copyright law
RIAA Totally Out Of Touch: Lashes Out At Google, Wikipedia And Everyone Who Protested SOPA/PIPA
www.techdirt.com
Remember all that talk of how the supporters of SOPA/PIPA were "humbled" by the protests of January 18th, and how they had learned their lessons about trying to push through a bill without actually involving the stakeholders? Remember the talk of how they hoped a new tone could be found...
Enough, Already: The SOPA Debate Ignores How Much Copyright Protection We Already Have
www.theatlantic.com
When it comes to copyright enforcement, American content companies are already armed to the teeth, yet they persist in using secretly negotiated trade agreements to further their agenda. In the past weeks, Americans have been realizing that the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) might not have been the Great...
Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA
www.techdirt.com
Here's a bizarre one. With Poland putting ACTA ratification on hold, and Slovenia apparently regretting its signature, now we've got Romania's Prime Minister, Emil Boc, admitting that he doesn't understand why the country signed ACTA. It appears that opposing politicians are criticizing the government and promising that they will suspend...
Can porn be copyrighted? One file-sharing defendant says no
arstechnica.com
The strange case of Hard Drive Productions versus "anyone that the video company's lawyers suspect of illegally downloading its pornographic movies" has taken a new and interesting twist. One of the nearly 1,500 "Does" being sued for allegedly sharing a Hard Drive film online has resorted to what seems,...
Top EU court upholds right to resell downloaded software
arstechnica.com
David Hepburn The European Court of Justice has ruled that customers have a right to resell software they purchase regardless of whether the software was originally distributed on a physical medium or downloaded over the Internet. The ruling is a defeat for Oracle, which had argued that the court...
Tell The White House To Stop Illegally Seizing & Shutting Down Websites
www.techdirt.com
While the public got reasonably upset about SOPA's overreach, and the possibility that it would be used to shut down websites with no due process, what they miss is that the federal government has been pretending that it already has that right under the last change to copyright law --...
Would The US Extradite UK Blogger For Linking To Works In The Public Domain In Other Countries?
www.techdirt.com
James Firth has an interesting post, talking about some of the more ridiculous consequences of current US law enforcement interpretation of copyright law. Looking at the case of Richard O'Dwyer, the computer science student that the US is getting closer to extraditing to the US to face criminal copyright infringement...
Attorney Says Pinterest Needs To Change It Digital Copyright Policy
www.readwriteweb.com
Questions continue to mount about Pinterest's uneasy relationship with copyright law, with one attorney (and avid Pinterest user) saying the company needs to upgrade its Digital Millenium Copyright Act policies or risk being shut down. Connie Mableson, an attorney in Phoenix, offers a point-by-point breakdown of where Pinterest's DMCA policy...
Court Orders ISP To Block Grooveshark
torrentfreak.com
Last year, a group of entertainment companies known collectively as RettighedsAlliancen sent a demand to the Danish Bailiff Court (known locally as Fogedretten) to have the country’s Internet service providers block US-based streaming music service Grooveshark. RettighedsAlliancen chief Maria Fredenslund said that Grooveshark had no content agreements or licenses with...
Copyright conundrum in Oracle-Google case: Is a computer language fair game?
news.cnet.com
The final outcome of Oracle-Google trial will determine whether computer programming languages are subject to copyright law. [Read more]...
The Biggest 'Pirates' And 'Freeloaders' Of Them All? College Professors And Librarians
www.techdirt.com
There's an interesting article over at Law.com highlighting just how many lawsuits there are in which college professors and librarians are fighting back against overly draconian copyright laws. Most of the cases they mention are ones we've discussed here, but it's a good article overall. It talks about the Georgia...
Game makers face uphill battle proving copyright infringement in court
arstechnica.com
The idea of copying a successful game concept and profiting off of your own version is practically as old as the game industry itself—just look at the countless Pong clones released in the wake of the Atari original (which itself may have been copied from another source... but that's...
Photographer Appeals Ruling Saying It's Not Infringement To Have Vaguely Similar Photos
www.techdirt.com
Last summer, we wrote about a simply ridiculous lawsuit from a photographer, Janine Gordon, against another photographer, Ryan McGinley, claiming copyright infringement for taking photos that were at best marginally similar. Seriously, the similarities between these photos is hard to see in most cases, and any claims of actual copying...
How The US Trade Rep Is Trying To Wipe Out Used Goods Sales With Secretive TPP Agreement
www.techdirt.com
For a while now, we've been covering the gradual legal assault on the First Sale doctrine and beyond. The First Sale doctrine, of course, is what lets you resell a legally purchased book without having to first obtain permission from the copyright holder. Of course, copyright holders generally hate the...
Why A Case Testing The Theory That Porn Cannot Be Covered By Copyright Could Be Important
www.techdirt.com
It really was just a few months ago, that we noted an interesting footnote in a legal ruling, in which a judge speculated briefly on the question of whether or not porn can be covered by copyright. There have been a few courts that have suggested, in fact, that pornography...
Exclusive: Publisher sues Tumblr over porn pics
paidcontent.org
It’s finally happened. In a case with big implications for the booming market in photo-sharing, a publisher is suing popular blogging site Tumblr for copyright infringement. In a complaint filed Friday in Manhattan, Perfect 10 claims Tumblr failed to remove unauthorized photos posted by its users. The company, which sells...
Jury rules Google violated copyright law, Google moves for mistrial
arstechnica.com
In what could be a major blow to Android, Google's mobile operating system, a San Francisco jury issued a verdict today that the company broke copyright laws when it used Java APIs to design the system. The ruling is a partial victory for Oracle, which accused Google of violating...
When The Kids Of Major Label Execs Get Accused Of Infringement...
www.techdirt.com
You may know the name Jimmy Iovine. He's the head of Interscope Records, one of Universal Music's most important subsidiaries (if not the most important one). Not surprisingly, Iovine has a bit of a history of being something of a copyright maximalist. A few years back, he specifically called out...
Oracle thinks you can copyright a programming language, Google disagrees
www.theverge.com
Oracle's case against Google has evolved primarily into a copyright infringement suit over the past several months, and with the full trial scheduled to begin this coming Monday, the court is making an effort to get down to the nuts and bolts of copyright law. The judge issued an...
Fair use gets stronger—thanks, "What What (In the Butt)"
arstechnica.com
The guys behind Brownmark Films Brownmark Films Poor "What What (In the Butt)." Once nothing more than a bizarre 2007 music video posing the question "You want to do it in my butt, in my butt?," it went viral, racking up more than 47 million YouTube views to date—until...
APIs cannot be copyrighted, judge says, torpedoing Oracle case against Android
www.guardian.co.uk
Ruling by Judge William Alsup stymies Oracle's aim of winning billions of dollars against Google over mobile operating systemOracle's high-profile lawsuit against Google, in which it claimed that the search giant's Android mobile software infringed both copyrights and patents obtained from Sun Microsystems, is in tatters after the judge in...
Pinterest's uneasy relationship with copyright law: what happens next
www.theverge.com
Pinterest is unquestionably among today's hottest new startups — the social networking service lets users "pin" images they like on the web to boards they can share with friends and publish to the world at large. You can see what your friends are pinning, re-pin things they've liked, and...
Everything Pinterest and Tumblr Users Need To Know About Copyright Law
www.readwriteweb.com
It's hard to write a story or post about Pinterest and copyright law without at least one reader leaving a comment along the lines of "What about Tumblr?" Indeed, comparisons between the two sites are fairly obvious: while Tumblr is more of a blog platform and Pinterest is more of...
Paramount Thinks That Louis CK Making $1 Million In 12 Days Means He's Not Monetizing
www.techdirt.com
One of the more annoying things about debates on copyright law, is that when we talk about alternative business models that do not rely on copyright, some people feel the need to insist that this means making less money -- or, even, making no money at all. There is just...
Supreme Court To Review If It's Legal To Resell A Book You Bought Abroad
www.techdirt.com
This isn't a huge surprise, but it's good to see that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear an important case regarding the first sale doctrine in copyright law, and whether or not it applies to products made outside the US. The specific case is one we've been covering, involving...
Chris Dodd: The Internet Developed Because Of Strict Copyright Enforcement
www.techdirt.com
It's really quite amazing just how badly Chris Dodd still doesn't seem to get what happened in the SOPA/PIPA fight. Every time he opens his mouth to "explain" what happened, he just looks less and less and less aware of what actually happened. His latest discussion on the topic came...
ACTA Vote Tomorrow: Copyright Law Looks Dead, but It Won't Lie Down
allthingsd.com
ACTA, the proposed European anti-counterfeit law, is up for vote in European Parliament tomorrow. After widespread protests in the wake of the defeat of SOPA and PIPA in the U.S., four of the major European parties now publicly oppose ACTA. But the largest, the conservative European People’s Party, is now...
Ireland Signs Controversial 'Irish SOPA' Into Law; Kicks Off New Censorship Regime
www.techdirt.com
Remember how EMI sued the Irish government for failing to pass a SOPA-like law that will force ISPs to act as copyright cops and censor and block access to websites that the entertainment industry doesn't like? Well, apparently, the end result is that the Irish government has now signed the...
UK Entertainment Industry: Fair Use Hurts Economic Growth
www.techdirt.com
Just as we're seeing increased recognition about the importance of exceptions to copyright law in making sure that creativity can thrive, you have a bunch of the biggest copyright trade organizations in the UK putting out a document that completely trashes the notion of copyright exceptions. In a list of...
Getting More People Aware Of The Problems Of Patents & Copyright: Reducing Social Distance
www.techdirt.com
Tim Lee has a great blog post over at Forbes in which he discusses the concept of "social distance" and how it relates to problems in patent and copyright law. The basic point: if you actually know people who are suffering from specific problems, you're much more willing to take...
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