In Supreme Court Argument, a Rock Legend Plays a Role; New York Times, 10/5/11

Adam Liptak, New York Times; In Supreme Court Argument, a Rock Legend Plays a Role:

"Jimi Hendrix made an appearance at the Supreme Court on Wednesday in an argument over whether Congress acted constitutionally in 1994 by restoring copyright protection to foreign works that had once been in the public domain. The affected works included films by Alfred Hitchcock and Federico Fellini, books by C. S. Lewis and Virginia Woolf, symphonies by Prokofiev and Stravinsky and paintings by Picasso.

The suit challenging the law was brought by orchestra conductors, teachers and film archivists who say they had relied for years on the free availability of such works."

[Op Ed] Will Copyright Stifle Hollywood?; New York Times, 10/4/11

[Op Ed] David Decherney, New York Times; Will Copyright Stifle Hollywood? :

"The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments today in Golan v. Holder, a case challenging the copyright provision of the 1994 act. There are many reasons the justices should conclude that Congress went too far in altering the copyright system."

NinjaVideo "queen" cops to copyright infringement, admits $200,000 in earnings; ArsTechnica.com, 9/30/11

Timothy Lee, ArsTechnica.com; NinjaVideo "queen" cops to copyright infringement, admits $200,000 in earnings:

"Hana Beshara, the co-founder and public face of the NinjaVideo movie-sharing site, has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement. Each count carries a sentence of up to five years in prison.

According to the government, Beshara has admitted to personally earning more than $200,000 from operating the site, and she has agreed to forfeit assets seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year."

Caving to Washington? "Canadian DMCA" expected to pass; ArsTechnica.com, 9/30/11

Matthew Lasar, ArsTechnica.com; Caving to Washington? "Canadian DMCA" expected to pass:

"News accounts say that C-11 is an exact duplicate of Bill C-32, which croaked when the 2010 Parliament dissolved without passing the bill. Now, as then, one of the biggest points of contention will be the provisions regarding "digital locks." These add up to a Canadian version of the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with its DRM anti-circumvention provisions that make a variety of fair dealing (or fair use) activities untenable.

But critics of that portion of the legislation, such as Canadian law professor Michael Geist, suggest that this time around, the government will get its way."

Princeton U. Adopts Open-Access Policy; Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/29/11

Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education; Princeton U. Adopts Open-Access Policy:

"The movement to make research freely available got a high-profile boost this week with the news that Princeton University’s faculty has unanimously adopted an open-access policy. “The principle of open access is consistent with the fundamental purposes of scholarship,” said the faculty advisory committee that proposed the resolution.

The decision puts the university in line with Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a growing number of other institutions with policies that encourage or require researchers to post open copies of their articles, usually in an institutional repository. Unpublished drafts, books, lecture notes, etc., are not included in the Princeton policy, which gives the university a “nonexclusive right” to make copies of its faculty’s scholarly journal articles publicly available."

On the Docket; New York Times, 10/1/11

New York Times; On the Docket:

"The Supreme Court, which returns to the bench on Monday, has so far agreed to hear about 50 cases, including ones on criminal and copyright law, the First Amendment and foreign affairs...

Golan v. Holder, No. 10-545

LOWER COURT DECISION The United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, upheld a federal law that provided copyright protection to works that had entered the public domain, rejecting a challenge from orchestra conductors, teachers and film archivists now unable to use what had once been freely available materials.

QUESTION PRESENTED Whether the First Amendment and the Constitution’s copyright clause prohibit Congress from taking works out of the public domain."

Court Allows Richard Prince to Appeal Copyright Decision; New York Times, 9/15/11

Randy Kennedy, New York Times; Court Allows Richard Prince to Appeal Copyright Decision:

"In a closely watched visual-arts copyright case, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday to permit an appeal by the artist Richard Prince, who was found in March by a lower court to have unlawfully used images by a French photographer to create a series of collages and paintings."

Judge Sets Schedule in Case Over Google’s Digital Library; New York Times, 9/15/11

Julie Bosman, New York times; Judge Sets Schedule in Case Over Google’s Digital Library:

"Google’s plan to build a huge digital library remained stalled on Thursday when a federal judge set a proposed schedule for a lawsuit against the giant search company that could take the case to trial next year."

In Authors' Suit Against Libraries, an Attempt to Wrest Back Some Control Over Digitized Works; Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/14/11

Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education; In Authors' Suit Against Libraries, an Attempt to Wrest Back Some Control Over Digitized Works:

"The copyright-infringement lawsuit brought on Monday by the Authors Guild and others against the HathiTrust digital repository, the University of Michigan, and four other universities could have a major impact on research libraries and the fate of millions of book scans created by recent mass-digitizing efforts. The plaintiffs seek to take control of those files out of the hands of libraries until Congress establishes guidelines for the use of digital libraries and orphan works—those that are subject to copyright but whose rights holders can't be identified or located.

But Paul Courant, dean of libraries at Michigan, said the libraries and the trust are in the right and will go on with their work."

Lawsuit Seeks the Removal of a Digital Book Collection; New York Times, 12/12/11

Julie Bosman, New York Times; Lawsuit Seeks the Removal of a Digital Book Collection:

"James Grimmelmann, an associate professor of law at New York Law School who has closely followed the Google lawsuit, said that a settlement in that case would have provided a framework to decide which use of the libraries’ books was permitted.

“They chose now to go after the libraries in part because of the posting of books online,” he said. “And in part because the Google books settlement has fallen apart.”"

Authors Guild Sues HathiTrust and 5 Universities Over Digitized Books; Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/12/11

Chronicle of Higher Education; Authors Guild Sues HathiTrust and 5 Universities Over Digitized Books:

"The Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors, a Canadian writers’ union, and eight individual authors are suing HathiTrust and five universities for copyright infringement, the guild announced on Monday afternoon."

Musicians win copyright extension to 70 years; Guardian, 9/12/11

Josh Halliday, Guardian; Musicians win copyright extension to 70 years:

"Thousands of music performers, from little-known session musicians to Sir Cliff Richard, will receive royalties from songs released in the 60s for an extra 20 years, under new copyright laws ratified by the EU on Monday.

The legislation – known as "Cliff's law" after its most high-profile campaigner – extends copyright on music recordings from 50 years to 70 years."

IFRRO: Collective Management For Orphan Works; Intellectual Property Watch, 9/8/11

Intellectual Property Watch; IFRRO: Collective Management For Orphan Works:

"The International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO) has submitted comments on the proposed European Union directive on orphan works, which aims to increase legal certainty for use of creative works whose copyright holders cannot be found. The group, which represents collective management organisations, authors and publishers, called for collective management and licensing for orphan works."

Michael Hart, Project Gutenberg's e-book loving founder, passes away; ArsTechnica.com, 9/8/11

Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; Michael Hart, Project Gutenberg's e-book loving founder, passes away:

"Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, has died at his home in Urbana, Illinois at the age of 64. The project he started back in 1971 lives on, however, producing quality public domain texts now readable on devices that could only have been imagined when Project Gutenberg began."

HathiTrust's Growth Strategy: Full-Text Search Coming to WorldCat and EBSCO Discovery Service; Library Journal, 9/8/11

David Rapp, Library Journal; HathiTrust's Growth Strategy: Full-Text Search Coming to WorldCat and EBSCO Discovery Service:

"Today, in separate announcements, OCLC and EBSCO both unveiled plans to integrate full-text HathiTrust search capability into WorldCat and EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), respectively. Once implemented, the deals will make the full texts of all of the 9.5 million-plus works in the digital repository searchable by some of the most widely used discovery tools—and greatly expand the accessibility of the massive HathiTrust corpus."

JSTOR Announces Free Access to 500K Public Domain Journal Articles; Library Journal, 9/7/11

David Rapp, Library Journal; JSTOR Announces Free Access to 500K Public Domain Journal Articles:

"The JSTOR journal archive announced today that it is making nearly 500,000 public domain journal articles from more than 220 journals—or about six percent of JSTOR's total content—freely available for use by "anyone, without registration and regardless of institutional affiliation."

The material, entitled Early Journal Content, will be rolled out in batches starting today over the course of one week. It includes content published in the United States before 1923 and international content published before 1870, which ensures that all the content is firmly in the public domain."

Still A Long Way To Go For Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement; Intellectual Property Watch, 9/8/11

Monika Ermert, Intellectual Property Watch; Still A Long Way To Go For Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement:

"The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiated last year will be open for signature for two years, until the first of May 2013. But while this looks like a long time, it likely will be needed by the 37 negotiating governments (including the United States, Japan, South Korea and the 27 European Union members) to iron out problems on their way to implementing what some rights owners welcomed as a possible new “gold standard” for the enforcement of intellectual property rights."

The Common Sense of the Fair-Use Doctrine; Chronicle of Higher Education, 8/21/11

Pat Aufderheide, Chronicle of Higher Education; The Common Sense of the Fair-Use Doctrine:

"The right of scholars to use unlicensed material for research and publication purposes is clear under the U.S. doctrine of fair use. Fair use—a broad, flexible part of copyright policy determined on a case-by-case basis—permits users to repurpose, or transform, an appropriate amount of original material. If it's so easy, why are so many smart people so scared of fair use? In the work that the legal scholar Peter Jaszi and I have done since 2004, and have synthesized in our new book, Reclaiming Fair Use, we have seen members of many professional and creative communities express that same anxiety. And we believe we understand why: They lack a common-sense understanding of their rights."

O.K., Downloaders, Let’s Try This Song Again; New York Times, 9/3/11

Janet Morrissey, New York Times; O.K., Downloaders, Let’s Try This Song Again:

"Still, Qtrax is relying primarily on the ads linked to the music player to finance licensing fees and to make the company profitable — a business model that many industry experts are skeptical can work. They point to previous hopefuls like Napster, which was sued by the record labels over copyright laws and is now a shadow of its former self (and now charges subscription fees for music) and to SpiralFrog and Ruckus, which had some backing from the major labels but collapsed after failing to raise enough cash to cover royalties to the record companies."

Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist; Guardian, 8/29/11

George Monbiot, Guardian; Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist:

"You might resent Murdoch's paywall policy, in which he charges £1 for 24 hours of access to the Times and Sunday Times. But at least in that period you can read and download as many articles as you like. Reading a single article published by one of Elsevier's journals will cost you $31.50. Springer charges €34.95, Wiley-Blackwell, $42. Read 10 and you pay 10 times. And the journals retain perpetual copyright. You want to read a letter printed in 1981? That'll be $31.50.

Of course, you could go into the library (if it still exists). But they too have been hit by cosmic fees. The average cost of an annual subscription to a chemistry journal is $3,792."

UK Copyright Modernisation Effort Picks Up Steam; Intellectual Property Watch, 8/31/11

Dugie Standeford, Intellectual Property Watch; UK Copyright Modernisation Effort Picks Up Steam:

"Efforts to modernise Britain’s creaking copyright regime sped up over the summer as the government accepted recommendations for major changes to the system, Parliament opened an inquiry into the matter, and the Intellectual Property Office said updating the rules could significantly boost the UK economy."

The Copyright Nightmare of "I Have a Dream"; Mother Board, 8/29/11

Alex Pasternack, Mother Board; The Copyright Nightmare of "I Have a Dream" :

"At the family’s Web site, videotapes and audiotapes of the speech can be purchased for $10 a piece. The family controls the copyright of the speech for 70 years after King’s death, in 2038.

Until then, you’ll most likely have an easier finding ABBA’s version of “I Have a Dream” than King’s."

[Press Release] Universities Band Together To Join Orphan Works Project; Cornell University Library, 8/24/11

[Press Release] Cornell University Library; Universities Band Together To Join Orphan Works Project:

"Leaders at Cornell, Duke, Emory and Johns Hopkins universities jointly announced today that they would begin making the full text of thousands of “orphan works” in their library collections digitally accessible to students, faculty and researchers at their own institutions."

Legislator Calls for Clarifying Copyright Law; New York Times, 8/28/11

Larry Rohter, New York Times; Legislator Calls for Clarifying Copyright Law:

"Arguing that Congress has an obligation “to preserve fairness and justice for artists,” the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee has called for a revision of United States copyright law to remove ambiguities in the current statute about who is eligible to reclaim ownership rights to songs and sound recordings.

“For too long the work of musicians has been used to create enormous profits for record labels, radio stations and others, without fairly distributing these profits to the artists,” said Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, who was chairman of the committee until January."

In France, Publisher and Google Reach Deal; New York Times, 8/25/11

Eric Pfanner, New York Times; In France, Publisher and Google Reach Deal:

"A second French publisher has reached a deal on digital books with Google to settle a copyright lawsuit in exchange for control over how its out-of-print, copyright-protected works are scanned and sold."

$600K Grant to Fund Indiana University-Led HathiTrust Text-Mining Project; Library Journal, 8/12/11

David Rapp, Library Journal; $600K Grant to Fund Indiana University-Led HathiTrust Text-Mining Project:

"The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded a $600,000 grant to a project to be led by the Data to Insight Center (D2I) at Indiana University (IU), exploring ways of conducting secure "non-consumptive" research using copyrighted digital works in the HathiTrust repository."

A Village Person Tests the Copyright Law; New York Times, 8/16/11

Larry Rohter, New York Times; A Village Person Tests the Copyright Law:

"“This is totally different, and outside the scope of these termination rights issues,” said Stewart L. Levy, of the New York firm Eisenberg Tanchum & Levy, who is representing the publishing companies. “The Village People were a concept group, created by my clients, who picked the people and the costumes. It was probably no different than the Monkees when they started. We hired this guy. He was an employee, we gave them the material and a studio to record in and controlled what was recorded, where, what hours and what they did.”"

Jack Kirby Estate Files Appeal in Marvel Superhero Lawsuit (Exclusive); Hollywood Reporter, 8/15/11

Matthew Belloni, Hollywood Reporter; Jack Kirby Estate Files Appeal in Marvel Superhero Lawsuit (Exclusive) :

"The estate of comic book legend Jack Kirby has appealed a U.S. District Court ruling tossing several key copyright claims against Marvel over such iconic characters as Thor, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk and others."

Gunning for the copyright reformers; Guardian, 8/15/11

Frederic Filloux, Guardian; Gunning for the copyright reformers:

"The book's most spectacular deconstruction involves Lawrence Lessig. The Harvard law professor is one of the most outspoken opponents of tough copyright. For years, he's been criss-crossing the world delivering well-crafted, compelling presentations about the need to overhaul copyright. When, in 2007, Viacom sued YouTube for copyright infringement, seeking more than $1bn in damages, Lessig accused Viacom of trying to overturn the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was a de facto defense of Google by Lessig who at the time was head of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University. What Lessig failed to disclose is that two weeks after closing the deal to acquire YouTube, Google made a $2m donation to the Stanford Center, and a year later gave another $1.5m to Creative Commons, Lessig's most famous intellectual baby. To be fair, Levine told me he didn't believe Lessig's positions on copyright were influenced by the grants from Google."

How the internet has all but destroyed the market for films, music and newspapers; Observer via Guardian, 8/14/11

Robert Levine, Observer via Guardian; How the internet has all but destroyed the market for films, music and newspapers:

"As pressure builds to enforce copyright law online, technology companies and the activists they support have started to argue that any attempt to block pirate sites will "break the internet", as though it were an iPhone teetering on the edge of a table. The truth is that the internet is broken already: it's simply too chaotic to provide the infrastructure for a 21st-century economy. This has to change, before newspapers and film suffer declines like that of the music industry. Technology companies have long lectured creators on the need to adapt to a changing changing digital world. It would be a shame if they couldn't heed their own advice.

Robert Levine is the author of Free Ride: How the Internet is Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business can Fight Back"

Don Henley Urges Artists to Know Their Rights; New York Times, 8/16/11

Larry Rohter, New York Times; Don Henley Urges Artists to Know Their Rights:

"Q.[Larry Rohter] You and Sheryl Crow went to Washington back in 1999 and 2000 and convinced Congress to undo language classifying sound recordings as “works for hire,” which had just been inserted stealthily into another, unrelated bill. Back then, were you already looking ahead to today, when artists would have the right to reclaim ownership of their recordings, at the expense of record labels?

A. [Don Henley] The termination issue was certainly part of it. We were concerned with a lot of issues in recording contracts that we considered to be unfair, and this was one of the most glaring. We knew that 2013 was going to be a deadline, and that recordings from 1978 would be the first battle. But let’s go back and talk about the history of work for hire for a minute. “Work for hire” was never intended to apply to sound recordings. That came about because of movies and books. Sound recordings somehow got added to the list, then taken off again."

Record Industry Braces for Artists’ Battles Over Song Rights; New York Times, 8/15/11

Larry Rohter, New York Times; Record Industry Braces for Artists’ Battles Over Song Rights:

"Congress passed the copyright law in 1976, specifying that it would go into effect on Jan. 1, 1978, meaning that the earliest any recording can be reclaimed is Jan. 1, 2013. But artists must file termination notices at least two years before the date they want to recoup their work, and once a song or recording qualifies for termination, its authors have five years in which to file a claim; if they fail to act in that time, their right to reclaim the work lapses."

Universities Join Together to Support Open-Access Policies; Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus, 8/2/11

Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus; Universities Join Together to Support Open-Access Policies:

"Today Kansas and 21 other universities and colleges announced that they’re joining forces to form the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions, or Coapi. The new group will “collaborate and share implementation strategies, and advocate on a national level,” it said in a statement. The group’s members so far include Arizona State, Columbia, Duke, Emory, Harvard, Oregon State, Stanford, and Trinity universities as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oberlin College."

Court Ruling Says Marvel Holds Rights, Not an Artist; New York Times, 7/28/11

Michael Cieply, New York Times; Court Ruling Says Marvel Holds Rights, Not an Artist:

"The ruling, by Judge Colleen McMahon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, declares comics and characters created by Mr. Kirby — who helped give birth to the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men, all of which now underlie valuable movie series — were works for hire under the Copyright Act of 1909, and cannot be reclaimed by the Kirby family."

The Empire Strikes Out: Artist Prevails in British Suit Over ‘Star Wars’ Costumes; New York Times, 7/27/11

Dave Itzkoff, New York Times; The Empire Strikes Out: Artist Prevails in British Suit Over ‘Star Wars’ Costumes:

"BBC News reported that the Supreme Court in Britain, the highest court of appeal for civil cases in that country, ruled on Wednesday that the costume replicas created by Mr. Ainsworth were functional rather than artistic works and thus not fully subject to copyright laws."

Mike Batt: my greatest mistake; Guardian, 7/29/11

Graham Snowdon, Guardian; Mike Batt: my greatest mistake:

"What I didn't fully appreciate was that I was signing a contract that offered me no money, no advance, not even a stipend to live on. Everything I wrote for five years would be theirs to publish on a 50:50 royalties basis. Nowadays you'd go 75:25 or 80:20 in favour of the writer. After that, they'd keep it for the full life of the copyright, 70 years after my death."

Marvel Wins Copyrights Over Kirby Heirs; ComicBookResources.com, 7/28/11

ComicBookResources.com; Marvel Wins Copyrights Over Kirby Heirs:

"The decision is an undeniable victory for Marvel and their new parent company Disney who can now move forward with exploitation of the properties in full faith that they control all rights to the Marvel Universe. CBR legal expert Michael L. Lovitz of Lovitz IP Law put it this way: "Essentially, the Kirby heirs were unable to overcome the presumption that the works were 'work-for-hire' because they were created at Marvel's instance and expense.""

Frank Foster, Jazz Saxophonist And Arranger, Has Died; NPR's Morning Edition, 7/26/11

NPR's Morning Edition; Frank Foster, Jazz Saxophonist And Arranger, Has Died:

"Foster had given away many of his publishing rights in youthful ignorance, which deprived him of substantial royalty payments over the years.

Last year, a team from Rutgers School of Law helped him win back his rights to collect royalties for his compositions, including "Shiny Stockings." Now, the family Frank Foster worried about for so many years will finally be able to collect on the fruits of his legacy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More Frank Foster stories at NPR Music:
In 2010, Foster finally won back the copyright for "Shiny Stockings," among other tunes. A Blog Supreme also posted when he finally signed the paperwork."

Judge Urges Settlement In Google Books Case; Wall Street Journal, 7/20/11

Chad Bray, Wall Street Journal; Judge Urges Settlement In Google Books Case:

"A federal judge urged Google Inc. and groups representing publishers and authors to reach a revised settlement over a proposed digital library of books before the next court hearing in September, saying he would set a schedule for the case to proceed to trial if the parties aren't close to a settlement by then."

Open Information Activist Indicted for Allegedly Stealing Millions of JSTOR Articles; Library Journal, 7/19/11

Aaron Swartz, Library Journal; Open Information Activist Indicted for Allegedly Stealing Millions of JSTOR Articles:

"Aaron Swartz, former tech lead for the Internet Archive's Open Library project and founder of the progressive activist group Demand Progress, was indicted today in federal court for allegedly stealing approximately 4.8 million articles from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the JSTOR journal archive."

Judge calls $1.5M file-sharing judgment "appalling," slashes to $54,000; ArsTechnica.com, 7/23/11

Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; Judge calls $1.5M file-sharing judgment "appalling," slashes to $54,000:

"Sections of the verdict are worth quoting in full; they illustrate Judge Davis' deep common sense about the case and provide a worthwhile framework for thinking about similar P2P cases.

[Excerpt of quote] The Court concludes that an award of $1.5 million for stealing and distributing 24 songs for personal use is appalling. Such an award is so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable...

As for her argument that she caused no harm to the music industry, Davis “rejects her suggestion" and calls for a penalty in order to enforce copyright law, compensate the record labels, and “deter future copyright infringement.”"

Parliament Study: ACTA Not Fully In Line With EU Rules; Intellectual Property Watch, 7/20/11

Monika Ermert, Intellectual Property Watch; Parliament Study: ACTA Not Fully In Line With EU Rules:

"The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) under negotiation by a group of countries including those in the European Union is more ambitious than current EU law and risks problems for access to medicines, concluded a recent study commissioned by the European Parliament Committee on International Trade. But the study stops short of calling for a flat rejection of the agreement."

Why I'm Not Going Near Spotify (and Why You Shouldn't Either); Harvard Business Review, 7/22/11

James Allworth, Harvard Business Review; Why I'm Not Going Near Spotify (and Why You Shouldn't Either) :

"Netflix has become so popular that it recently surpassed the amount of Bittorrent ("pirate") traffic on the web, proving that it's compelling offerings, not lawsuits, that win customer's hearts and minds. But if Hulu and Netflix are so fantastic, what's the concern about Spotify?

Simply put: the way we consume music is fundamentally different to the way we consume movies and TV."

Celine Dion shuts down parody website; Guardian, 7/22/11

Sean Michaels, Guardian; Celine Dion shuts down parody website:

"Celine Dion has taken legal action to force the closure of a blog publishing silly photographs of her, according to reports. Our Lady of Histrionics took offence to the website Ridiculous Pictures of Celine Dion, dispatching her lawyers with a cease and desist order."

[Obituary] Sherwood Schwartz obituary; Guardian, 7/14/11

[Obituary] Guardian; Sherwood Schwartz obituary:

"[Sherwood Schwartz] was admired by Brady fans for his efforts to stop Paramount from harassing amateur theatre groups for copyright infringement when they staged productions based on the Brady Bunch."

French copyright cops: we're swamped with "three strikes" complaints; ArsTechnica.com, 7/15/11

Timothy B. Lee, ArsTechnica.com; French copyright cops: we're swamped with "three strikes" complaints:

"We can appreciate that Hadopi has a broad mission, but the three strikes program, with its threat to actually disconnect people from the Internet over online infringement, is what has drawn worldwide attention to France's antipiracy program. For example, we've been covering American ISPs' recent tentative steps toward a "graduated response" strategy of their own. Those ISPs took great pains to distinguish their own policies from a French-style 3-strikes plan, promising that they would not spy on their users or disconnect them from the Internet. Disconnection as a sanction has almost come under attack from the United Nations and from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, both of which say the penalty is disproportionate to the offense."

[Editorial] A New Try at Curbing Piracy; New York Times, 6/16/11

[Editorial] New York Times; A New Try at Curbing Piracy:

"It remains to be seen whether the new approach will do better in curbing piracy, which is starting to evolve from BitTorrent downloads — currently the main vehicle of piracy — to streaming and other less detectable techniques. But it is well worth a try."

[Podcast] Congress, Copyright and Monkeys; On the Media, 7/15/11

[Podcast] On the Media; Congress, Copyright and Monkeys:

"Techdirt's Michael Masnick talks about the PROTECT IP Act which is a bill making its way through Congress that would allow the DOJ to block sites it deems "infringing" on copyrighted material. Masnick isn't a fan of the legislation. His main critique is that the definition of "infringing" is way too broad. Plus, Masnick talks about standing his ground in a current copyright dispute involving Techdirt, a macaque monkey and a human photographer."

Designers Revisit Copyright Protection; New York Times, 7/15/11

Eric Wilson, New York Times; Designers Revisit Copyright Protection:

"One of the biggest differences in the new bill is that designers would have to prove that a copy is “substantially identical” to their originals, rather than “substantially similar.” And they would have to prove that their designs were truly original, that the defendant’s design was an infringement and that the defendant indeed had knowledge of their work. Also, similarities in color and patterns would not count."

Youth-Culture Photographer Ryan McGinley Sued for Copyright Violation; New York Times, 7/13/11

Randy Kennedy, New York Times; Youth-Culture Photographer Ryan McGinley Sued for Copyright Violation:

"Janine Gordon, who is known as JahJah and is also a musician and multimedia artist, has filed suit against Mr. McGinley in federal court in Manhattan, saying that at least 150 of his photographs are “substantially based” on her work and are violations of her copyright protections."