The Brief Writer

Chris Gregerson, a stock photographer based in Minneapolis, recently represented himself in a copyright infringement suit against a local real estate firm. Gregerson contended that that the firm mooched pictures off of his photo website and removed his copyright information. The federal court awarded Gregerson $19,462, including damages for the removal of his copyright information. You may read the court judgment here.

The case of United States v. Chalupnik, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 2245 (February 1, 2008), presents a harrowing set of facts for finding tossed-out CDs and DVDs.

As virtually anyone over 25 knows, Columbia House sells CDs and DVDs via direct mail. Due to the amount of undeliverable discs, Columbia arranged with the United States Post Office to gather and discard the undeliverables because it was more costly for Columbia to produce replacement discs than to pay for the return of the undeliverables and restock them.

James Chalupnik, a janitorial supervisor at the post office in Fargo, N.D., saw the discs in the trash, took them out, and enterprisingly sold them to used record stores. He eventually sold $78,818 worth of discs.

Approximately five years after Chalupnik began taking the discs out of the trash, the Postal Service began investigating the disappearance of undeliverable discs at the Fargo post office. A surveillance camera revealed Chalupnik taking the discs out and storing them in a telephone closet.

Chalupnik was initially charged with felony mail theft. Presumably to avoid a felony record and possible jail time, he entered a guilty plea to misdemeanor copyright infringement in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 506(a) and 18 U.S.C. § 2319(b)(3). He was sentenced to two years probation and initially ordered to pay $78,818 in restitution. The restitution order was later overturned, but the case does present the issue of how copyright infringement could have occurred when the property had been abandoned by both Columbia House and the Postal Service.