[privacylawthrow]

The law cares about intent and outcome. If you intended to publish Bill Gates' credit card number and did so, and if doing so was a crime, you'd be guilty of that crime. This is true regardless of how you published the information. There is no "out" for putting it behind a pretext.

It's why sharing child pornography is illegal, even though all the creators are really doing is sharing a set of instructions for someone's else's computer to generate the image/video.

[lostcolony]

Sometimes the law cares about intent.

For copyright, it really doesn't. Hence Disney threatening to sue daycares for having Disney character murals on their walls.

While we have since had the four factors of fair use introduced, it still doesn't care about intent; it cares about how the work is used/transformed, but that's different than intent.

[snappieT]

If you take copyrighted material and put it on a daycare mural, then you _intended_ to put copyrighted material on a daycare mural. It is not about intent to damage, it's just pure intent.

[redwall_hp]

They intended to make referential work to characters in our modern common culture/mythology, as people have done since time immemorial. Some rent-seekers merely think they get to own ideas now.

[kryogen1c]

> Some rent-seekers merely think they get to own ideas now.

are you quite serious? Disney doesn't think they own coming of age tales or intrepid children feeling out of place. Disney thinks they own the things they paid to create during the operation of their business.

the daycares Aren't making up their own stories, theyre directly benefiting by using Disney's products without licence or permission. this is the exact opposite of seeking.

[feanaro]

The point is Disney shouldn't really be able to "own" the image of Mickey Mouse for over a hundred years just because they paid for the creation of some initial image.

[sullyj3]

Copyright may or may not be a good idea, but arguing its merits isn't relevant to the question of its current legality.

[lostcolony]

What you're saying is that action = intent. Meaning intent is immaterial; the action is proof of intent. I.e., the opposite of caring about intent.

To prove intent you'd have to prove the daycare knew the works were copyrighted (i.e., the distinction between public domain Snow White, and Disney's Snow White), knew the copyright law sufficiently to know this was infringing (i.e., painting on the interior of a daycare where you're clearly not economically benefiting), and to choose to do it anyway.

Hence why copyright law doesn't take intent into account; 'ignorance of the law is not a defense'.

[drdeca]

This isn't the intent being referred to. They aren't referring to "intent to violate copyright law".

If your intent is to comment on Shakespeare, and it happens that what you produced, when run through some process, produces something under copyright, but the thing you intended to express doesn't, I don't think that would violate copyright law? Or at least, no one would convict you.

[drdeca]

Also, my understanding is that if you can prove that your creation of something was independent of someone else’s creation of the same thing, it isn’t a copyright violation?

[Blikkentrekker]

> It's why sharing child pornography is illegal, even though all the creators are really doing is sharing a set of instructions for someone's else's computer to generate the image/video.

The strange matter is that in the U.S.A., mens rea is an element of the crime of sharing and possessing child pornography, meaning that one can only be convicted if one knew, or could reasonably be expected to know the actor was under a certain age, but this is not the case for actual sexual intercourse with a minor, where one is criminally liable if one could not be expected to know.

In most jurisdictions, mens rea is an element of both.