Confirmation No Copyright Breach Has Occurred In Twitter Rocket Review

Picture courtesy of Steve Punter

Found an fabulous online resource where you can (for a fee) get legal questions answered by UK lawyers.  I posed two questions to the service

Question

1. UK Copyright Law-
I purchased an ebook (written and published by someone in the UK) and reviewed the contents on a website
The ebook described amongst other things, a way of doing things online to achieve a claimed result. I repeated this process in my own words, in a slightly different order, with annotations as to my experience in performing the process as well as warnings and links to terms of service etc.
None of the ebook contents were copied.
The author of the ebook has made a DMCA complaint to my host who has suspended all of my websites. I have made a counter DMCA back because I do not believe I have infringed copyright at all because I have described a process, not copied any of the contents.

I have not claimed the process as my own.
I was fair minded in my description, being both positive and negative

Can you please advise me whether my thinking is correct.

Answer

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 s30 allows you to review someone else’s work under fair dealing. You also acknowledged the author and never made any attempt to pass of the work as your own.

Also, from what you say, the ebook contained ideas on how things could be done. There is no copyright in an idea only the written expression of the idea. If you expressed that ideas differently, then you have not infringed copyright.

If you have any challenges with this and need an expert opinion, you can contact the Copyright Protection Agency Limited by clicking here: Send them an email with this question and they will give you the definitive answer, however, from what you have said above, you now have the definitive answer…I’m sure that they can give you a second opinion if you need it.

Question

2. Do I have grounds for defamation when someone posts comments on my blog such as “you are a liar, a downright dishonest cheat” ?

Answer

Such statements, if untrue, would certainly give grounds for an action for defamation.

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While the legal advice is probably not going to stop the negative comments I do hope they stay the defamatory ones. As for the copyright one, well I knew where I stood when I wrote it, but alas that hasn’t stopped the nuisance actions of others in causing my sites to be taken down (all of my sites on Blue Host are suspended).

Next step is to look at the financial loss from the frivolous DMCA claim and how that can be recovered.