Primrose Road

The World Wide Web has surely opened up access to otherwise difficult-to-access texts and has necessitated a rethinking of copyright law (Copyleft seems an interesting alternative because it's at the same time the complete opposite of and a form of copyright); reading various other bloggers' posts on a recent cease-and-desist scandal of sorts involving Direct Buy, a company you may have seen on late-night or early-morning infomercials. The company, which apparently relies on ultra-high-pressure sales tactics and ridiculously overbearing contracts, threatens its critics (mainly bloggers like Infomercial Scams) with lawsuits.

Amusingly, their law firm goes so far as to tell critics not to post their cease-and-desist letters on the internet, because their cease-and-desist letters are copyrighted. I'm not a lawyer, but the five minutes I spent as a pre-law student in 1998 suggest to me that this isn't how copyright works, folks.

My friend Dan over at tdaxp has a nice series of posts detailing the situation and linking to a number of other blogs that have been dealing with the same topic. This little "scandal" caught my attention because it reminds me very much of a publishing scam that "accepts" every work submitted to them and takes advantage of inexperienced writers: it addresses its critics with cease-and-desist letters and its own authors with "tone letters" (i.e. thanks for your honest question, but we don't like your tone, please write us a letter of apology). It's unbelievable how companies who are running shady services find shady lawyers to argue that US copyright law can work to silence one's critics.

The good news, however, is that, despite their threats, these companies likely do not want to be taken to court, where they'll be subject to 'discovery' and public exposure as scam operations.