Mystic Page 1186.6 Hack

Well, I modded Mystic Page 1268 to keep the lady liberty/flag pairs together.

http://stamphacks.com/wp/?p=57

And 3 more hacks for you!

1991-92 Pages, 627, 629, 649

http://stamphacks.com/wp/?p=61

And page 667 to keep the Legends of Rock and Roll booklet pane together.

http://stamphacks.com/wp/?p=66

I'm curious, is anyone using these things?

Wow, one of these pages looks like an almost exact copy of my own (Ruskystamps.com) commercial Russia stamp pages! Did you realise that?

David Farndale
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David, those are almost exactly your pages.

Probably nothing wrong with it so long as someone uses them for their own collection and does not distribute them. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

He'd be better off buying your pages. You've done all the work already. :)

David,

Which one? I've never been to your site.

I think David was referencing the pages in the post by 'tomd'. Here's a link to the Ruskystamps site with an illustration of the title page:

http://www.ruskystamps.com/img/Page-2.jpg

Sure looks like an exact copy to me.

PS he did credit the Ruskystmps site as the source of these images, also the post in question was from four years back.

Well, you can't expect ruskystamps to turn around check every post on the Internet.

Ruskystamps makes a really nice ablbum.

Which raises the question of the ethics of "borrowing" someone's pages for your own use. I suppose, like with quoting, if you borrow with the intent of using it once for your personal use and you give proper credit, you might be okay. But that's for a quotation. For a product, if you copy artwork, an article someone wrote, etc. for your use, that might be called stealing. So, I don't know how this would be treated. I think you also have to ask permission. I'm a bit uncomfortable with taking someone else's work and copying and pasting it for my own use. Are these "ruskystamps" pages in the public domain for all to use? If not, then you have to pay for them. Maybe then, you might be able to make a limited number of copies for your own use (like a computer file, etc.). Not sure -- and I'm not a lawyer.

As someone who has taken Mystic pages, modified them, and posted them for free, I have always worried about this. I never asked Mystic for permission.

But my pages are completely worthless with an actual mystic album. I think my pages may actually help sell Mystic albums.

In this case, if the guy wants to try and hack his own pages that look like Ruskystamps, then more power to them. Soon as he posts them online, then we may have a problem, depending on intent. If he creates pages that look like Ruskystamps, and can replace that album completely, then I would definitely say he's in the wrong. If he hacks some pages to add varieties, then his work complements the original work, and I would tend to think the author might see it as a value add.

TBH, I am still waiting for a cease and desist email to show up in my inbox one day from Mystic. I hope that day never comes, but we shall see.

So it is not considered stealing unless you get caught?
Don

The real question here is at what point is something so close it's stealing. TomD's work has the Soviet coat of arms as bookends around the name of the country and a thin border around the page. This a very common style in a lot of stamp albums(though I personally would put the coat of arms on one side and the flag on the other) He doesn't use the same font. I don't think those pages could be considered stealing. The with the Russian map on it, however, is a little too close for comfort.

Speaking solely with respect to the legal framework in the US, which is similar in the UK and other common law locations, without providing situation-specific legal advice to anyone posting or reading here, and setting aside the ethical questions:

--the availability of a legal remedy, for copyright infringement in this case, requires the subject work to show a threshold level of originality and authorship. When a page consists of a rectangular border, square boxes for stamps in chronological order of issue, and minimal descriptive text, then a single page may not even be subject to protection. For rhetorical purposes, call that a Type I page. When pages include many artistic design elements, as in the case of the Rusky pages, they likely do qualify. Call these Type II pages. A large compilation (like a country set) of Type I pages could collectively exhibit enough authorship for the set to qualify as Type II.

--the copyright owner has the exclusive right to control reproduction of the work in copies, and distribution to others. Even a single instance of either is infringement, subject to the fair use defense.

--US law, by statute, and many common law countries exclude "fair use" from acts of infringement that cause liability. To determine whether fair use exists, US courts consider:

1/ the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2/ the nature of the copyrighted work;
3/ the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4/ the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Under factor (2), Type I pages will be given less protection and Type II pages will be given more.

By this test, when personal home copying of a few Type I pages occurs and all use is private, the fair use test likely would favor the user and not the album publisher.

If an SCF member scanned and posted here a complete set of country pages of an album publisher, that member probably would lose the fair use test. Note that factor (1) (nonprofit use or intent by the SCF member) is not dispositive even for a Type I set of pages. If all the pages of a country are posted (factor 3) and the effect is that no one needs to buy them from the publisher any more (factor 4), then the use is not fair, but infringing.

Obviously many scenarios could fall in different points on the spectrum. The content of the prior posts should be evaluated against this 4-item framework.

The cost of copyright litigation certainly is a factor, but trust me, there are law firms that make a living filing narrowly focused suits against individuals seeking statutory damages in the $15K to $75K range, all the time, and these suits usually cost the infringing user $10K or more to resolve.

Chris

Chris,
Could you quickly outline the current US copyright notice requirements (or lack of them).
Thanks
Don

If I was going to design a Soviet Union page, I would do it like this:



I'm curious how close people think this would be to ruskystamps.com.

If anyone actually wants a printable PDF of this, please let me know.