Is this a conpsiracy theory, or just stupidity?

patchbunny

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patchbunny
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Found this story on CNN about the murders in Florida:

Additional documents released Monday from the Florida Department of Children and Families show a bizarre attempt by Byrd Billings to copyright the children's names and request money from the department for their use.

A department attorney, Katie George, told the Pensacola News-Journal that every time the agency sent Billings a letter referencing the children by name, he would reply with an invoice demanding millions in copyright infringement. In one document released by the department, he demands $10 million in silver or federal reserve notes of equal value.

In a sharply worded letter of December 2005, another department attorney, Richard Cserep, wrote to Billings, "you reference a wide variety of law in connection with this claim" for damages. "This includes copyright violations, trademark violations, contract violations, admiralty and maritime law, libel and the Truth in Lending Act. At no time in any of your correspondence have you made a plain demand for damages under a clear and cognizable theory of liability."

A handwritten note on the letter says that no further correspondence was received from Billings after that letter.
Click to expand...

Anyone come across this before about copyrighting kids' names? Is it part of this whole Freeman thing, or was he just an idiot trying to get money?
 
It sounds like garden variety lunacy with a side of free-range criminal fraudulence.
 
you can't copyright or trademark proper names (otherwise, people would have done it years ago)

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf

What Is Not Protected by Copyright?


Several categories of material are generally not eligible for
federal copyright protection. These include among others:

• Works that have not been fixed in a tangible form of
expression (for example, choreographic works that have
not been notated or recorded, or improvisational speeches
or performances that have not been written or recorded)

• Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols
or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation,
lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients
or contents

• Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts,
principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a
description, explanation, or illustration

• Works consisting entirely of information that is common
property and containing no original authorship (for
example: standard calendars, height and weight charts,
tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from
public documents or other common sources)
Click to expand...
 
The whole "copyrighting a name and demanding money for every notice including it" seems very Freeman on the Land. Its the same basic tactic they use as trying to charge police and courts $5,000 an hour for their time under the delusion that this represents some mystical legal loophole.
 
In a sharply worded letter of December 2005, another department attorney, Richard Cserep, wrote to Billings, "you reference a wide variety of law in connection with this claim" for damages. "This includes copyright violations, trademark violations, contract violations, admiralty and maritime law, libel and the Truth in Lending Act. At no time in any of your correspondence have you made a plain demand for damages under a clear and cognizable theory of liability."
Click to expand...

This bolded part is a Freeman staple, the belief that all courts are admiralty courts, or all courts with gold fringe on the flag (which is most courtrooms), that admiralty law (which the nuts confuse with martial law) is the law of the land. I've even heard that the government claims admiralty jurisdiction over you because when you are born, you come through a vagina, which counts as "navigable waters," which means you're under admiralty jurisdiction your whole life.

Not that this guy necessarily subscribes to all of that nonsense, but seeing admiralty and maritime law mentioned raises a flag for me. A gold-fringed flag.
 
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