Person Who First Wrote Facebook Status About Copyright Protection Sues Everyone Who Shared It
The Facebook status in question is copyrighted
JOHNSON CITY, TENNESSEE (The Global Edition) – The man who wrote the Facebook status update asserting the legal protection of his authors’ rights in May of this year plans to sue everyone who copy and pasted his status and posted it on their walls without asking. Alan Smithee of Johnson City, TN announced that he “doesn’t normally sue people who copy status updates without asking, but this one seemed too important to ignore”.
“When I successfully protected my authors’ rights by posting this status update, I never dreamed that other Facebook users would be so unscrupulous as to steal it from me. I thought that Facebook of all places would be piracy-free,” the Facebook user said.
Mr. Smithee claims that his lawyer has already started collecting first names, last names, social security numbers, and addresses of the people who shared the problematic status update without previously asking its owner for permission, or at least before writing a “Cool! I will share this on my profile!” comment underneath.
“This is a pretty straightforward case of copyright infringement, so I expect the court won’t hesitate to issue a judgment in my favor,” Smithee says. “It was pure luck that I managed to effectively copyright this status by posting this status, otherwise it would be tough to prove it,” he added.
The last major Facebook status scandal took place last year when founder Mark Zuckerberg was forced to pay seven billion dollars to a sick kid in Africa after almost all of Facebook’s users shared his status update which said “Facebook will donate 5 cents to the sick kid every time someone shares this status.”
