Questions about two cases of copyright infringement

["Jack Boeve" <JBoeve@xxxxxxxx>]

SUMBITTED BY MODERATOR ON BEHALF OF ROBERT HOLLEY.
Please reply to the list. Thank you.
============

I have some questions about two occurrences during the 2009 ALA Annual
Conference and would like to ask for comments on whether two copyright
infringers were running any "real" risks for their infringement.

In the first case, a professor who was hosting an exhibit at one of the
Chicago museums was showing YouTube videos on two monitors in a
continuous loop. I asked the professor about copyright permissions. The
person answered that he didn't have any.

The second case happened as my flight landed in Detroit when one of the
flight attendants sang a pastiche of a song from a Disney movie that was
certainly under copyright protection given Disney's policies on
copyright. I don't think that the pastiche would have qualified as a
parody. I thought that this possible infringement was more dangerous
because the speech was commercial, the airline has deep pockets, and a
Disney executive might be taking the flight.

My questions are whether these two cases posed any real risks for being
sued for copyright violation or whether these fell under the category of
theoretical violations where the people involved were indeed violating
copyright but ran little risk of any consequences.

Thanks!

Bob

Robert P. Holley
Professor, School of Library & Information Science
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI 48202
313-577-4021 (phone)
313-577-7563 (fax)
aa3805@xxxxxxxxx (email)