I said they were old. But you can't get the complete story if you just go by the last rendering by the judge. These articles give the history of the case as it was happening. I can't help but think that there would never have been a Ken Burns' Civil War documentary if he left out the readings of diary entries of the soldiers written at the time of a particular battle.
Cats4U
Thanks for finding these
@Cats4U - and you are so, so right! These go into more detail than a court order that had to summarize NINE YEARS of legal wrangling. I thought the judge did a valiant job holding it to just 14 pages, but as we're not downloading, hey, why not get a little bit more backstory?
Feng Tao's argument that US Copyright Law isn't applicable worldwide is correct - each country has its own copyright laws governing intellectual property that are unique to that country, and may not be valid in other countries. As Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe could tell you if they weren't dead, a lack of an international copyright law in their day meant each country's copyright laws only applied to works created and used in that country, which is why both authors lost money when their works were published the US and UK, respectively, without their permission.
What Feng Tao failed to mention is that there are a number of International Copyright Treaties and Conventions that exist today that the US is a signatory to, like the Berne Convention and its supplement, The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty, which was implemented in US law in 1998 by the
(DMCA), which is why its violation by Feng Tao is the reason AASCLA called for a preliminary injunction in the first place. WIPO for the protection of works, such as DRM (). There are 110 signators and 30 ratifying nations - China is both of these.
Those are old, the injunction is dated way later than those articles.
Chameleon
@Chameleon, this is actually the first preliminary injunction issued on March 4, 2014, after Feng Tao et al failed to appear, but you can see how scorched-earth it was. First Feng Tao moved to amend it (2nd article), then AASCLA moved to oppose that and further amend it, with each opposing each other's motions after that. So there was an amended preliminary injunction issued which Feng Tao filed an interlocutory appeal on (I stated earlier they won the appeal, but I misread the ruling - the injunction was affirmed), before AASCLA filed for a permanent injunction in 2019, which was issued in August of 2023. The permanent one had to meet four legal standards: an irreparable injury; legal remedies like monetary damages are inadequate compensation for that injury; an equitable remedy is warranted; and the public interest would not be harmed by a permanent injunction. It was deemed necessary as Feng Tao made it clear they weren't going to comply with the preliminary one.
