On July 18th, 2012 I upload the following titles to my Patriot1980 Scribd.com account:
Link: “HR 3590 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2009)”
Link: “HR 4872 Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010”
On August 1st, 2012 I published a report here at the Was Obama Born In Kenya blog titled, “How to read HR 3590 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 90 days.” I was planning to read them and publish videos with my thoughts on each segment of the bill that I read for the following reasons:
a. Congressmen/women have issued statements to the effect that they can’t (not physically or mentally possible) , won’t or shouldn’t read the bill.
b. A large percentage of proponents of the bill have not read the entire bill, if any of it, other than excerpts.
c. A large percentage of individuals who do no advocate the bill have not read the entire bill, if any of it, other than excerpts.
d. I want to narrow (unite) the sometimes crevices and sometimes canyons between birthers and those individuals who protest HR 3590 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Last month I received the following two (2) emails from Scribd.com, both embedded below for review, stating that, “Scribd’s automated copyright protection system identified a book in your Scribd account as a copy and a possible copyright infringement of a book distributed through Smashwords. As a result, Scribd has proactively disabled access to the copy of the book titled “HR 3590 Patient Protection and AffordableCare Act (2009)” (id: 100458142) in your account and will be replacing it with a version distributed through Smashwords.”
03.23.2014 email from Scribd. REMOVED & REPLACED – HR 3590 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (200… by Lucas Daniel Smith
03.23.2014 email from Scribd. REMOVED & REPLACED – HR 4872 Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of… by Lucas Daniel Smith
I don’t understand how these government Acts (which I uploaded in July, 2012) were copyrighted. Moreover, I originally downloaded (in July, 2012) the Acts from www.healthcare.gov which is, clearly, a government website:
https://www.healthcare.gov/law/resources/authorities/patient-protection.pdf
If you have clicked on the above link you’ll find that you end up at a page which states, “Sorry, we can’t find that page on HealthCare.gov . . . We’ve recently reorganized our site, and that may explain it. It’s also possible that you typed the address incorrectly.” :
Perhaps there is some logical and even-handed reasoning behind Scribd.com’s removal and replacement of the said Acts.
Perhaps there is nothing strange and atypical regarding the missing page at the HeathCare.gov wesbiste.
Please exercise your free speech in the comments section below. There are no stipulations of political correctness on this blog. Speak your mind, give us your thoughts, both objective and subjective. Share your ideas, hunches, inklings or your expertise. Please provide recommendation and corrections if you spot errors in fact within the blog report. Lastly, remember that posting a comment is much like casting a vote, so please do so.
According to the below-linked article on Wikipedia, works of the United States government are “… not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law.”
Copyright status of work by the U.S. government
Excerpt:
A work of the United States government, as defined by United States copyright law, is “a work prepared by an officer or employee” of the federal government “as part of that person’s official duties.”…. In general, under section 105 of the Copyright Act, … such works are not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law.
The act only applies to U.S. domestic copyright as that is the extent of U.S. federal law. The U.S. government asserts that it can still hold the copyright to those works in other countries….
In addition, many publications of the U.S. government contain protectable works authored by others (e.g., patent publications (but only if a formal notice is included),… Securities and Exchange Commission filings, public comments on regulations), and this rule does not necessarily apply to the creative content of those works.
View the complete article at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government
The following passage on the Smashwords website seems to imply that they do not normally hold any copyright on the material they publish.
Excerpt:
Do I own my copyright if I publish with Smashwords?
You own your copyright. When you publish with Smashwords, you grant Smashwords a non-exclusive right to publish, promote and distribute your book, as well as samples of your book. Because the relationship is non-exclusive, you can publish and distribute via other services, if you wish.
View the complete article at:
https://www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq#copyright
————————————————–
Hmmmmm! So, if the U.S. government doesn’t normally copyright their work domestically, and the Smashwords publishing company doesn’t normally hold any copyright on material they publish —
—- Why were the two Obamacare (2012) related documents changed (?) due to ‘copyright’ issues?
I wonder if there is any way to conveniently view the 2012 versions of the documents.
Unfortunately, since HR3590 has 2409 pages, it would be a monumental task to try to determine what, if anything, was changed on the 2014 version, even if one could find a way to conveniently view the earlier version.
> Why were the two Obamacare (2012) related documents changed (?) due to ‘copyright’ issues?
The answer is easy – Scribd obviously uses a “dumb” system that looks for matches, not knowing and thus not caring if the respective material is actually copyrightable.
It’s like if your photograph of the Mona Lisa (or your wife) looks too much like the Mona Lisa, it will automatically get pulled for copyright infringement.
Welcome to the false positives of an automated world…
(And I’m not saying I like it.)
> it would be a monumental task to try to determine what, if anything, was changed on the 2014 version, even if one could find a way to conveniently view the earlier version
You just need two text copies (not PDF) and a good diff program (any programmer will be able to point you to half a dozen).
My guess is that there is nothing sinister going on here involving the U.S. government.
Based on the following statement in the Scribd emails, I suspect they are just trying to ‘tidy’ up things a bit with Smashwords to be sure that only ONE VERSION of ALL THE SMASHWORDS PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS is available to the viewing public.
In the rather unusual case of these two U.S. government documents, there really is no copyright issue involved. I think Scribd is just sending out ‘form letters’ that are most appropriate for the vast majority of the cases involved.
@ Bruce:
I agree, you are mostly likely correct. I figured though that it was worthy of note here on the blog and wanted to get everyone’s thoughts on the matter.
The only thing that still puzzles me a little is that disappearance of the PDF link on the HealthCare.gov website. By itself I would find it atypical but couples with the PDF’s removal from Scribd.com it becomes at least somewhat suspicious.
I’m probably having one of my “dumb moments” (I hope I don’t have too many of those, lol!) but I don’t understand how Smashwords is related to the documents I uploaded.
I downloaded the documents from a gov website (i.e., HealthCare.) and then uploaded them to Scribd.com
Is it that Smashwords has a copy as well which Scribd.com is seeking that have as the only copy on the website?
@ Lucas:
The following U.S. government link seems to provide some current, pertinent information on the topic:
https://www.healthcare.gov/where-can-i-read-the-affordable-care-act/
For example, I was able to download a pdf copy of the certified full-text version of the Affordable Care Act at:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ148/pdf/PLAW-111publ148.pdf
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