Ana Rincon is an idiot.

Her info on how to handle copyright violators is laughable if it weren't so scary and if it weren't for the fact that every body does this when confronted with SOME ONE ELSE'S Copyrights being violated!

Stupid. You do not - and according to the Act CAN NOT - take ALLEGED Copyright violators to court UNTIL you have at least followed the grievance procedures set out BY THE ACT. The Act supersedes any and all other sanctions IMAGINED yet still printed, publicised, adhered to by Colleges, High Schools, Libraries, companies, etc, all blindly thinking they know Copyright Law. The Copyright Act is not huge and nor hard to read. The DMCA bullshit, however, is complicated and is hard to read, but what of it?

The ONLY course of action for you to take when you feel violated is to report the violation to the PEOPLE THAT CAN AND WILL DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT LEGALLY! That would be the US Copyright Office for ALLEGED Copyright infringement. Your College has NO BUSINESS accusing anyone nor imagining anyone of violating copyright law - how can they? No college employee nor student anywhere in the US can legally enforce ANY violation of the Act. Enforcement of the Act is the sole territory of the US Treasury Department. A college employee certainly can not enforce any ALLEGATIONS of same. And yet most schools print in their Policy Manuals words to that detrimental effect. I can not wait to get into the court system over Person A accusing Person B (me, in this case) of violating Person C's copyright, I live for this shit.

If you see a customer copying something at Kinko's, say of a picture taken by a photographer that you know Personally, and you some how, some way, find out that this customer does NOT have the Copyright Holder's permission to copy that picture, is there anything that you can do on behalf of your photographer friend?

Well, yes, there is something we can do to help the friend - one thing, and one thing only: You can call him on the phone and ask him to get his ass down quick to the Local Kinko's, because , "Dude, someone is copying one of your photographs from one of your published books! You better get down here and kick this guy's ass! I talked with a Kinko's employee about it and they said they only refuse to copy the works themselves, unless THE CUSTOMER gives a copy of signed permission form FROM the original Copyright Holder".

And that, my friends, is all that anyone can and is allowed to do under the Copyright Act. In this case, since I am not the copyright holder, I can not accuse nor report this Kinko's customer to anyone except the original copyright holder - period. I cannot complain to the Office of Copyright, the cops, the Kinko's store managers, no one except the original copyright holder. And if the original copyright holder does not care (about this one-time infringement) then I still can not do anything more. That is all.

Look it up: In your State, there are a list of crimes that can be reported and to whom they can be reported. Unfortunately there is no list of alleged crimes that CAN NOT be reported.

The Kinko's case is brought in here because Kinko's the company was once involved in a Copyright infringement case, that ultimately put ALL copy stores and libraries with copy machines "On Notice". The settlement specific to Kinko's was that they must FOREVER and ALWAYS (this now includes FedEx's ownership interest in Kinko's) must refuse all customer requests to make copies of customer's work unless the Kinko's Mange or employee attempting to do the work is ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the CUSTOMER owns or holds ALL copyright to all the work that the customer wishes the Kinko's employee to copy.

ANY and ALL COPYRIGHT infringement can only be PROVED, DISPROVED and SETTLED first with the Office of Copyright, and if not there, then appealed to a COURT of actual LAW. Why do we not know this in America?

How hard is that, really?