Exclusive: German authors, performers call for tougher ChatGPT rules amid copyright concerns; Reuters, April 19, 2023

Foo Yun Chee, Reuters;  Exclusive: German authors, performers call for tougher ChatGPT rules amid copyright concerns

"Forty-two German associations and trade unions representing more than 140,000 authors and performers on Wednesday urged the European Union to beef up draft artificial intelligence rules as they singled out the threat to their copyright from ChatGPT...

"The unauthorised usage of protected training material, its non-transparent processing, and the foreseeable substitution of the sources by the output of generative AI raise fundamental questions of accountability, liability and remuneration, which need to be addressed before irreversible harm occurs," the letter seen by Reuters said."

Publishers Escalate Legal Battle Against ResearchGate; Inside Higher Ed, October 4, 2018

Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed; Publishers Escalate Legal Battle Against ResearchGate

"The court documents, obtained by Inside Higher Ed from the U.S. District Court in Maryland, include an “illustrative” but “not exhaustive list” of 3,143 research articles the publishers say were shared by ResearchGate in breach of copyright protections. The publishers suggest they could be entitled to up to $150,000 for each infringed work -- a possible total of more than $470 million.

This latest legal challenge is the second that the publishers have filed against ResearchGate in the last year. The first lawsuit, filed in Germany in October 2017, is ongoing. Inside Higher Ed was unable to review court documents for the European lawsuit.

The U.S. lawsuit is the latest development in a long and increasingly complex dispute between some academic publishers and the networking site."

The unique legal concept that led to Germany’s weird wifi laws; Quartz, July 30, 2018

Edmund Heaphy, Quartz;  The unique legal concept that led to Germany’s weird wifi laws

"Germany is about to get a lot more free wifi. One of the country’s highest courts has upheld a 2017 law designed to put an end to the effect of a peculiar legal concept known as Störerhaftung as it applies to public wifi networks.

For more than a decade, Störerhaftung—most commonly translated as “interferer’s liability”—meant that providers of public wifi could be held liable for copyright infringement committed by users of their networks. That had an obvious chilling effect: By some measures, Germany, the EU’s largest economy, has around half the number of cafes with free wifi hotspots per capita than countries like the UK, Austria, and Sweden.

The court ruling means that, at long last, German businesses can be confident that the law will protect them from prosecution for such copyright infringement."

Germany’s Latest Best Seller? A Critical Version of ‘Mein Kampf’; New York Times, 1/3/17

Melissa Eddy, New York Times; Germany’s Latest Best Seller? A Critical Version of ‘Mein Kampf’:

"The dual-volume doorstop of a meticulously historically annotated version of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was one of Germany’s best-selling works of nonfiction last year, its publisher said on Tuesday, announcing that it would bring out a sixth run at the end of the month.

Originally published in the 1920s and banned for seven decades in Germany, the new version, “Hitler, Mein Kampf, A Critical Edition,” spent 35 weeks on Der Spiegel’s best-seller list and sold about 85,000 copies, according to the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich.

The success of the critical and annotated version, it said, was proof that the attempt by a team of historians to annotate, criticize and contextualize the original much-reviled work was worth it. The project had been planned to follow the expiration at the end of 2015 of a 70-year copyright held by the state of Bavaria and stirred controversy during the three years it took to complete."

Re-Print of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' Unleashes Row in Germany; Reuters via New York Times, 12/23/15

Reuters via New York Times; Re-Print of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' Unleashes Row in Germany:

"For the first time since Hitler's death, Germany is publishing the Nazi leader's political treatise "Mein Kampf", unleashing a highly charged row over whether the text is an inflammatory racist diatribe or a useful educational tool.

The 70-year copyright on the text, written by Hitler between 1924-1926 and banned by the Allies at the end of World War Two, expires at the end of the year, opening the way for a critical edition with explanatory sections and some 3,500 annotations.

In January the 2,000 page, two-volume work will go on sale after about three years of labor by scholars at Munich's Institute for Contemporary History."

Germany, Italy Leading Resistance To EU Ratification Of Marrakesh Treaty, Blind Union Says; Intellectual Property Watch, 12/10/15

Intellectual Property Watch; Germany, Italy Leading Resistance To EU Ratification Of Marrakesh Treaty, Blind Union Says:

"The World Intellectual Property Organization Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled was adopted on 27 June 2013. In a press release today, the European Blind Union (EBU) said “while a range of countries such as India, Mexico, El Salvador, Argentina, Paraguay, Mali and others have already ratified the Marrakesh Treaty, the EU and its members are still failing in doing so.”...

According to the release, 21 EU member states have expressed their consent for a proposed compromise, while seven members “led by Germany and Italy,” have rejected the compromise and “are forming a blocking minority which stalemates the ongoing ratification negotiations.”...

This week, WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), which negotiated the Marrakesh Treaty, is meeting for discussions on further exceptions and limitations to copyright, this time for the benefit of libraries, archives, research and educational institutions, and people with other disabilities than visual impairment (IPW, WIPO, 7 December 2015)."

German court sentences founder of illegal movie downloading platform to prison term; Associated Press via Washington Post, 6/14/12

Associated Press via Washington Post; German court sentences founder of illegal movie downloading platform to prison term:

"A German court has convicted the founder of an illegal movie downloading platform of breaching copyright laws and sentenced him to four years and six months in prison."

German court overturns injunction against RapidShare; ArsTechnica.com, 7/23/10

Jacqui Cheng, ArsTechnica.com; German court overturns injunction against RapidShare:

"File sharing service RapidShare doesn't have to employ a word filter to combat the sharing of copyrighted files, the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf has now confirmed. The court reversed a preliminary injunction against RapidShare it issued last year, handing the company another legal victory.

Movie distributor Capelight Pictures had won a preliminary injunction against RapidShare for hosting a number of its films, including Insomnia and The Fall, as well as Inside a Skinhead. The court initially ruled that RapidShare had not done enough to prevent the sharing of Capelight's films because it didn't use a word filter, but RapidShare managed to eke out an appeal victory in April by arguing that common English terms, such as "insomnia" and "fall" would cause too many wrong hits with a filter.

A similar argument worked for the most recent decision as well. When it came to Inside a Skinhead, RapidShare said that a filter would hinder people from saving private copies of the file as allowed by German law. The court also said that RapidShare did not have the obligation to stop the dissemination of download links, and reversed its previous injunction.

RapidShare lawyer Daniel Raimer described the ruling as another step in the right direction. "The previously common practice of copyright holders to sue RapidShare on the off-chance there might be something to be gained from it, misunderstanding the realities it is operating within and showing contempt for its business model, will no longer bear fruit. The newest court rulings in Germany and the USA indicate this very clearly."

Indeed, courts in both Germany and the US have recently been issuing favorable rulings for RapidShare. The Düsseldorf appeals court overturned another decision in May, saying that the service can't be held responsible for the actions of third parties and pointing out that various filtering schemes are impractical. In the same month, a US District Court in California denied adult entertainment company Perfect 10's request for an injunction against RapidShare, saying that there wasn't sufficient proof that RapidShare itself had infringed on Perfect 10's copyrights.

The latest rulings are a long way from the days when RapidShare was being told to proactively remove infringing content and found itself facing a possible shutdown. As RapidShare CEO Christian Schmid pointed out, copyright holders may want to reconsider whether it's worth their time to go after file sharing companies (and file sharers)—especially when they seem to be spending so much more on legal fees than what they're getting back in claim settlements."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/german-court-overturns-injunction-against-rapidshare.ars

In Europe, Challenges for Google; New York Times, 2/2/10

Eric Pfanner, New York Times; In Europe, Challenges for Google:

"Google’s most immediate challenges may be in Italy. This month, a decision is expected in a trial in Milan, where four Google executives were charged with defamation and privacy violations in a case involving videos posted on a Google Web site that showed the bullying of a boy with autism.

The company says a guilty verdict might require it to edit content on YouTube before it is posted, which it says, would be incompatible with the open spirit of the Internet, as well as European Union guidelines.

Prosecutors say Google was too slow to remove the video.

On another front, Italian authorities last summer raided the company’s offices in Milan, opening an investigation of Google News, which displays excerpts from online news articles. Italian publishers contend that Google News violates their copyrights, but say they cannot remove their articles from the service without slipping in Google’s search rankings, which would cost them ad revenue. Google says there is no such link between Google News and the search engine."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/technology/companies/02google.html?scp=2&sq=google&st=cse

German beer-hall yodel goes to court in Munich; Guardian, 7/23/09

Kate Connolly via Guardian; German beer-hall yodel goes to court in Munich:

"To the uninitiated it sounds rather like a cry for help from an Alpine goatherd who has trapped his hand in a barn door.

In the world of German folk music, however, it amounts to one of the most popular and lucrative refrains in the yodelling repertoire.

The money-spinning power of "horlla-rü-di-ri, di-ri, di-ri", the famous chorus of the Kufsteinlied, which is capable of making even the hardiest of lederhosen-clad Germans go weak at the knees, has been keenly felt this week in a Munich courtroom battle over who owns the copyright.

The heirs of Karl Ganzer, the Austrian composer of the 63-year-old beer-hall hit which is said to be Europe's most-played folk song, were yesterday successful in their attempts to sue the music publisher Egon Frauenberger, who claimed he had written the song's refrain and therefore had a right to a twelfth of the royalties.

The song is a staple of beer festival gatherings such as Munich's Oktoberfest as well as folk music shows which, because of their enduring popularity, are a mainstay of primetime television across the German-speaking world.

Royalties must be paid each time the song is performed in public."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/23/beer-hall-yodel-royalties-munich