n.the assertion of a false claim of copyrightMazzone 2006, 1028Copyfraud, as the term is used in this Article, refers to claiming falsely a copyright in a public domain work. These false copyright claims, which are often accompanied by threatened litigation for reproducing a work without the putative “owner’s” permission, result in users seeking licenses and paying fees to reproduce works that are free for everyone to use, or altering their creative projects to excise the uncopyrighted material.Druga 2010, 147Law professor Jason Mazzone (2006) coined the term “copyfraud” to describe cases where archives assert blanket copyright over all of their holdings regardless of the items’ actual copyright status; Kathleen Butler (1998) and Susan Bielstein (2006) more specifically address the related practice of claiming copyright in reproductions of public domain materials to control their further dissemination. In terms of intellectual property law, Mazzone argues, these actions are thoroughly suspect at best and blatantly illegal at worst.Mazzone 2011, 3In addition to enriching publishers who assert false claims at the expense of legitimate users, copyfraud stifles valid forms of reproduction and creativity and undermines free speech.Mazzone 2011, 18Copyfraud stifles creativity and imposes financial costs upon consumers. False copyright claims lead individuals to pay unnecessarily for licenses and to forgo entirely projects that make legitimate uses of public domain materials. Copyfraud is a land grab. It represents private control over the public domain. Copyfraud upsets the balance that the law has struck between private rights and the interests of the public in creative works.Dryden 2011, 523For example, some place restrictions on uses of public domain photographs, and many more require the repository’s permission for publication and other uses, even though the repository does not own the copyright in the works in question. The term “copyfraud” has been used to refer to false claims of copyright.Light 2015, 54One of the villains is “copyfraud”; that is to say, when you claim copyright ownership over public domain content or when you overreach the law to restrict access to content to which you do not have rights. Jason Mazzone originally coined the term “copyfraud” and called out archives specifically as claiming “blanket copyright in everything in their collections, including historical works as to which copyright, which likely never belonged to the archive in the first place, has long expired.”
