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by zandjager 2762 days ago
Doesn't the owner first have to claim copy rights on the content for it to be illegal?
2 comments

Nope, copyrights are automatic in the US and EU and for any countries that adopt the Berne convention. It’s illegal to copy and redistribute something you don’t have explicit license for.

Example: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register

For it to be enforced someone has to step forward and claim infringement, but there's no formal requirement for copyright registration any more.
Then several infringement cases have to be opened, in each country according to its specific copyright laws. This may drown the author in costs and time spent to fight these claims that he/she may be discouraged and shut the business down. However this orchestrated "attack" would require coordination from the accusing parties. Further the complexity of such cases requires highly educated lawyers educated in law in cyberspace which means that they are expensive. That is why copyright laws cannot be solved easily in a decentralized way, if they are deemed to be a problem of course. I would claim even that there is no economic feasibility in such infringement claims i.e. there's no money to be made in them directly (acquired from the infringing party) and since the documents are public already, they hold implicitly no monetary value, thus even indirectly there is no money to be made there.