Do reward-seekers have a duty to minimize loss or harm to a third party? Alice repeatedly commits some tortious act against Bob (say, defamation, or copyright infringement, or breach of contract). Under the principle of mitigation, Bob must take reasonable action to minimize the amount of harm or loss he suffers. That is, once he becomes aware of Alice's tortious activity, he cannot simply allow it to continue with the intention of accumulating loss and suing her for a much greater amount in the future. However, consider the situation in which Bob is not yet aware of Alice's tortious activity, but an uninvolved third party, Charles, does become aware of it. As I understand it, as a third party, Charles would generally have no legal obligation to minimize Bob's losses. But what if Charles intends to report Alice's activity to Bob in hopes of receiving a reward from Bob? (Note the wording &quot;hopes&quot; here; Charles would freely turn over his evidence to Bob without demanding anything in exchange.) Charles supposes that if Bob indeed offers a reward, then it will be proportional to Bob's losses. Can Charles delay reporting Alice's tortious activity with the expectation that she will repeat or continue it, thus causing Bob further loss, and thus increasing the expected value of the reward from Bob? If Charles does so delay his report, then does Bob (or indeed Alice, in the event Bob sues her) have a claim against Charles for the losses Bob incurred after Charles first became aware of Alice's tortious activity? (This question arises from reports I have heard that certain law firms in Germany are proactively gathering evidence of serial copyright infringement and then presenting this evidence to the copyright holders in hopes that those copyright holders will retain the law firms to sue the infringers for damages. I don't know or care whether these reports are actually true, though I am interested in knowing about the legality of this general sort of scenario, for any sort of tort in any jurisdiction.)
Given that Bob has no obligation to pay anything to Charles, who has no legal duty to do anything, I don't see how Charles could have liability to Bob. If Charles wants to, he can decline to pay a reward to Bob or can pay an amount smaller than Charles hoped for as a reflection of Charles' delay.
The party providing the computer, ISp connecting the computer to the internet, or manufacturer of the computer would not be liable. A person wishing to sue for damages would have to establish that the defendant was negligent in their action. The underlying premise is that all parties have some obligation to all other parties to care, to some extent. The inquiry ask haw a reasonable prudent person would behave in this context when pursuing their goals to avoid harming others. A reasonably prudent person would not provide a rack of sharp carving knives on the floor of a daycare center. A reasonably prudent person would provide a rack of sharp carving knives on a work-table at a fish-cleaning business. In both cases, it is possible that a person might cut themselves. In the daycare center, the toddlers on the floor are not assumed to share any of the burden of care, in the fish-store, the employees are assumed to share some of the burden of care. The ISP knows that it is possible that a person will harm themselves when they surf the web, but that does not make them liable for damages when an irresponsible party deliberately and knowingly connects to a nest of viruses, likewise the computer maker. The alternative is that providing an internet connection always makes you liable, or building a computer: that would be the end of SE. Two parties can significantly and reasonably mitigate the risk: the bank, and the customer. The customer can either decline to use this unsafe computer, or they can take precautions, in particular remembering to log out. The bank can also do certain things without harming their interest: providing ample warnings (which they do), or automatically logging a customer out after a period of inactivity (a metric of the fact that the customer just up and left). Banks do that too. The only control that could be reasonably be expected from the company, short of simply not providing a computer in the break room, would be filtering to prevent any access to certain kinds of web sites, such as porn sites, banks, or SE. Filtering for the first type of site is overall consistent with reasonable company objectives (which is to accommodate reasonable employee interests in accessing or transmitting information during the work day). Given the reasonable goals of the company, the jury would not likely find that the company had breached their duty to the employee. The jury balances these interests of the parties, and would determine that the company could not be expected to filter out connection requests to banks, and that they can reasonably rely on prudent actions by the employee and bank to prevent whatever happened.
I am just a foreign patent attorney who is studying common law to pass the California Bar Exam, but I will present my personal view. (I cannot guarantee the validity of my theory) There is an equitable theory called Constructive Trust. If it is established, the victim is entitled to benefit of any increase in value of defendant's (thief) property, meaning in this example victim (plaintiff) can recover $100 million. In order to assert CT, the following must be met: Wrongful appropriation; Here, D stole lottery ticket. Met. D has title; Here, D has title to $100 million. Met. P can trace his property to D's property; P can trace from P's $1 lottery ticket to its possession by D and collection by D of $100 million. Met. Unjust enrichment by D; D was enriched by stealing P's property (the lottery ticket). Met. Thus, it is highly possible that a court will order D to hold the property ($100 million) in constructive trust for P. This means, in plain language, that P will recover $100 million.
Alice has been developing her own enhancements, and they're pretty similar to Bob's. Neither Alice nor Bob has copied the other's enhancements, so neither has violated the other's copyright in the enhancements. Whether that could be proved in court is another matter, of course, but since the original work is licensed under creative commons the question unlikely to arise in court. Would Alice be prevented from coming up with enhancements to her own game if other people could prove they thought of and released the idea first? No. Copyright does not protect ideas. It only protects a particular expression of those ideas from being copied. Theoretically, if two authors come up with identical 500-word descriptions of something and can establish that each did so independently, neither has a claim against the other. The practical problem there, of course, is that it would be impossible to prove such a thing. Could Alice outright claim Bob's "Adapted Material" because he developed it on her original work? Assuming that in publishing his adaptations Bob followed the terms of the creative commons license with respect to the original work, Alice's only claim would be that he copied her adaptations without following the terms of the license. If Bob can show that he did not do so, her claim would fail. In a comment, you wrote: Suppose Alice went ahead and intentionally, somehow provably ripped off Bob's "Adapted Material" because she liked the content so much, does Bob reserve any rights on his adaptation, or is Alice able to commercialize the work that Bob did in extending her original work? If we assume that Bob complied with the license of the original material, we know that he licensed his adaptations under "the identical terms," so Alice would be able to use Bob's adaptations under those terms for non-commercial purposes. Since the assumption here is that Alice provably copied something of Bob's, I think it is fairly clear that she would be liable for damages if she exploited that material commercially without paying royalties.
In the US, there are many possible sanctions A frivolous case, or pattern of cases, can result in a number of punishments: Paying the other side's legal fees -- Mind you, in the U.S, it is normal for each party to pay their own fees, and that will happen in &quot;honest disagreement&quot; type cases in which both parties have a valid perspective. &quot;Loser pays&quot; only happens when a) the loser has filed a ridiculous lawsuit, or greatly burdened the other side with frivolous filings; and b) the winner asks for fees. Transferring other costs to the plaintiff as the court sees fit. Again, winner must ask. Barring a plaintiff from filing future cases, without advance permission from the court. Again, winner must ask! Barring attorneys or firms from practicing in certain areas of law. Disbarment of the attorneys. That is decided by the state's Bar Association, typically a nonprofit trade association who in effect regulates lawyers in this manner. For instance, California is one of only four states allowing cash awards for ADA violations. A clever person named Mr. Molski went around to different restaurants and checked their bathrooms for ADA compliance. If a toilet paper roll was 1/2&quot; out of position from where ADA required, Molski would take notes. Molski checked dozens of restaurants every day, and passed these notes onto a San Francisco law office. The law office filed hundreds if not thousands of these lawsuits against the various restaurants. The lawsuits all claimed that Molski was injured as a result of the ADA noncompliance. Mind you, this was in the age before easy merging of databases and MS-Word documents. Since these hundreds of cases were so similar, they simply made Xerox copies of the relevant paperwork, only leaving a few fields blank to be typed in by hand. To reduce secretarial workload, they didn't bother customizing the date of injury: so all cases claimed Molski was injured on the same day. Hundreds of defendants simply settled for amounts in the $5000 range (about half the cost of hiring a lawyer to grind through a trial). However, one defendant, a Chinese restaurant, fought. Their counsel discovered the hundreds of other same cases, and pointed out to the court that Molski was claiming to have suffered the same injury at dozens of restaurants on the same day. What an unlucky fellow! The defendant then claimed Molski and attorneys were Vexatious Litigants, and the court wholeheartedly agreed. Molski was barred for life from filing any lawsuit without advance court approval (in which Molski would need to show a body of evidence to the court that yeah, a real and valid case was there). The law firm was barred for life from filing any ADA related cases. The law firm folded up, and is no more. The lawyers involved in the case quit practicing law. Then we have Righthaven, who purchased from newspapers the &quot;right to sue and collect damages&quot; for copyright violations. Many bulletin boards, chatrooms, forums and Q&amp;A sites allow/rely on &quot;User Generated Content&quot; (UGC), such as this here answer. They used search engines to find forums where users had copy-pasted newspaper articles. Generally, forums are protected from user behavior by the DMCA. Then, like Molski, they sued the forums, offering a settlement number below the cost of litigation itself. Again, hundreds paid; but a few fought on principle, with support from EFF. Again, Righthaven got destroyed in court - the right to sue cannot be sold. Courts ordered them to pay their victims' legal fees, bankrupting the operation. Prenda tried a similar thing against people who BitTorrent porn. I was in a case where we asked for fees. I got them, with such ease that I am kicking myself for not asking that the plaintiff be declared a vexatious litigant (which would have saved many others from this person). Further, the judge laid a heavy hint to the 3 other co-parties that if they asked for fees, they'd get them too. They did not ask. Amusingly, one of the lawyers who should have asked, was unable to collect from the client. Should have asked...
No. The Creative Commons license seeks to promote recognition of the original author's work through attribution, but does not provide the same framework for enforcement that the DMCA would. The proper approach in cases such as the deleted Wikipedia article and subsequent reuse would be to provide a courteous notice to Wikipedia of your original publication and ask to be listed as the original author or be provided attribution. In the absence of relief there, then what rights you have would be determined by the Wikipedia Terms of Service. Since, and I am assuming here, that you are not generating billions of dollars on the original publication in royalties, seeking to bring a DMCA type enforcement on a Wikipedia article dispute would be like trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer. (or more commonly in divorce, two people having hearing and spending thousands of dollars on attorney's fees fighting over a blender -- they are free to do it, but they would have been much better off buying 500 new blenders...) Keeping perspective and providing a courteous letter is probably your most cost efficient first step in situations like this. And in all areas of law, just remember, you catch more flies with honey than you do with salt. (meaning taking the courteous approach usually affords better results than a scalding letter breathing hell-fire and brimstone) In followup to earlier comment: Presuming you would be covered by the World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty on Copyright of 1996 (as a U.S. Citizen you would be), and your copyright is on file with the United States Copyright Offices (same presumption) as prerequisite to suit, then there is nothing that prevents you from invoking the protections under general copyright law and under the DMCA (inlcuding the Takedown provisions). Note: these are not the only prerequisites to taking action, but instead the minimum critera to qualify, and note this does not pass on the wisdom of doing so (there are often significant consequences to improperly invoking previsions of certain acts).
Seems unlikely that it will "forestall copyright infringement suits". Some jurisdictions, e.g the USA, say that "Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable". On the face of it, in such a jurisdiction copyright can't exist in a randomly generated work. Which the TED talk doesn't mention. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU Let's imagine a case in a jurisdiction where copyright can exist in such a work. There is a dispute between two artists or labels. The plaintiff produced a well known tune and accuses the defendant of copying this work. The defendant says the plaintiff didn't have copyright in that work because it wasn't original in the first place, there is a 1200GB TAR file (compressed file) on GitHub that contains all possible single octave, 8-note, 12-beat melody combos, which were produced before the plaintiff's work. The plaintiff says, "like the majority of the population I never heard of GitHub, let alone downloaded, uncompressed a 1200GB file and listened to every melody." That's all aside from plaintiffs or lawyers deciding they have a case or believing the mere threat of civil proceedings will cause the alleged infringer to acquiesce to their demands. I think they are making a point about the law rather than a realistic means of thwarting copyright disputes. It's reasonable of the creators to say there is a finite set of melodies and the likelihood of inadvertently 'creating' the same melody as someone else may be smaller than we think, maybe copyright law has led to some unjust outcomes and led to a chilling effect on music-making.
If a statement is true, it cannot be defamatory. In your hypothetical, the credit bureau calculates a score based on correct information. There is no false statement anywhere, so there can be no defamation. Can you add some explanation of how giving someone a credit score lower than what his credit history merits is different from simply lying about that person's credit history? When I say "merits" I mean a score that would result in treatment by lenders that is significantly more consistent with what people with similar histories typically get. I presume that credit bureaus use a deterministic algorithm to calculate credit scores, in which case it wouldn't be possible to "give someone a credit score lower than what his credit history merits." More accurately, it wouldn't be possible to do that without bypassing the algorithm in some way. You might be able to argue defamation if you could prove that the credit bureau did in fact bypass its algorithm when it assigned your credit rating. You would probably have to show that your reputation was damaged because someone (i.e., a lender) knew that the ratings were deterministic and drew incorrect conclusions about you based on your incorrect score. The problem here will be to show that the credit rating was erroneous given the credit bureau's algorithm. To do that, you'd have to get your hands on the algorithm, which seems like it would be impossible to do, so you could do the calculation yourself. Even if you can do that, a more likely strategy would be to pursue the credit bureau under the Fair Credit Reporting Act or some other consumer protection law.