-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Million pound Usenet indexer found guilty
,----[ Quote ]
| Newzbin was a members-only website and had
| turnover of more than Â1m in 2009. It
| provided members with a search engine for
| Usenet groups. Precise terms of the
| judgement are still to be decided, but the
| site is unlikely to continue in its current
| form.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/30/usenet_search_engine/
'Smallville' producers claim Warner Bros. self-dealing cost them millions
,----[ Quote ]
| The frequency of vertical integration
| lawsuits has slowed in recent years, thanks
| to increased studio efforts to negotiate at
| arms length and new deal language that has
| kept many disputes in private arbitration
| rather than public litigation.
`----
http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/03/smallville-producers-claim-warner-bros-selfdealing-cost-them-millions.html
James Cameron: Innovation trumps digital piracy
,----[ Quote ]
| Oscar-winning director James Cameron says
| the key to combating digital piracy in the
| movie industry is to use technology to
| create an experience that is unmatched
| anywhere other than the theater.
`----
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12261_7-20001201-10356022.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
House Bans File Sharing By Government Employees
,----[ Quote ]
| The House has passed a bill that would
| prevent government employees from using
| peer-to-peer file-sharing software either
| in the office or when accessing government
| networks remotely from home.
`----
http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224200362
IFPI and BPI goons get brought up short
,----[ Quote ]
| THE CROWN PROSECUTION SERVICE has dropped a
| legal case against a seventeen year old boy
| accused of illegally distributing
| copyrighted material.
|
| The boy in question, Matthew Wyatt, was
| seventeen when he was accused of sharing
| three albums and one single and arrested at
| home in front of his parents despite a lack
| of evidence.
`----
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1598767/ifpi-bpi-goons-brought-short
Extortion-Like Mass Automated Copyright Lawsuits Come To The US: 20,000 Filed, 30,000 More On The Way
,----[ Quote ]
| Uh oh. It appears that a group of
| independent filmmakers don't seem to
| recognize the kind of backlash they can
| receive for going to war against file
| sharers. It appears that a company,
| ridiculously named the US Copyright Group,
| has signed up a bunch of independent
| filmmakers, with the unofficial backing of
| Independent Film & Television Alliance, to
| follow in the footsteps of the disastrous
| European automated copyright infringement
| threat letter campaign, and have already
| gone after 20,000 alleged file sharers with
| another 30,000 about to follow. Five
| specific lawsuits have been filed, listing
| the 20,000 IP addresses accused of
| infringement.
`----
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100330/1132478790.shtml
Warner Bros. Recruits Students to Spy on Pirates
,----[ Quote ]
| Warner Bros Entertainment UK is recruiting
| tech-savvy students to help the company
| with their anti-piracy efforts. During the
| 12 month internship the students will have
| to maintain accounts at private BitTorrent
| sites, develop link-scanning bots, make
| trap purchases and perform various other
| anti-piracy tasks.
`----
http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-recruits-students-to-spy-on-pirates-100329/
Who Is That Masked Chocolate Candy? Zorro Slashes M&Ms Over Trademark
,----[ Quote ]
| You may have seen the news that Zorro
| Productions is suing Mars, the makers of
| M&M's, over a trademark infringement claim,
| concerning an M&Ms commercial that
| apparently involves some sort of Zorro
| costume. But wait a second... just like
| Sherlock Holmes, it appears that at least
| some of Zorro should be in the public
| domain by now. Pamela Chestek writes in to
| give her very thorough analysis of this
| particular case, noting that, in some ways,
| it may be setting up some future lawsuits
| concerning the difference between trademark
| and copyright in characters.
`----
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100328/2218238752.shtml
The Economics Of The Music Industry: A Band Has To Work Hard To Get Its Part
,----[ Quote ]
| These days, a lot of that money is up for
| grabs -- and the record labels are upset
| that they're not getting more of it.
| Instead, it may be going to others, such as
| Apple or an ISP or someone else entirely.
| But, really, it's up for grabs -- and
| that's why we see a lot of smart musicians
| figuring out how to take advantage and get
| their share.
`----
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100328/2221168755.shtml
OK Go and the Old Media Model
,----[ Quote ]
| This presages the direction a lot of
| creators and artists will start to take as
| they leave the copyright-mired Old Media
| Dinosaurs behind.
`----
http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.php?perm=593056000000002798
Google Sued For Using The Term 'Gadgets'; Tiny Company Afraid People Will Think They Support Google
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100328/0158548748.shtml
Makers audiobook: direct from the author, no DRM, no EULA
,----[ Quote ]
| I get an additional 20 percent on top of my
| customary royalty if you buy it from me,
| and you get a book that has no DRM and no
| crappy "license agreement" requiring you to
| turn over your firstborn in exchange for
| the privilege of handing me your hard-
| earned money.
`----
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/23/makers-audiobook-dir.html
EU Demands Canada Completely Overhaul Its Intellectual Property Laws
,----[ Quote ]
| Late last year, a draft of the European
| Union proposal for the intellectual
| property chapter of the Canada - EU
| Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement
| leaked online. The leak revealed that the
| EU was seeking some significant changes to
| Canadian IP laws. Negotiations have
| continued and I have now received an
| updated copy of the draft chapter, complete
| with proposals from both the EU and Canada.
| The breadth of the demands are stunning -
| the EU is demanding nothing less than a
| complete overhaul of Canadian IP laws
| including copyright, trademark, databases,
| patent, geographic indications, and even
| plant variety rights.
`----
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4914/125/
High Court Finds Newzbin Liable For Copyright Infringement
,----[ Quote ]
| Newzbin, the Internetâs premier Usenet
| indexer, has lost its High Court case
| against several Hollywood movie studios.
| Justice Kitchin found the company, which
| turned over more than Â1 million in 2009,
| liable for copyright infringement and will
| issue an injunction restricting its
| activities later this week.
`----
http://torrentfreak.com/high-court-finds-newzbin-liable-for-copyright-infringement-100329/
Real Copyright Reform
,----[ Quote ]
| I suggest, is to reallocate copyrightâs
| benefits to give more rights to creators,
| greater liberty to readers, and less
| control to copyright intermediaries.
`----
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1474929
The Politics of Intellectual Property
,----[ Quote ]
| This talk, delivered at the 2006 AALS mid-
| year meeting, briefly addresses the
| politics of copyright legislation before
| segueing into the politics of intellectual
| property scholarship. I urge that the
| metaphor of a âcopyright war,â used by both
| copyright owners and copyright reformers,
| is uncomfortably apt. It reflects a
| polarization of the copyright community
| that has affected copyright scholarship in
| unhealthy ways, encouraging scholars to
| choose sides in the copyright wars and to
| tailor their scholarship to fit.
`----
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1468397
What does Murdoch have in mind?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/mar/26/rupert-murdoch-internet-news-paywall
Times and Sunday Times websites to start charging from June
,----[ Quote ]
| The Times and the Sunday Times are to start
| charging for content online in June.
|
| Users will be charged Â1 for a day's access
| and Â2 for a week's subscription for access
| to both papers' websites, publisher News
| International has announced.
`----
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/26/times-website-paywall
News Corpâs UK Titles To Pull Out Of Nexis
,----[ Quote ]
| An exact date hasnât been confirmed, but it
| was made clear that there will be no access
| to the content of these papers on Nexis
| from around the time the paywall goes up.
| LexisNexis hasnât commented yet.
`----
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-news-corps-uk-titles-to-pull-out-of-nexis/
Does The Timesâs New Paywall Add Up?
,----[ Quote ]
| So here we go. After much speculation, we
| now know that News Corporationâs two
| flagship titles in the UK, The Times and
| The Sunday Times, will charge users to
| access online content starting in June. No
| freebies, no tiered access models, just a
| paywall. And the price, at Â1 per day, is
| the same as the cover price of the print
| edition.
`----
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-does-news-corps-new-paywall-for-the-times-add-up-/
Hollywood Seeks To Kill Off 3D Golden Goose With Much Higher Prices
,----[ Quote ]
| So what's Hollywood doing? They're just
| making it more expensive. Yes, they're
| jacking up the prices on 3D movies, in a
| typical short-term strategy. Rather than
| recognize how this might just drive more
| people to more seriously consider getting a
| 3D setup at home, Hollywood's simplistic
| business modeling seems to be "let's see
| how much we can squeeze out of people as
| quickly as possible."
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100326/0218498726.shtml
Quarter of eight-to-12-year-olds on Facebook, MySpace or Bebo
,----[ Quote ]
| Ofcom's annual Children's Media Literacy
| Audit for 2009 also had bad news for the
| music industry, finding that 44% of
| children between 12 and 15 thought
| downloading shared copies of films and
| music for free should not be illegal.
`----
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/26/eight-year-olds-facebook-bebo
Copyright Problems
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-hnPwEQTR8
World War II Veterans Must Pay To Sing War Songs
,----[ Quote ]
| Veterans of World War II who sang war songs
| at a free concert last year have now been
| told that they must pay fees to copyright
| holders. A collections society says they
| are owed money since the veterans sang the
| songs in public. The controversy has
| prompted an announcement in Russiaâs
| parliament.
`----
http://torrentfreak.com/world-war-ii-veterans-must-pay-to-sing-war-songs-100328/
Economists Urge Government to Stop War on Piracy
,----[ Quote ]
| In an advisory report two economy
| professors are urging a government to
| rethink new anti-piracy legislation
| currently being drafted. The professors
| argue that harsher anti-piracy measures
| will only benefit the large media companies
| and prominent artists, at the expense of
| users and upcoming artists.
|
| The Spanish Government has recently
| proposed new legislation under which
| BitTorrent sites could be taken offline
| without a judicial order. The new
| Sustainable Economy Law, sponsored by Prime
| Minister Josà Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero,
| further includes a wide range of measures
| that are aimed at protecting copyright
| holders from online piracy.
`----
http://torrentfreak.com/economists-urge-government-to-stop-war-on-piracy-100327/
LEGO to Project Legos: Let go of our trademark
,----[ Quote ]
| Toymaking giant LEGO is suing a small
| Minneapolis nonprofit, saying it benefits
| from the high-profile name.
`----
http://www.startribune.com/local/88972362.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU
Want to Use My Suit? Then Throw Me Something
,----[ Quote ]
| Mardi Gras Indians have been around for
| more than a century â more than two, some
| say â and are generally thought to have
| originated as a way to pay homage to the
| American Indians who harbored runaway
| slaves and started families with them.
`----
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/us/24orleans.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Universal Music Funds Yet Another 'Educational' Propaganda Campaign Against File Sharing
,----[ Quote ]
| Back in January, we noted that Chris
| Morrison, the manager of Damon Albarn's
| bands, Blur and Gorillaz, stated at a
| conference that "piracy can be stopped,"
| while also suggesting he wanted to
| personally beat up anyone who shared
| Albarn's music (oddly, this was right after
| he had admitted how much wonderful free
| publicity Albarn had gotten from a leak of
| the Gorillaz album). Now it looks like
| Morrison and a former partner of his are
| involved in a silly and amusing new
| propaganda campaign, funded by Universal
| Music, to try to equate file sharing to
| drunk driving in some cases and racism in
| other cases. Seriously.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100326/0406208731.shtml
Sony accuses Beyonce of piracy for putting her videos on YouTube
,----[ Quote ]
| Sony Entertainment has shut down Beyonce's
| official YouTube site. Congrats to Sony
| Entertainment for wisely spending its legal
| dollars and working on behalf of its
| artists.
`----
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/26/sony-accuses-beyonce.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29
Sony Music Claiming Beyonce's Official YouTube Channel Violates Copyright?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100326/1126168736.shtml
Times and Sunday Times websites to charge from June
,----[ Quote ]
| The Times and Sunday Times newspapers will
| start charging to access their websites in
| June, owner News International (NI) has
| announced.
`----
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8588432.stm
Murdoch Puts Up Some More Paywalls
,----[ Quote ]
| Unfortunately, the details look like the
| rumor was wrong, or the plans changed
| entirely, because now it looks like both
| publications are going with your standard
| everyday super expensive paywall. Starting
| in June, both publications will begin
| charging a whopping Â1 per day or Â2 per
| week for access -- which is actually pretty
| steep, especially in a market where there's
| an awful lot of competition. On a yearly
| basis, it's only a bit less than what
| Newsday is charging for its website --
| which has been a colossal failure.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100326/0239558728.shtml
First Amendment Based Copyright Misuse
,----[ Quote ]
| We are at a crossroads with respect to the
| under-developed equitable defense of
| copyright misuse. The defense may go the
| way of its sibling, antitrust-based patent
| misuse, which seems to be in a state of
| inevitable decline. Or - if judges accept
| the proposal of this Article â courts could
| reinvigorate the copyright misuse defense
| to better protect First Amendment speech
| that is guaranteed by statute, but that is
| often chilled by copyright holders misusing
| their copyrights to control otherâs speech.
`----
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1574385
Fighting intensifies over how to enforce intellectual property laws [UPDATED]
,----[ Quote ]
| One fight stems from the secretive
| negotiations over the Anti-Counterfeiting
| Trade Agreement, which began under
| President George W. Bush. Copyright holders
| have pressed for provisions that could
| force Internet Service Providers to do more
| to combat online piracy, such as cutting
| off broadband accounts that are used
| repeatedly for infringement. Such three-
| strikes provisions are anathema to tech
| advocacy groups, which also fear that the
| agreement would make it harder for them to
| bring some fair-use balance to the
| anticircumvention provisions of the Digital
| Millennium Copyright Act.
`----
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/03/acta-net-neutrality-and-intellectual-property-enforcement-strategy.html
Must Read: CCIA Sets US IP Czar Straight On Intellectual Property
,----[ Quote ]
| The RIAA, MPAA and the Screen Actors Guild
| teamed up to submit their own filing, and
| as the LA Times noted "it's a doozy."
| Consider it a wishlist of protectionist,
| anti-consumer, anti-innovation policies,
| basically demanding that the White House
| prop up their own businesses, because of
| their unwillingness to adapt:
|
| Among other things, the "creative
| community organizations" urged that:
|
| * The federal government encourage
| ISPs to use, and companies to
| develop, monitoring, filtering,
| blocking, scanning and throttling
| technologies to combat the flow of
| unauthorized material online;
| * Copyright holders be able to
| combat infringement by making a
| database of their works available
| to service providers, rather than
| submitting individual takedown
| notices. And once a work is taken
| down, service providers should be
| expected to employ "reasonable
| efforts" to prohibit users from
| uploading or even linking to them
| again;
| * Copyright owners be able to block
| unauthorized streams of live
| broadcasts without going through
| the formal notice-and-takedown
| process;
| * The federal government press
| search engines, social networks,
| hosting companies, domain name
| registrars and online advertising
| and payment networks to cooperate
| with copyright holders on efforts
| to combat piracy ("Encouraging
| these intermediaries to work with
| content owners on a voluntary basis
| to reduce infringements, and
| assuring these intermediaries that
| such cooperation will not be
| second-guessed, should be top
| priories that call for the personal
| intervention of senior government
| officials if necessary.");
| * A federal interagency task force
| work with industry to interdict
| prerelease bootlegs of Hollywood
| blockbusters and crack down on U.S.
| services that assist foreign piracy
| hotbeds;
| * States adopt "labeling laws" that
| "defined unauthorized online file
| sharing and streaming as a felony,"
| giving state and local law
| enforcement jurisdiction to go
| after unauthorized copying online;
| * States use consumer protection
| laws to go after file-sharing sites
| that "expose consumers to
| intrusion, viruses and revelation
| of personal data."
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100326/0500568732.shtml
Textbooks are too expensive, so Italian high school tries to produce them in house
,----[ Quote ]
| Every year italian families must spend
| hundreds of Euros in textbooks for every
| child, while the cost limits set by the
| government are regularly violated in spite
| of denounces and warnings from consumer
| associations. In order to solve this
| problem, Education Minister Mariastella
| Gelmini proposed to deduce cost (and
| weight!) of textbooks by encouraging
| schools to adopt digital textbooks starting
| from 2011.
`----
http://stop.zona-m.net/node/133
Big Content: stopping P2P should be "principal focus" of IP czar
,----[ Quote ]
| Thanks to the recent PRO-IP Act, the US has
| for the first time has an "Intellectual
| Property Enforcement Coordinator"
| responsible for pulling together all the
| resources of the federal government. What
| should the IPEC be doing with her time and
| resources? The "core content industries"
| have an answer: she should turn the online
| world from a "thieves' bazaar to a safe and
| well-lit marketplace" by encouraging
| network admins to deploy bandwidth shaping,
| site blocking, traffic filters, watermark
| detectors, and deep packet inspection.
`----
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/big-content-stopping-p2p-should-be-principal-focus-of-ip-czar.ars
Wishful Thinking And Misinterpreting Surveys Won't Save The News Business
,----[ Quote ]
| Perhaps the most common mistake that
| paywall supporters make is forgetting that
| people haven't paid for the news in 180
| years. Newspaper readers used to pay for
| paper, ink, trucks and delivery boysâand
| often barely paid enough to cover that
| bill. Now they pay for internet connections
| instead. Then and now, the reader only pays
| for accessâadvertising always has and will
| continue to pay for everything else.
`----
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100315/1450128570.shtml
Hammonton Municipal Government to Copyright Public Meeting Broadcasts
,----[ Quote ]
| How exactly Hammonton will enforce a
| copyright of a public meeting baffles this
| author, but looks forward to seeing the
| explanation in Council. Remember, any
| production by the Town of Hammonton is paid
| for by public dollars and owned by the
| public.
`----
http://www.myhammonton.com/?p=1540
Cameron as Future Avatar of Film Industry
,----[ Quote ]
| For some months now, I've been touting
| "Avatar" as a good example of how the film
| industry should be concentrating on
| enhancing the experience of watching films
| *in the cinema* - something that no copied
| DVD can reproduce - thus making
| unauthorised copies pretty much into
| marketing devices that encourage people to
| go to the cinema for the full experience.
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2010/03/cameron-as-future-avatar-of-film.html
Happy Birthday, Gnutella: Pioneering P2P Protocol Turns Ten
,----[ Quote ]
| Still, Gnutella captured the imagination of
| many, one of them being Mark Gorton,
| founder of the New York-based Lime Group.
| Gorton was at the time pursuing a vision of
| automating businesses through structured
| data, and Gnutella, as something that
| could, for example, distribute real estate
| listings wrapped in XML, seemed to fit that
| image quite nicely. Early versions of the
| Gnutella client of Gortonâs LimeWire
| venture were still written with this vision
| in mind, hoping to build a P2P network that
| could eventually be used to do all kinds of
| things with which weâre now familiar on the
| web, thanks to web services.
`----
http://newteevee.com/2010/03/20/happy-birthday-gnutella-pioneering-p2p-protocol-turns-ten/
Why Google Made BitTorrent a Success
,----[ Quote ]
| BitTorrent is undoubtedly the most
| efficient way to share large files on the
| Internet. The key to BitTorrentâs
| widespread adoption can nevertheless not be
| exclusively attributed to its technical
| superiority. Much of BitTorrentâs success
| lies in the fact that it is web-based, easy
| to monetize and indexed by Google.
`----
http://torrentfreak.com/why-google-made-bittorrent-a-success-100321/
UK Anti-Piracy Lawyers Threaten File-Sharing Forum
,----[ Quote ]
| ACS:Law have been making news headlines
| damaging to their reputation ever since
| they started sending out thousands of
| threatening letters to alleged file-sharers
| in the UK. Now they are threatening to sue
| Slyck.com, one of the Internetâs oldest
| file-sharing forums, because they donât
| like what members have written about them.
`----
http://torrentfreak.com/uk-anti-piracy-lawyers-threaten-file-sharing-forum-100322/
Spanish Gov't Moves Forward On New Law To Make File Sharing And Links
,----[ Quote ]
| The news of the approval sparked an
| immediate wave of protest on the Internet.
| Several Web sites that offer unauthorized
| links, such as Cinetube.es, Series
| Yonkis.com and Divxonline.com shut
| themselves down until midnight, showing
| only the message "For freedom in the Web.
| No to the closure of Web [sites]," with a
| black background.
`----
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i6e499b206b4e48ab90c3ba2bc221ac83
MGMTâs Congratulations Leaked Like Watergate
,----[ Quote ]
| Most Americans were too busy tweeting about
| health care to notice, but MGMTâs
| forthcoming album Congratulations leaked
| over the weekend. The band is now streaming
| the whole thing from their website. Full
| disclosure: I listened to about five
| seconds of the first song, and it totally
| justifies that insane cover art.
`----
http://www.crawdaddy.com/index.php/2010/03/22/mgmt-s-congratulations-leaked-like-watergate/
More And More Musicians Embracing Free Music With Subscriptions For Support
,----[ Quote ]
| In many ways, all of this business model
| experimentation is similar to the kind of
| experimentation these musicians do in the
| music itself. That is, they take ideas they
| have themselves, combine it with ideas
| inspired from others, and come out with
| something wholly unique and creative, which
| best matches with their own community. It's
| improvisational business modeling.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100321/2133288647.shtml
Why 'TV Everywhere' Will Fail
,----[ Quote ]
| Taking away choice.
| While Comcast pitches Xfinity as giving
| users more control over content by being
| able to watch what they want when they
| want, the reality is that Comcast is
| locking people into their menu of offerings
| for cable TV. And, most importantly, they
| are giving people the chance to watch
| content on other platforms -- laptops,
| smartphones, etc. -- only if they keep
| paying their cable bills. There is still no
| choice for people who want to pay less for
| just the shows they want. The ultimate in
| customization comes from the Internet,
| where you watch what you want and aren't
| usually forced into bundles of content and
| channels.
`----
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/03/why-tv-everywhere-will-fail081.html
Kulula Responds To FIFA Legal Threats With Hilarious Clarifying Ad
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100323/1141138682.shtml
EMI pawns its pop stars in Â400m rescue bid
,----[ Quote ]
| EMI is in talks to mortgage its back
| catalogue of music recordings in a last-
| ditch attempt to solve its mounting cash
| crisis.
|
| The group is offering rival labels the
| chance to manage its North American
| catalogue business, which includes tracks
| by The Beatles and Blondie, for a five-year
| period.
`----
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article7069841.ece
BBC Link Policy: We Want To Send A Lot Of Traffic To Other Sites
,----[ Quote ]
| It then goes into a list of specific
| policies, which pretty much all focus on
| adding lots of external links to stories.
| Of course, given how UK newspapers are
| suddenly working hard to block links from
| others, you have to wonder if those same
| papers are going to start blocking the BBC
| as well...
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100321/2128518643.shtml
Cablevision Buying Blogs... Will It Lock Them Up Behind A Paywall Too?
,----[ Quote ]
| True to form, Cablevision decided the best
| thing to do with Newsday was to spend $4
| million redesigning and putting up a
| paywall that drove away some writers and
| convinced 35 people to sign up in its first
| three months. Yes, 35. Of course,
| Cablevision insisted that the goal was
| really about reducing churn by offering the
| newspaper website to Cablevision cable TV
| and broadband subscribers, but it still
| seems like a pretty big failure all around.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100322/1356538659.shtml
Frost & Sullivan Analyst Apparently Has Never Heard Of Network TV: Says Video Can't Be Free To Consumers
,----[ Quote ]
| Basically, there's proof that free-to-the-consumer video has worked in the past, and can work again.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100319/1606598639.shtml
Beware of Default Judgments: Captcha Gotcha Spammers Under Digital Millenium Copyright Act
,----[ Quote ]
| Craiglist was told by the spammer that he'd
| sold about $40,000 worth of the autoposter
| software. Craigslist pursued both Digital
| Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. ÂÂ 1201
| ("DMCA") and the TOU (Contract) claims.
|
| The spammer did not hire a lawyer to defend
| the lawsuit and failed to respond to
| pleadings and court notices.
|
| Craiglist obtained default judgments
| pursuant to Rule 55 of the Federal Rules of
| Civil Procedure under both the DMCA for
| statutory damages of $470,000 and under the
| TOU (Contract) for $840,000. The court
| found the liquidated damages clause of $200
| per unauthorized post to be enforceable.
| The court accepted Craigslist's lowest
| estimate of unauthorized posts. The
| spammer, Igor Gasov was held personally
| liable.
`----
http://copyrightlitigation.blogspot.com/2010/03/beware-of-default-judgments-captcha.html
Viacom's Real Intent? To Pretend The DMCA Requires Filtering
,----[ Quote ]
| So please pay careful attention to the
| actual arguments being made here. No one is
| saying that copyright infringement should
| be allowed on YouTube. The only question is
| whether or not it should be YouTube's
| responsibility to proactively monitor that
| content and stop it from being uploaded.
| The law is pretty clear that this is not
| required -- and, as Google's filing makes
| clear, even if it were required, given
| Viacom's own actions, this would be
| impossible.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100319/1740288641.shtml
Hollywood Continues To Make Up Facts; AP Continues To Parrot Them
,----[ Quote ]
| With these big professional reporters, you
| might think they would try to fact check a
| claim like "90% of all "pirated" DVDs come
| from camcorded movies." They might have
| trouble doing that, because the actual
| research suggests something quite
| different. A study that we wrote about a
| few years ago found otherwise.
| Specifically, it found that "77% appear to
| have been leaked originally by industry
| insiders."
|
| But, of course, we need to save the AP,
| because they do real fact checking, right?
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100319/1538218638.shtml
Don't Call Them "Pirates"
,----[ Quote ]
| I agree. Copyright infringers should not be
| called pirates. A pirate is a robber,
| plunderor, predator. The term much better
| describes the patent and copyright lobbies,
| which use state monopoly grants to plunder
| and rob the masses.
`----
http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.php?perm=593056000000002693
Can The Government Use The Term 'Music Piracy' In A Criminal Copyright Trial?
,----[ Quote ]
| Via Michael Scott, we learn that there was
| recently a debate over whether or not the
| government could use the phrase "music
| piracy" to describe the actions of an
| individual who had been charged with
| criminal copyright infringement.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100322/0350068656.shtml
A Supersized Custody Battle Over Marvel Superheroes
,----[ Quote ]
| WHEN the Walt Disney Company agreed in
| August to pay $4 billion to acquire Marvel
| Entertainment, the comic book publisher and
| movie studio, it snared a company with a
| library that includes some of the worldâs
| best-known superheroes, including Spider-
| Man, the X-Men, the Incredible Hulk and the
| Fantastic Four.
`----
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/business/21marvel.html?pagewanted=1
Too Little Too Late: Universal Music Finally Realizes That Maybe CDs Were Too Expensive
,----[ Quote ]
| Uh, perhaps because the market is shrinking
| because people find it too expensive
| otherwise. Either way, this move seems like
| way too little, way too late. Doing this in
| the late 90s might have been a start, but
| this isn't going to get people who have
| stopped buying CDs back into a plastic disc
| fix.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100318/1239478621.shtml
[Satire] Report: Music Industry Made $18 In 2009
,----[ Quote ]
| The Recording Industry Association of
| America announced Tuesday that the combined
| revenue brought in by Warner, Sony, EMI,
| Universal, and countless independent music
| labels in 2009 totaled $18. "The music
| industry is back," RIAA representative Doug
| Fowley said. "Not only was Kenny Chesney's
| Greatest Hits CD purchased at a Knoxville,
| TN Borders for $12.99, but we also had two
| songs downloaded through iTunes, and our
| ringtone sales reached three." Fowley added
| that as long as no one returns or exchanges
| the CD, the music industry would continue
| to be a vital and creative force in
| American culture.
`----
http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-music-industry-made-18-in-2009,17051/
Hotel music charges case referred to ECJ
,----[ Quote ]
| THE HIGH Court has asked the European Court
| of Justice to decide legal issues raised in
| proceedings brought in an effort to have
| hotel operators pay a charge for playing
| copyright music in guest bedrooms.
`----
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0319/1224266596757.html
PITTSBURGH: Music, Copyrights, and Free Speech in the Digital Age
,----[ Quote ]
| In the past 10 to 15 years, music has gone
| from a finite good available only in
| physical form from various brick and mortar
| retailers to an infinite good readily
| available for legal purchase and illegal
| download on the internet. As I write this
| post, I'm listening to music on an iPhone,
| a device smaller than a deck of cards,
| which holds approximately 8 GB of music
| that has been ripped from CDs, purchased
| from iTunes, and downloaded from the
| internet. Music's relatively new status as
| an infinite good has led to an intense
| debate between the music industry and
| consumers. How far may the recording
| industry limit consumers' free speech
| rights to hear and disseminate recorded
| works in the interest of protecting
| copyright? The ACLU event that I attended
| was led by staff attorney Sara Rose, and
| was an attempt to facilitate a discussion
| on this inherent conflict between copyright
| and free speech. However, it became clear
| that many of the audience members lacked an
| understanding of the basic economic,
| ethical, and technological issues impacting
| the music industry in the 21st century.
`----
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/dateline/2010/03/pittsburgh-music-copyrights-and-free.php
Confidentiality Issues Mushroom in the Tribune Bankruptcy
,----[ Quote ]
| The Tribune Co. bankruptcy keeps producing
| juicy legal storylines: a bench smackdown
| of Sidley Austin's proposed $1,100 per hour
| rates, a debate over expensive fee
| examiners, a cameo from Warren Beatty and,
| most central to the case, a possible
| lawsuit against the banks that engineered
| the leveraged buyout that ruined Tribune.
`----
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202446313024&Confidentiality_Issues_Mushroom_in_the_Tribune_Bankruptcy
ACS:Law Now Using Dubious Legal Theories To Threaten Slyck.com
,----[ Quote ]
| Just last week, we were talking about how
| UK firm ACS:Law, who has been condemned by
| UK politicians and ISPs, was still pushing
| forward with its efforts to send out tens
| of thousands of threatening "pre-
| settlement" letters. These letters attempt
| to scare recipients into paying up to avoid
| a potential (though rarely filed) lawsuit
| claiming copyright infringement, based on
| quite weak evidence (an IP address
| collected by DigiProtect after DigiProtect
| purposely puts a file online). The whole
| thing has been called a "scam" by Lord
| Lucas in the UK, and lawyers at the firm
| that initiated this practice, Davenport
| Lyons (and who apparently provided ACS:Law
| with its original documents) were recently
| referred to a disciplinary committee by the
| Solicitors Regulation Authority.
|
| [...]
|
| Of course, in theory, ACS:Law could push
| forward against Slyck anyway, and could
| potentially win in the UK. But given the
| mass scorn being heaped upon ACS:Law right
| now in the UK, combined with a recent push
| in the UK to rewrite defamation laws to
| prevent these sorts of questionable
| lawsuits, if ACS:Law does decide to push
| forward, it may find that the backlash is a
| lot more damaging than some anonymous
| person in a forum calling its plan a wank
| plan.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100321/2136068650.shtml
Making a copyright system that works
,----[ Quote ]
| Today, plagiarism is an honor code offense,
| not a violation of law, and this seems to
| be quite adequate. The defense against
| plagiarism accusations is simple, though:
| simply identify your sources. This informal
| attribution requirement hardly needs
| enforcement.
|
| Formal attribution requirements do carry a
| burden though, of transactional costs
| involved in tracking the information and
| meeting the notice requirements. In this
| way, they are similar to the BSD
| advertising clause that the GNU project
| objected to. So, I think it is reasonable
| to have time limits to the formal
| requirements of attribution, exactly as for
| copyleft terms.
`----
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/making_copyright_system_works
"Piracy" sounds too sexy, say rightsholders
,----[ Quote ]
| For years, we've heard complaints about
| using the term "piracy" to describe the
| online copyright infringementâbut most have
| come from Big Content's critics.
|
| As noted copyright scholar William Patry
| argued in his most recent book, "To say
| that X is a pirate is a metaphoric
| heuristic, intended to persuade a
| policymaker that the in-depth analysis can
| be skipped and the desired result
| immediately attained... Claims of piracy
| are rhetorical nonsense."
`----
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/piracy-sounds-too-sexy-say-rightsholders.ars
Historian warns against copyright-fight heavy hitting
,----[ Quote ]
| Copyright-dependent industries risk
| alienating the public and undermining
| intellectual property laws with their
| unregulated and aggressive tactics,
| according to an historian who has studied
| nearly 400 years of piracy and intellectual
| property law.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/15/historian_copyright_caution/
Better Homes and Copyrights
http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.php?perm=593056000000002760
Response To The White House's Request For Feedback On IP Enforcement
,----[ Quote ]
| The central tenet of copyright law has
| been, "To promote the Progress of Science
| and useful Arts," and the mechanism for
| this is both copyright and patents, or more
| specifically, "securing for limited Times
| to Authors and Inventors the exclusive
| Right to their respective Writings and
| Discoveries." Unfortunately, over the
| years, all too often we've lost sight of
| the beginning of that sentence, in the
| assumption that any increase in those
| "exclusive rights" must surely "promote the
| progress." And, yet, as we have expanded
| and stretched copyright law time and time
| again -- and almost never contracted it --
| no one ever seems to ask for any actual
| evidence that stronger and lengthier
| copyright law leads to promoting more
| progress.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100319/0353418628.shtml
ICANN Threatened by Olympic Committee Over Intellectual Property Concerns
,----[ Quote ]
| The International Olympic Committee appears
| to think it has the rights to all sport,
| given a recent letter to ICANN that raises
| concerns on the .SPORT gTLD proposal in
| particular, and new gTLDs in general.
`----
http://www.domainpulse.com/2010/03/23/icann-threatened-by-olympic-committee-over-intellectual-property-concerns/
Filmmakers Fake Piracy Threat to Boost Sales
,----[ Quote ]
| In a desperate cry for media attention, the
| filmmakers behind the flopped Danish movie
| Winnie & Karina have accused Piratgruppen
| of stealing their film. In two libelous
| press releases they fabricated a piracy
| threat from the local group of copyright
| critics, hoping to draw attention to the
| upcoming DVD-release.
`----
http://torrentfreak.com/filmmakers-fake-piracy-threat-to-boost-sales-100324/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
iEYEARECAAYFAku0b8gACgkQU4xAY3RXLo4+MgCgmwBXroqbSKK1M/gh1tD/iPWK
tCQAn2bJJS4AdgKSx76mSLn2bT/vpSrV
=7ePM
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
|
