Google Publishes Data on Copyright Removal Requests; PCMag.com, 5/24/12

Chloe Albanesius, PCMag.com; Google Publishes Data on Copyright Removal Requests:

"Google today announced plans to disclose the number of copyright-related takedown requests it receives on a daily basis.

The search giant today released information dating back to July 2011 and said it will update the data every day. "The number of requests has been increasing rapidly," Fred von Lohmann, Google's senior copyright counsel, said in a blog post. "These days it's not unusual for us to receive more than 250,000 requests each week, which is more than what copyright owners asked us to remove in all of 2009.""

Mark Gorton, Man Behind the Music Service; New York Times, 5/24/10

New York Times; Mark Gorton, Man Behind the Music Service:

"Mark Gorton is a confident guy. He’s confident about his ideas. He’s confident about his enthusiasms. And he’s confident that his successes — like making money on Wall Street and promoting alternative transportation in New York — provide a record that backs him up.

But that confidence faces a new test, Joseph Plambeck writes in The New York Times. Two weeks ago, a federal judge ruled that he and the popular file-sharing service he created, LimeWire, were liable for copyright infringement and could be forced to pay up to $450 million in damages.

Mr. Gorton, 43, says he did not think it would come to this point. He thought that the record industry, sometime since the lawsuit was filed in 2006, would come to appreciate his vision for the future of LimeWire — a paid subscription service providing unlimited downloads of licensed songs — and want to join forces instead of continuing litigation...

The Recording Industry Association of America, the industry group that managed the lawsuit on behalf of 13 record companies, said it thought he had willfully skirted the law, motivated by the money generated by the millions of users of LimeWire. Total revenue increased to an estimated $20 million in 2006 from $6 million two years earlier, according to the court ruling, much of it from a paid service that allowed for faster downloads.

“He thought with his cleverness that he could get away with it,” Mitch Bainwol, the association’s chief executive, said. “He’s the Bernie Madoff of Internet crime. He was thumbing his nose at the rule of law to profiteer enormously.”...

“People have a short memory, and they’ve gotten caught up in the mythology of P2P’s being run by ne’er-do-wells and eye-patch pirates,” said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has represented some of the file-sharing services in copyright cases. (Mr. Lohmann was named in the ruling as having given legal advice to the company about how to protect itself from liability.)

“LimeWire was not a fly-by-night operation,” he said...

Mr. Gorton says he has tried to take that same strategy to the record labels to explain the new service he is proposing.

“I tell them to think of Woodstock,” he said. “The first one was free, but it ended up making the industry a lot of money and was a huge success. The second and third ones were very expensive for fans and were failures.”

But before he can hope to make any progress with the labels on his paid service, he will need to get the lawsuit behind him. And given the heated rhetoric from Mr. Bainwol and the record association, the coming negotiations may not be easy.

At a minimum, the record association says, LimeWire needs to shut the current service and Mr. Gorton needs to pay for damages out of his own pocket. A status conference with Judge Wood is scheduled for June 7.

Mr. Gorton says he knows that the music industry needs to alter the behavior of a generation of people who have grown accustomed to getting their music free.

Still, he says that LimeWire has a relationship with that generation that can help make the change. And he says he remains optimistic that, in the end, his idea will triumph.

“I don’t want to be on my deathbed thinking that I kept a bunch of musicians from making money,” Mr. Gorton said. “I have a lot of work to do to get my karma scores up.”"

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/mark-gorton-man-behind-the-music-service/?scp=2&sq=limewire&st=cse

[Documentary] When Copyright Goes Bad; YouTube via BoingBoing.net, 4/21/10

Cory Doctorow, YouTube via BoingBoing.net; [Documentary] When Copyright Goes Bad:

"Ben Cato Clough and Luke Upchurch's "When Copyright Goes Bad" (from Consumers International) is a great, 15-minute mini-documentary on what copyright can do, what it is doing, and what it needs to stop doing. Appearances by Fred Von Lohmann - Electronic Frontier Foundation; Michael Geist - University of Ottawa Law School; Jim Killock - Open Rights Group; and Hank Shocklee - Co-founder of Public Enemy."

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/21/when-copyright-goes.html

EFF's Fred von Lohmann Wins Copyright Award; Electronic Frontier Foundation, 3/30/10

Electronic Frontier Foundation; EFF's Fred von Lohmann Wins Copyright Award:

"EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann was named the 2010 winner of the L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award today.

The American Library Association (ALA) Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) and its Copyright Advisory Subcommittee issues the award to recognize work done in support of fair use and the public domain. The award is named after the late L. Ray Patterson, a copyright scholar and historian that left a lasting impression on the law of copyright, the public domain, and fair use.

Chair of the OITP Copyright Advisory Subcommittee Patrick Newell said, "Fred is a tireless advocate for openness of information and seeking the proper balance between intellectual property protection and the public interest in fair use, expression and innovation."

An award reception honoring Fred will be held on June 25 during the ALA's Annual Conference in Washington, D.C."

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/effs-fred-von-lohmann-wins-copyright-award

Music Labels Win $2 Million in Web Case; New York Times, 6/18/09

Bloomberg News via New York Times: Music Labels Win $2 Million in Web Case:

"The Universal Music Group, owned by Vivendi, and other record labels were awarded $1.92 million on Thursday in the retrial of a Minnesota woman accused of swapping music over the Kazaa Internet service.

The federal jury in Minneapolis said the woman, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, of Brainerd, should pay $80,000 for each of the 24 songs that were posted on the site so others could download them.

The first time the case went to trial, in 2007, a jury awarded $9,250 a song, or $222,000."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/business/media/19music.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=jammie%20thomas&st=cse

High-Def 'Hunt For Gollum,' New Lord Of The Fanvids; Podcast Via NPR, All Things Considered, 4/30/09

Podcast [3 min. 3 sec.] Via NPR, All Things Considered: High-Def 'Hunt For Gollum,' New Lord Of The Fanvids:

"Of course, Academy Award-winning writer-director Peter Jackson might not consider this production a tribute. New Line Cinema, which produced the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the J.R.R. Tolkien family, which owns the rights to the books, might have a thing or two to say about it as well.

It's an interesting question to Fred Von Lohman, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Von Lohman says it's not really clear whether Bouchard and his crew of volunteers are in violation of the copyright for Tolkien's work."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103673352

IPod: Gift 'Fit For A Queen' Might Violate Copyright Law, Online Media Daily, 4/6/09

Via Online Media Daily; IPod: Gift 'Fit For A Queen' Might Violate Copyright Law:

"This week, President Barack Obama gave the Queen of England an iPod preloaded with 40 tracks from Broadway shows. Did doing so violate the copyright law?

Fred von Lohmann at the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the answer might be yes...

Lohmann's point isn't that Obama is potentially a scofflaw, but that the law needs to be changed. As he put it: "You know your copyright laws are broken when there is no easy answer to this question."

Law professor Eric Goldman at Santa Clara University agreed. "It's a neat little question. Can you give a gift of an iPod preloaded with music," he told Online Media Daily. "The answer should be, 'Of course he can.' The fact that it's cloudy at all is, I think, really damning about the state of copyright law.""

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=103489

As Rights Clash on YouTube, Some Music Vanishes, The New York Times, 3/23/09

The New York Times: As Rights Clash on YouTube, Some Music Vanishes:

"In early December, Juliet Weybret, a high school sophomore and aspiring rock star from Lodi, Calif., recorded a video of herself playing the piano and singing “Winter Wonderland,” and she posted it on YouTube.

Weeks later, she received an e-mail message from YouTube: her video was being removed “as a result of a third-party notification by the Warner Music Group,” which owns the copyright to the Christmas carol.

The law provides a four-point test for the fair use of copyrighted works, taking into account things like the purpose, the size of an excerpt and the effect the use might have on the commercial value of the actual work...

The body of law is ever-evolving, and each era and technology seems to force new interpretations. In the 1960s, for example, the Zapruder film, the home movie that captured the Kennedy assassination, was bought and copyrighted by Time magazine. But a judge denied that it could be a copyrighted work because of its value to the public interest.

Many of the offending videos of the user-generated variety like Ms. Weybret’s — as opposed to copies of music videos produced by Warner and its artists — would fall under fair use, according to Mr. von Lohmann, because they are noncommercial and include original material produced by the user.

Others, including Warner Music’s lawyers, might argue that the videos, while themselves created for noncommercial purposes, are nevertheless being shown on YouTube, which is a moneymaking enterprise."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/business/media/23warner.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=youtube&st=cse

EFF Chastises YouTube, Seeks Fair Users; Public Knowledge, 2/4/09

Via Public Knowledge: EFF Chastises YouTube, Seeks Fair Users:

"In a post to the Deep Links blog yesterday, EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann makes it quite clear that he's had enough of Big Content's efforts to squelch fair uses on YouTube. He points to a recent spate of abusive takedowns--largely believed to be the result of a breakdown in negotiations between YouTube and the Warner Music Group--as evidence that the DMCA notice and takedown system is now being used blatantly as a tool for censorship, rather than copyright enforcement. His proposed solution comes in two parts. First, YouTube must fix Content ID, its automatic digital fingerprinting/filtering system...

Second, von Lohmann thinks that it's time for a little impact litigation and he's looking to the YouTube community for help".

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1976

RIAA's New Piracy Plan Poses a New Set of Problems, Via Washington Post, 12/20/08

Via Washington Post: RIAA's New Piracy Plan Poses a New Set of Problems, The RIAA is backing down from consumer copyright infringement lawsuits, but consumers should still be concerned:

"Effectively, RIAA has turned itself into the sheriff, and your ISP into its deputy. Based on the same data gathering and user identification methods that have come under fire from the start, RIAA will now be able to get your Internet access limited or discontinued on its own if it for some reason flags you as an illegal filesharer...

"This means more music fans are going to be harassed by the music industry," saysFred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"The problem is the lack of due process for those accused," von Lohmann continues. "In a world where hundreds of thousands, or millions, of copyright infringement allegations are automatically generated and delivered to ISPs, mistakes are going to be made. ... Anyone who has ever had to fight to correct an error on their credit reports will be able to imagine the trouble we're in for."

In essence, the music industry is trading one questionable practice for another. Striking a deal to deem itself the judge and your ISP the regulator is not the answer -- and it's not going to win the war, either.

What is the solution, then? The EFF suggests RIAA support a "voluntary collective licensing regime" -- basically, a legal peer-to-peer network that'd let music fans pay a small monthly fee for the right to freely trade music. A survey conducted this summer found an overwhelming 80 percent of current peer-to-peer users would be interested in paying for such a system."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/19/AR2008121902930.html?nav%3Dhcmodule&sub=AR

Questions Raised About Google Library Project’s Impact On Knowledge Access, Intellectual Property Watch, 11/26/08

Via Intellectual Property Watch: Questions Raised About Google Library Project’s Impact On Knowledge Access:

"Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, recently raised concerns about Google’s new settlement with publishers allowing the search engine to continue borrowing millions of books from libraries and scanning them to make a digital library.

His remarks were made to an international library copyright event in Chisinau, Moldova on 13 November where he spoke on the subject of “copyright’s ever-expanding empire” addressing digital rights management (technologies for controlling copyrighted content), licences and the privatisation of public information.

The key concern is that the Google project, likely to go into effect in 2010, will be in the private sector, which has different implications than public libraries, which von Lohmann described...

The Google project was settled out of court, which may prevent the outcome from being a precedent, noted von Lohmann, who added, “I think it [the Google project] raises many questions that are going to be with libraries for many years.”"

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1332