[ubernostrum]

Google doesn't pop up a thing asking me to donate to Tom Scott's fundraising campaign.

Brave apparently does (based on screenshots shared by others; in order to preserve my right to legal action in the future I'm very carefully never going to personally do anything that would require accepting Brave's ToS).

See my other comments in this thread for why A) that's a bad thing and B) if you work at Brave you should quit and hire a lawyer.

[dkhenry]

Neither does Brave, its really clear when you use the browser that you are allocating your funds via the BAT system not "fundraising" on behalf of a person, and its also clear what happens to your funds if the person you allocated them to doesn't want them.

Also the idea your in more legal jeopardy working at Brave, then you are working at any other company is silly. There is a distinction in corporate liability between employees and officers of a company ( its why no Thanos employees have been held liable for the fraud there). It makes me wonder what is going on when I see people participating in such strong fearmongering. Especially when you are flat out wrong on some of the basic legal principles you are discussing.

[ubernostrum]

Like I said elsewhere: these kinds of schemes don't really "work". The best that happens is you get away with it for a while until you accidentally do it to someone with resources.

Are you carefully vetting every single entity whose content you show this pop-up on (regardless of what description you choose to use to spin what it is) to make sure none of them have trademarks that could be enforced against you? Because if any of them do, game over. You can hem and haw and deflect and pretend to be helping creators as much as you like, but you don't have the legal right to appropriate someone else's mark to raise money.

And if you are vetting to make sure you don't pop up on anyone who has a trademark, what if that comes out in discovery when someone goes after you, and suddenly you get to answer questions about whether Brave knew that what they were doing might not be legal (as evidenced by the care they took around trademarks), did it anyway, and now it's really over.

And like I said elsewhere: when the shit hits the fan, what's your personal plan for Brave deciding that all your "helpful" comments here weren't authorized and were in fact misrepresenting them, which led to the terrible misunderstandings that provoked the legal action?

I'm trying my best to help you see the ways this can go badly. I'm also very sincere in my advice of "lawyer up". I'm not your attorney and this isn't legal advice, but I think you should have both an attorney and legal advice.

The folks who've run this scheme in the past were mostly small-time, and the worst that happened was they were forced to stop or retool because they weren't worth the effort of going after properly. Brave has attracted enough attention and money to be a lucrative target for someone to eventually turn into a smoking hole in the ground. Please, for your sake, fix this or get out of it ASAP.

[dkhenry]

The courts have ruled many times using content that is in the public domain is fair use, you have no claim to trademark protection when you place your information on the internet for others to scrape ( you can however opt out, read up on the various Google News fights if you need more info ), but lets say we live in a world where Brave looses that court case, and someone decides this was all illegal. There is no liability for employees who work at the company ( even if they post on a public forum ). In fact it turns out according to the US court system that even if you as an employee _know_ you are violating copyright, and even if you send email's using your corporate account about the known violation, and even if those emails show up in discovery, you are not personally liable ( see Youtube vs Viacom )

You are wrong about this, there is lots of precedent to say this is legal, and even more to say that working at brave is not a legal liability. However I am not your lawyer, nor am I Brave's lawyer, or Tom's Lawyer. I am not at all related to anyone involved in this fight, I am just a lowly internet user who happens to think this is a good model for the future of the internet. Feel free to ignore me and continue to tell people the sky is falling.

[ubernostrum]

The courts have ruled many times using content that is in the public domain is fair use, you have no claim to trademark protection

If you take all your legal advice from people who repost whole movies onto youtube and put "no copyright intended" in the description as if it's a magic talisman, maybe.

But in the actual world, if you use someone else's trademark to make money, you're gonna have a bad time, and part of that bad time will be learning in excruciating detail what "public domain" and "fair use" actually mean.

"Something is viewable by the public on the internet" is not "public domain". Public domain means copyright has expired on the material, or that the material was for some reason never protected by copyright (such as certain works of the federal government, in the US). "Fair use" is a defense that can be raised to claims of copyright infringement, and uses a multi-factor test. None of the factors are "but it was there on the internet for me to take".

Neither of these involve trademarks, which are a different area entirely. Using someone else's trademark for your profit is very much not "public domain" and not "fair use", and will not end well.

[dkhenry]

Your correct that in the real world things are different, in fact here are the real world court cases that in my opinion clearly define the activity of the Brave browser as not a copyright violation.

This case was about google getting money while displaying parts of copyrighted material. The court ruled it was fair use. (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/834877-google-books-...)

This case ( still pending ) was about google being able to display parts of news stories without paying the authors ( the initial ruling was it was legal, but Germany was allowed to impose a "tax", current guidance is that even the tax may not be allowed and Google will be able to display the content ) https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/12/13/technology/13reut...

Since you referenced people who had the same idea as Brave and it was found to be illegal, would you care to reference those specific cases ?

[ubernostrum]

I referenced people who've tried this before and were made to shut down or change tactics before it escalated to a court ruling.

You also keep citing copyright cases. You cited a case where the multi-factor test of fair use was met, without explaining why you think Brave would meet that test.

You have not yet provided evidence of a case ruling that all trademarks are "public domain" free for the "fair use" of anyone for any purpose, and therefore that trademarks provide no protection whatsoever. I await your attempt to do so.