Prisoners copyright their names; claim damages against warden
July 21, 2007 Humor, News, Politics 1 CommentAccording to Techdirt and an article in the British newspaper The Telegraph, several inmates in an Oklahoma City penitentiary tried to coerce the warden into freeing them by copyrighting their own names, then suing the prison for copyright violation. Apparently, the prisoners thought they had arranged with someone outside the prison to freeze the warden’s assets, thereby allowing them to extort him for their freedom. In reality, the outside contact was an FBI agent, and now the prisoners are facing up to an additional 16 years for their foiled plot.
Regardless of the ridiculous nature of this particular situation, it shows that the idea of manipulating copyright law to extort people has spread far beyond the RIAA and MPAA, to individual enterprising criminals. Unfortunately for the four men in this scenario, they don’t have the clout of either the RIAA or MPAA, and so, rather than meeting with resounding success, their attempt to use copyright law for extortion purposes failed miserably.