The Copyright Barons Are Coming. Now’s the Time to Stop Them; Wired, 1/31/17

Josh Tabish, Wired; The Copyright Barons Are Coming. Now’s the Time to Stop Them

"FRESH ON THE heels of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, one of the largest pro-copyright lobbies in the United States is asking the newly elected president to increase the powers held by copyright holders.

In a recent letter addressed directly to Trump, the Copyright Alliance— speaking on behalf of high profile members such as the MPAA and RIAA—suggests the President create new digital borders on the internet. The concept is not dissimilar in spirit to the controversial and highly symbolic wall Trump has promised to build between the United States and Mexico or the restrictions he’s imposed on refugees and Muslims entering the country."

YouTube Has Paid $1 Billion to Copyright Holders Since 2007; NBCNews.com, 10/14/14

NBCNews.com; YouTube Has Paid $1 Billion to Copyright Holders Since 2007:

"YouTube has paid out a cool $1 billion to copyright holders since 2007, the company confirmed to NBC News. It's all part of YouTube's Content ID program, which, according to a Google spokesperson, scans 400 years' worth of content every single day for potential copyright issues...

The majority of Content ID's 500-plus partners decide to monetize instead of ban those videos, according to Google, which could explain why the entertainment industry shifted from complaining about YouTube to awarding it a Primetime Engineering Emmy Award in 2013."

The Cloud That Ate Your Music; New York Times, 6/22/11

Jon Pareles, New York Times; The Cloud That Ate Your Music:

"Apple’s Match is a sign that copyright holders are starting to rethink their licensing terms for the cloud, which will make subscription catalogs even larger."

Sunday Times faces £150,000-plus payout over Jimi Hendrix CD; (London) Guardian, 8/6/10

Josh Halliday, (London) Guardian; Sunday Times faces £150,000-plus payout over Jimi Hendrix CD: US companies linked with musician's estate win ruling that paper did not obtain proper copyright clearance for giveaway disc:

"High court judge Sir William Blackburne last Friday ruled that the Sunday Times covermount had delayed by a year the receipt of $5.8m in earnings to Experience Hendrix and Last Experience from the Hendrix concert film. He ordered Times Newspapers to pay damages equivalent to one year's interest on that sum.

The exact damages figure is still being worked out by the two sides' legal teams, but MediaGuardian.co.uk understands it will be just over $250,000."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/06/sunday-times-jimi-hendrix-cd

‘Drop Internet Issues From ACTA, Add Public Interest’; Intellectual Property Watch, 7/17/09

Intellectual Property Watch; ‘Drop Internet Issues From ACTA, Add Public Interest’:

"Nine organisations representing the technology industry, libraries, digital rights and privacy interests have sent a letter to United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk urging that issues related to the internet be dropped from negotiations for an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). They also demanded that in the secretive ACTA negotiation, negotiating documents be made available to those representing the public interest, and that advisory committees be created to include civil society and internet-related industry interests.

The demands are based on information that rights holders alone have had access to the negotiating texts, and the fact that leaked versions of the draft treaty text showed ACTA “could harm a significant portion of the economy as well as consumer interests.” USTR officials, who have claimed the talks are transparent, are at an undisclosed location in Morocco on 16-17 July for the latest round of closed-door negotiations of the plurilateral treaty.

The 14 July letter is available here [pdf]."

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/07/17/%e2%80%98drop-internet-issues-from-acta-add-public-interest%e2%80%99/

Copyright Meets a New Worthy Foe: The Real-Time Web; NewTeeVee.com, 5/21/09

Liz Gannes via NewTeeVee.com; Copyright Meets a New Worthy Foe: The Real-Time Web:

"If you’re a copyright holder and you want to keep up with your pirated content flitting about the web — well, good luck. The way the DMCA is set up means you’re always chasing, and the real-time web is racing faster than ever before. Analytics services are only just emerging that will tell you where your views are coming from on a semi-real-time basis.

That’s especially true for live video streaming sites such as Ustream and Justin.tv...

They’re also working to perfect and sell services so rights holders can monetize unauthorized clips that go viral, turning those views into marketing and revenue. (See our extended feature on this topic.) Adoption of such programs is moving a lot faster than the law...

Another live video company, Livestream (which until this week was called Mogulus), is trying to stand out from Justin.tv and Ustream by monitoring copyright more closely than DMCA requires. Livestream CEO Max Haot tells us his company has adopted aggressive copyright policies such as limiting new accounts to 50 concurrent viewers until they have been verified."

http://newteevee.com/2009/05/21/copyright-meets-a-new-worthy-foe-the-real-time-web/

Copyright Challenge for Sites That Excerpt, The New York Times, 3/1/09

Via The New York Times: Copyright Challenge for Sites That Excerpt:

"Generally, the excerpts have been considered legal, and for years they have been welcomed by major media companies, which were happy to receive links and pass-along traffic from the swarm of Web sites that regurgitate their news and information.

But some media executives are growing concerned that the increasingly popular curators of the Web that are taking large pieces of the original work — a practice sometimes called scraping — are shaving away potential readers and profiting from the content.

With the Web’s advertising engine stalling just as newspapers are under pressure, some publishers are second-guessing their liberal attitude toward free content."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/business/media/02scrape.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=copyright&st=cse

OP-ED: The Kindle Swindle?, The New York Times, 2/24/09

OP-ED, Roy Blount, Jr., Via The New York Times: The Kindle Swindle?:

"The Kindle 2 is a portable, wireless, paperback-size device onto which people can download a virtual library of digitalized titles. Amazon sells these downloads, and where the books are under copyright, it pays royalties to the authors and publishers.

Serves readers, pays writers: so far, so good. But there’s another thing about Kindle 2 — its heavily marketed text-to-speech function. Kindle 2 can read books aloud. And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights...

What the guild is asserting is that authors have a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2’s version of books. For this, the guild is being assailed. On the National Federation of the Blind’s Web site, the guild is accused of arguing that it is illegal for blind people to use “readers, either human or machine, to access books that are not available in alternative formats like Braille or audio.”

In fact, publishers, authors and American copyright laws have long provided for free audio availability to the blind and the guild is all for technologies that expand that availability. (The federation, though, points out that blind readers can’t independently use the Kindle 2’s visual, on-screen controls.) But that doesn’t mean Amazon should be able, without copyright-holders’ participation, to pass that service on to everyone."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=copyright&st=cse

Panel Issues Guide to Using Copyrighted Material in the Classroom - Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/11/08

Via Chronicle of Higher Education: Panel Issues Guide to Using Copyrighted Material in the Classroom

"The guide, to be released today, is called "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media-Literacy Education." The center created the guide over the course of 10 meetings that involved more than 150 educators, and it was reviewed by a panel of lawyers who are experts in fair use—the doctrine that allows people to reproduce portions of copyrighted works for purposes like teaching or scholarship...

The guide argues that discussion of copyright in education has too often been shaped by copyright holders, "whose understandable concern about large-scale copyright piracy has caused them to equate any unlicensed use of copyright material with stealing." The authors say they hope their work will help professors understand their rights better under current law...

Will a misstep on copyright in the classroom get you sued? "That's very, very unlikely," says the new guide. "We don't know of any lawsuit actually brought by an American media company against an educator over the use of media in the educational process.""

http://chronicle.com/free/2008/11/7151n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Opposition mounts to bill enabling US to prosecute suspected IP thieves - Beta News, 9/11/08

Opposition mounts to bill enabling US to prosecute suspected IP thieves:
"The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008 (PDF available here), S.3325, would create a new appointed federal office called the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC), who would report directly to the President. That person would chair what the bill describes as an "interagency advisory committee" on IP law enforcement, as well as serve as the principal coordinator of policy with regard to anti-counterfeiting and anti-piracy activities.
But opponents see this IPEC position as a potential loose cannon..."
http://www.betanews.com/article/Opposition_mounts_to_bill_enabling_US_to_prosecute_suspected_IP_thieves/1221148060