Hey St. John’s Dairy Queen workers, you forgot to make your Facebook group private. Now your hilarious little videos of each other mooning the drive-thru and waging indoor snowball fights are all over Canadian television. They just don’t understand your jokes about “using meat the next day that wasn’t kept overnight in the cooler.” Neither do the health inspectors.
CBC News extracted this precious gem from the government department that inspects restaurants: “They say employees should not drop their pants behind the counter.”
After reviewing the video, franchise owner Albert Buott exclaimed: “Good God almighty! Where’s my managers? Who’s allowing this to happen?” before confusedly adding: “Who’s there? Where am I?”
Dairy Queen workers’ hijinks on web shock owner [CBC News via BarfBlog]
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@youbastid: to me, the only reason to “own” something is so others don’t use it without my permission, something I can’t really prevent if it’s not registered.
You can’t really prevent if it is registered either. All registering does is give you an easier time proving your ownership. Think of it as having a receipt for your work.
@youbastid
You’re making a couple of points here. Let me try to respond.
You write,
“If registration isn’t that important, why is the ‘poor man’s copyright’… ineffective?”
You’re piecing together two unconnected — but both true — statements and trying to use one to disprove the other.
1. Registration isn’t that important. True, for most people.
2. “Poor Man’s copyright” is ineffective. Also true.
from [www.copyright.gov]
“There is no provision in the copyright law regarding any such type of protection [mailing yourself a copy], and it is not a substitution for registration.”
This also meshes with the source you cite.
Also from the copyright.gov site, and the FAQ I posted earlier, “You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a US work.”
Which leads to this link: [www.copyright.gov]
which states, in summary, that you must register before filing suit but that you can register at any time. If you register early on, if you win your suit you may be able to get statutory damages awarded (think RIAA) rather than just actual damages awarded.
Which is sort of what you said (“if you plan on winning in court, you need to register”) — but it’s even more precise: if you plan on filing with the court — never mind winning — you need to register.
Early registration is also prima facie evidence that the copyright is valid. That means it is presumed valid, and the defendants will need to disprove (rebut)that presumption. Think of how defendants in the US are presumed innocent until proven guilty — same basic concept of presumption.
Read on for Part II.
Part II coming right up.
Part II:
@trollkiller answered the big question already: registering your copyright does not do anything extra to prevent someone from infringing.
But the question you almost asked:
Why would you not register your copyright?
- The biggest reason: it costs money. It’s at least $45 per item, and the fees go up from there: [www.copyright.gov]
Other reasons:
- You have to mail in the forms — you can’t file online, and not all fees can be paid with a credit card. [www.copyright.gov]
- Registering will not prevent people from taking advantage of Fair Use. [www.copyright.gov]
- You may not care enough about your work, or expect it to be misused. For example, I’ve taken lots of digital photos (several thousand). Most of them are crap. All of them are copyright by me (by default), but I haven’t registered any of them because it’s highly unlikely someone will infringe.
And to reiterate, all of the applies only to the US, IANAL, YMMV, yada yada yada. Oh, Canada?
“Snowball fight behind the counter, where food is prepared. It gets worse” NO! It can’t get worse than that! How has our country fallen so far? Where people fling balls of frozen water, the most dangerous substance on earth, where food is prepared!
I agree with the not-washing hands after mooning the drive through though. If he had, I would have had no problem at all. I would probably have also been sarcastic about the mooning if he had.
@Antediluvian: You do know you can place all of those photos on a dvd then register the dvd. That will in effect register all the photos. 700 for the price of one.
@trollkiller: Actually, I think that will only register the compilation, as far as I understand it (based on my reading of the copyright.gov site). I certainly could be mistaken.
But since I wasn’t intending to register them (or likely ever any of my “work”), I’ve not looked into super-closely, but will revisit if I create something register-worthy.
@trollkiller: This thread is more derailed than Amtrak.
Yay, my city made it on the Consumerist site.
Anyone else here from St. John’s?
Chrisfromnl
nl=newfoundland
@chrisfromnl: So Chris, you’ve gotta tell us: how’s the service at this particular DQ?
@forgottenpassword:
You had no idea we had DQ in Canada? Wow. How are things in Arkansas?
@Antediluvian: A movie is also a compilation of still photographs but the copyright still protects each frame.
@faust1200: I’m sorry we should have stuck to our disgust of the moon. Did you have anything constructive to add or did you just want to bitch about something?
@bbbici: Which restaurants do I have here in Tampa, FL? Cant answer? How about in Mexico? What’s that? I swear, you guys forget you’re a different country, we can’t keep track of every restaurant and retail stores you have up there in the attic.
ON POINT – This is why I don’t eat fast food anymore, and rarely eat out. Ever seen Kitchen Nightmares? That little ma and pop place you go eat at is probably worse off than most fast food places.
P.S. folks, stop threadjacking here, there is a perfectly good consumerist message board you can use for off-topic conversation at [consumerist.proboards88.com]
@trollkiller: It funny, your name is TrollKiller yet you seem to be one yourself. Faust contributes much to this site and runs the boards. He’s just trying to keep things on-topic.