellectual property lawyer with Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Washington. “There are entire magazines with no commentary, no criticism – clearly not a case of classic fair use.”
The Mygazines site said in a July 29 press release announcing its launch that its copies are no different from magazines shared in a doctor’s office or salon.
This argument has been rejected by legal experts because the site makes available copies of paid for content not the actual product.
“The first-sale doctrine says that once I buy a physical copy of something, I can do whatever I want with it – except copy it,” Curnard said
Several magazine publishers said they are aware of the site and are considering legal action.
“We take our intellectual property seriously and are considering appropriate action on this matter,” The Economist said in an email statement.
Dawn Bridges, a spokeswoman for Time Warner’s Time division, said the publisher of People, Sports Illustrated and other titles is investigating its options, including ways to have the site shut down.
The challenge for the magazine publishers is that Mygazines’s domain name is registered in the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla, which is a British overseas territory, and thus outside of the jurisdiction of US copyright law. The registration records show the domain name is owned by “John Smith” of Salveo Ltd., based in The Valley, Anguilla.
Publishers could have recourse if the company uses servers physically in the United States. They also could sue the company in US courts because content is available to Americans, but they would not be able to force Mygazines representatives to show up nor collect any damages for any ruling made in absentia.
Why should domainers care?
Because this is another example of intellectual property abuse, which in this case, publishers are going to be going to congress for legal help.
What can publishers do? Use the Network Solutions presence in Virgina to get the action into the US courts?
Seek an injunction against the website and get a court to rule that Network Solutions can take down the website?
Obtain a default judgement against the website and seek an order to take over the domain, Bodog style to satisfy the judgement?
This is an interesting case which may have implications for domain names and the right to enforce US laws and judgements against domains owned by Non-US citizens.
So how is what Youtube is to video different from what this is to print?
He he, don’t forget that VeriSign sold off Network Solutions years ago. They’re now 2 separate entities. 😉
But yep, they could still try to secure some kind of court order and enforce it on VeriSign, even though the domain name’s registered with Gandi.net. Under what legal grounds, though, beats the heck out of me.
This site is great – Thanks :-))
All joking aside I really think the publishers should embrace this technology instead of fighting. It’s hard to do since the shelf life of the “paper” magazine world is rapidly disappearing however these guys are really no different than what napster did for music downloads – just trying to bring the sharing aspect online. Nice to see whoever did this stay out of us jurisdiction but a default judgement will simply take thier name away at most which – as in Bodog’s case – hasn’t really made any difference.
Interesting to see where this ends up but ultimately someone is going to develop a system almost exactly like this which happens to be… yep, emrabced by the publishers. Maybe now – maybe 5 years….
Tony
I think Youtube is different because users post the videos not Youtube.com while this service posts the copyright material itself.
Alan
The is the Napster equivalent for the magazine industry.
Once there is an itunes equivalent where the publishers can get paid, you are right, its the future.
Mike,
The concept and delivery of the content is great, but I can’t see how they will stay online for long, nor how they will make any money on this. Can you?
They keep moving from one hosting company to another as well, since copyright infringement is illegal is most countries – onshore or offshore.
Regards.
Mike,
I am not sure that this is the magazine version of napster? The content here is not peer to peer or distributed.
They’re not simply a ‘tracker’ of content – they’re serving it right off their site.
It looks like they are hosted in Sweden right now with the same ISP as piratebay.org
Thanks for the site – I will have a look at it
An easy first step would be to file a UDRP against the domain, “John Smith” may not respond…
Pure
UDRP on the basis of what?
I mean you still have to have some argument that your entitled to the domain, even if the party doesn’t respond, don’t you?
I was actually going to mention that, but I just didn’t want to give anyone any funny ideas.
And agree with MHB in that the complainant must demonstrate trademark rights to the term. No TM rights, no case.