Dave Itzkoff, New York Times; Bad Times, Worse Times: Led Zeppelin Sued for Copyright Infringement:
"Led Zeppelin historians have chronicled the creation of that rock band’s early classic “Dazed and Confused” for so long it’s understandable if fans can no longer tell what’s true about its authorship. One thing is for certain: Jake Holmes, a folk singer who asserts he recorded a similar song, also called “Dazed and Confused,” in 1967, says that he is the song’s creator and has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Led Zeppelin and its guitarist, Jimmy Page, as well as the band’s record labels and Mr. Page’s publishing company.
According to court documents filed on Monday in United States District Court in California and reported by TMZ.com, lawyers for Mr. Holmes say his “Dazed and Confused” was first copyrighted in July 1967, and its copyright renewed in December 1995. The song was later covered by the Yardbirds, the blues-rock band in which Mr. Page performed before Led Zeppelin, and the Zeppelin song was recorded in 1968 and released on the band’s self-titled debut album in 1969. (The group broke up in 1980.)
Mr. Holmes’s suit says Mr. Page copied the song “without authorization or permission” and “knowingly and willfully” infringes on his copyrights. A management company listed for Mr. Page said it no longer represented him, and a press representative for Led Zeppelin at Atlantic Records did not immediately reply to a request for comment."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/bad-times-worse-times-led-zeppelin-sued-for-copyright-infringement/?scp=3&sq=copyright&st=cse
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Playboy Sues Drake for Copyright Infringement; New York Times, 6/29/10
Joseph Plambeck, New York Times; Playboy Sues Drake for Copyright Infringement:
"The rapper Drake’s breakthrough single, “Best I Ever Had,” which went from a mixtape to a popular EP, didn’t get to be the best all on its own, according to a copyright infringement suit filed by Playboy Enterprises.
In the suit, which Playboy filed in a California federal court on June 25, the company says that Drake, whose real name is Aubrey Graham, used material from the 1975 song “Fallin’ in Love,” by Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds. Playboy owns the rights to that song. Cash Money Records, Universal Music Group and Universal Music Group Distribution are also named as defendants in the suit. Representatives for Playboy Enterprises, Drake and Universal had no comment.
Drake’s single peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and brought him a pair of 2010 Grammy nominations. The EP called “So Far Gone” that includes the single has sold almost 500,000 copies. Drake’s first full album, ”Thank Me Later” (Aspire/Young Money/Cash Money), sold 447,000 copies in its first week earlier this month."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/playboy-sues-drake-for-copyright-infringement/?scp=1&sq=copyright&st=cse
"The rapper Drake’s breakthrough single, “Best I Ever Had,” which went from a mixtape to a popular EP, didn’t get to be the best all on its own, according to a copyright infringement suit filed by Playboy Enterprises.
In the suit, which Playboy filed in a California federal court on June 25, the company says that Drake, whose real name is Aubrey Graham, used material from the 1975 song “Fallin’ in Love,” by Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds. Playboy owns the rights to that song. Cash Money Records, Universal Music Group and Universal Music Group Distribution are also named as defendants in the suit. Representatives for Playboy Enterprises, Drake and Universal had no comment.
Drake’s single peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and brought him a pair of 2010 Grammy nominations. The EP called “So Far Gone” that includes the single has sold almost 500,000 copies. Drake’s first full album, ”Thank Me Later” (Aspire/Young Money/Cash Money), sold 447,000 copies in its first week earlier this month."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/playboy-sues-drake-for-copyright-infringement/?scp=1&sq=copyright&st=cse
ACTA Risks Long-Term Damage To Democratic Public Policymaking, NGOs Say; Intellectual Property Watch, 6/30/10
Kaitlin Mara and Monika Ermert; Intellectual Property Watch; ACTA Risks Long-Term Damage To Democratic Public Policymaking, NGOs Say:
"An international agreement on intellectual property rights enforcement now under negotiation in Lucerne, Switzerland runs the risk of ushering in a new and undemocratic precedent for international policymaking that could have long-term damaging effects on critical public policy issues, non-negotiating government representatives and civil society advocates said this week.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, they said, could have a chilling effect on access to medications, including the potential to criminalise makers of active pharmaceutical ingredients who are critical to the generics industry, and could cause serious problems for internet freedom.
The 28 June event in Geneva was cosponsored by Knowledge Ecology International and IQsensato.
More worrying, they added, is that while currently an initiative of a few countries, its ultimate aim seems to be to become universal. The negotiating process seems to follow on the heels of the trend of countries shopping for easy fora through which to push the same increasing intellectual property enforcement agenda. Denied enforcement actions in places such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Customs Organization and elsewhere, these countries are now creating their own forum under ACTA.
This platform can then be used to foist burdensome enforcement strategies on the rest of the world through bilateral and regional agreements. If such a strategy is allowed to succeed, they argue, it could have follow-on effects far outside the intellectual property sphere.
While it is probably too late to stop, the ACTA could be saved if its real targets act, said Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa and a staunch critic of the ACTA process to date.
At the “end of the day, ACTA is about Brazil, India” and other emerging economies, Geist said. If those countries “who are the targets [and] who have for too long sat on the sidelines and said they weren’t part of the process … are willing to stand up and be more aggressive,” then ACTA could be turned into something that would not risk upsetting a balanced IP regime.
ACTA’s ninth negotiating session is taking place in this week in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Negotiators in Lucerne on Monday met with nongovernmental organisations and later the Pirate Party. For one and a half hours the Berne Declaration and several other nongovernmental organisations presented their concerns to the delegations of Australia, Canada, European Union, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States who are negotiating the agreement."
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/06/30/acta-risks-long-term-damage-to-democratic-public-policymaking-ngos-say/
"An international agreement on intellectual property rights enforcement now under negotiation in Lucerne, Switzerland runs the risk of ushering in a new and undemocratic precedent for international policymaking that could have long-term damaging effects on critical public policy issues, non-negotiating government representatives and civil society advocates said this week.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, they said, could have a chilling effect on access to medications, including the potential to criminalise makers of active pharmaceutical ingredients who are critical to the generics industry, and could cause serious problems for internet freedom.
The 28 June event in Geneva was cosponsored by Knowledge Ecology International and IQsensato.
More worrying, they added, is that while currently an initiative of a few countries, its ultimate aim seems to be to become universal. The negotiating process seems to follow on the heels of the trend of countries shopping for easy fora through which to push the same increasing intellectual property enforcement agenda. Denied enforcement actions in places such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Customs Organization and elsewhere, these countries are now creating their own forum under ACTA.
This platform can then be used to foist burdensome enforcement strategies on the rest of the world through bilateral and regional agreements. If such a strategy is allowed to succeed, they argue, it could have follow-on effects far outside the intellectual property sphere.
While it is probably too late to stop, the ACTA could be saved if its real targets act, said Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa and a staunch critic of the ACTA process to date.
At the “end of the day, ACTA is about Brazil, India” and other emerging economies, Geist said. If those countries “who are the targets [and] who have for too long sat on the sidelines and said they weren’t part of the process … are willing to stand up and be more aggressive,” then ACTA could be turned into something that would not risk upsetting a balanced IP regime.
ACTA’s ninth negotiating session is taking place in this week in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Negotiators in Lucerne on Monday met with nongovernmental organisations and later the Pirate Party. For one and a half hours the Berne Declaration and several other nongovernmental organisations presented their concerns to the delegations of Australia, Canada, European Union, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States who are negotiating the agreement."
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/06/30/acta-risks-long-term-damage-to-democratic-public-policymaking-ngos-say/
ACTA A Sign Of Weakness In Multilateral System, WIPO Head Says; Intellectual Property Watch, 6/30/10
Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch; ACTA A Sign Of Weakness In Multilateral System, WIPO Head Says:
"The plurilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and other such regional negotiations are a “bad development” for multilateral agencies, the World Intellectual Property Organization director general has told Intellectual Property Watch.
Asked about this week’s ACTA negotiation in Lucerne, Switzerland (IPW, Enforcement, 26 June 2010), Gurry said it is an example of the difficulty of the United Nations and the rest of the multilateral system have providing swift answers to international problems.
WIPO Director General Francis Gurry told UN journalists on 29 June that the inability to provide answers could lead to member states taking matters into their own hands to seek solutions outside of the multilateral system to the detriment of inclusiveness of the present system.
There is an increasing number of issues that can only be addressed internationally, which is bringing a challenge to the whole UN system, highlighting its inability to address them, Gurry said. Despite that “surge for international agreements, we are not seeing international agreements flowing out very easily,” he said.
If “you look across the system, in all organisations, you are not seeing agreements being concluded on a daily basis,” even if the speed with which interconnection has intensified would suggest that agreements are needed, he said. But he did not offer clear ideas on how to solve the delays.
“A number of countries feel [there is] an important area of public policy they are not able to address in a multilateral forum, and so have gone outside the multilateral framework to satisfy their desire for creating some form of ‘international’ cooperation,” Gurry told Intellectual Property Watch in an interview last week. “That’s the challenge, for us. And whether it concerns enforcement, ACTA, or any other area, that, on the whole, is a bad development for a multilateral agency, that member states start to do things outside.”
“Either the machinery works, or it doesn’t,” he said. “That I think is the real significance of ACTA.
The frustration it has caused is a consequence of practical issues not being addressed, he said, citing recent difficult discussions in the Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights on increased access for visually impaired persons. “Can anyone not subscribe to that principle, as a general rule?” he asked, with visually impaired readers only obtaining access to about five percent of all published work in reasonable time.
“Can anyone stand up and say that they should not have more [access], that we should not do something about it?” It is such an obvious question, he said “but we are not getting an agreement” although the last meeting showed genuine involvement of member countries.
“This is the frustration that we are all feeling,” he said, and it leads to other ways to reach solutions."
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/06/30/acta-a-sign-of-weakness-in-multilateral-system-wipo-head-says/
"The plurilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and other such regional negotiations are a “bad development” for multilateral agencies, the World Intellectual Property Organization director general has told Intellectual Property Watch.
Asked about this week’s ACTA negotiation in Lucerne, Switzerland (IPW, Enforcement, 26 June 2010), Gurry said it is an example of the difficulty of the United Nations and the rest of the multilateral system have providing swift answers to international problems.
WIPO Director General Francis Gurry told UN journalists on 29 June that the inability to provide answers could lead to member states taking matters into their own hands to seek solutions outside of the multilateral system to the detriment of inclusiveness of the present system.
There is an increasing number of issues that can only be addressed internationally, which is bringing a challenge to the whole UN system, highlighting its inability to address them, Gurry said. Despite that “surge for international agreements, we are not seeing international agreements flowing out very easily,” he said.
If “you look across the system, in all organisations, you are not seeing agreements being concluded on a daily basis,” even if the speed with which interconnection has intensified would suggest that agreements are needed, he said. But he did not offer clear ideas on how to solve the delays.
“A number of countries feel [there is] an important area of public policy they are not able to address in a multilateral forum, and so have gone outside the multilateral framework to satisfy their desire for creating some form of ‘international’ cooperation,” Gurry told Intellectual Property Watch in an interview last week. “That’s the challenge, for us. And whether it concerns enforcement, ACTA, or any other area, that, on the whole, is a bad development for a multilateral agency, that member states start to do things outside.”
“Either the machinery works, or it doesn’t,” he said. “That I think is the real significance of ACTA.
The frustration it has caused is a consequence of practical issues not being addressed, he said, citing recent difficult discussions in the Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights on increased access for visually impaired persons. “Can anyone not subscribe to that principle, as a general rule?” he asked, with visually impaired readers only obtaining access to about five percent of all published work in reasonable time.
“Can anyone stand up and say that they should not have more [access], that we should not do something about it?” It is such an obvious question, he said “but we are not getting an agreement” although the last meeting showed genuine involvement of member countries.
“This is the frustration that we are all feeling,” he said, and it leads to other ways to reach solutions."
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/06/30/acta-a-sign-of-weakness-in-multilateral-system-wipo-head-says/
Stores See Google as Ally in E-Book Market; New York Times, 6/30/10
Brad Stone, New York Times; Stores See Google as Ally in E-Book Market:
"Independent bookstores were battered first by discount chains like Barnes & Noble, then by superefficient Web retailers like Amazon.com.
Darin Sennett of Powell’s said a Google deal would make the store independent of the e-readers sold by the big booksellers.
Now the electronic book age is dawning. With this latest challenge, these stores will soon have a new ally: the search giant Google.
Later this summer, Google plans to introduce its long-awaited push into electronic books, called Google Editions. The company has revealed little about the venture thus far, describing it generally as an effort to sell digital books that will be readable within a Web browser and accessible from any Internet-connected computing device.
Now one element of Google Editions is coming into sharper focus. Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country, according to representatives of Google and the association.
The partnership could help beloved bookstores like Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore.; Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, Calif.; and St. Mark’s Bookshop in New York. To court the growing audience of people who prefer reading on screens rather than paper, these small stores have until now been forced to compete against the likes of Amazon, Apple and Sony.
The Google deal could give them a foothold in this fast-growing market and help them keep devoted customers from migrating elsewhere.
“Google has shown a real interest in our market,” said Len Vlahos, chief operating officer of the booksellers association, which has over 1,400 member bookstores. “For a lot of reasons, it’s a very good fit.”
Google will probably face an uphill battle in its effort to enter the already crowded e-books field. The company has little experience as a retailer. It also has far fewer consumer credit card numbers in its database than either Amazon or Apple, and its online payment system, Google Checkout, has not been widely adopted."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/business/30books.html?hpw
"Independent bookstores were battered first by discount chains like Barnes & Noble, then by superefficient Web retailers like Amazon.com.
Darin Sennett of Powell’s said a Google deal would make the store independent of the e-readers sold by the big booksellers.
Now the electronic book age is dawning. With this latest challenge, these stores will soon have a new ally: the search giant Google.
Later this summer, Google plans to introduce its long-awaited push into electronic books, called Google Editions. The company has revealed little about the venture thus far, describing it generally as an effort to sell digital books that will be readable within a Web browser and accessible from any Internet-connected computing device.
Now one element of Google Editions is coming into sharper focus. Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country, according to representatives of Google and the association.
The partnership could help beloved bookstores like Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore.; Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, Calif.; and St. Mark’s Bookshop in New York. To court the growing audience of people who prefer reading on screens rather than paper, these small stores have until now been forced to compete against the likes of Amazon, Apple and Sony.
The Google deal could give them a foothold in this fast-growing market and help them keep devoted customers from migrating elsewhere.
“Google has shown a real interest in our market,” said Len Vlahos, chief operating officer of the booksellers association, which has over 1,400 member bookstores. “For a lot of reasons, it’s a very good fit.”
Google will probably face an uphill battle in its effort to enter the already crowded e-books field. The company has little experience as a retailer. It also has far fewer consumer credit card numbers in its database than either Amazon or Apple, and its online payment system, Google Checkout, has not been widely adopted."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/business/30books.html?hpw
Court to Consider Breaking Up Mass BitTorrent Lawsuits; Wired.com, 6/29/10
David Kravets, Wired.com; Court to Consider Breaking Up Mass BitTorrent Lawsuits:
"If you’ve used BitTorrent to snag unauthorized copies of independent films you should be interested in the arguments unfolding in Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C.
At issue is a mass-litigation campaign, in which the fledgling US Copyright Group is suing about 15,000 users whose IP addresses were detected harvesting films like Steam Experiment, Far Cry, Uncross the Stars, Gray Man and Call of the Wild 3D.
Several digital rights groups will argue Wednesday on behalf of the account holders behind the IP addresses that each defendant should be sued individually in courts near where the defendants reside. Currently, they’ve all been lumped together in handful of lawsuits filed in the nation’s capital in March.
If U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer agrees with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Citizen, the US Copyright Group could find its legal campaign almost impossible to continue on such a grand scale.
The issue is important if you live in California and have to answer to a lawsuit across the country. Copyright Act violations carry fines of up to $150,000.
A similar brouhaha came up during the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuit campaign against file sharers using Kazaa, Limewire and other networks. The association preferred suing hundreds of alleged downloaders at once, but in many instances were forced to drop the large-scale actions and sue each defendant separately.
In all, the RIAA sued thousands of individuals spread out over the past six years — and was backed by the deep pockets of the nation’s recording labels. If the US Copyright Group loses Wednesday’s courtroom showdown, it would be required to spend at least $350 per IP address to re-file an individual case against a sole defendant. Its lawyers likely would have to appear in courtrooms across the country, perhaps simultaneously.
The RIAA’s lawsuits against 20,000 alleged music pirates were focused on old-school file sharing systems like Kazaa and Limewire. BitTorrent file sharing is more complicated, with downloaders and uploaders collecting in transient swarms of so-called seeders and leechers. The US Copyright Group claims that, because of the swarming element of the BitTorrent protocol, the infringing activity of all the defendants likely had some nexus with the District of Columbia, even if a defendant’s computer was outside the district.
The indie filmmakers are taking a different tactic from their commercial counterparts. The Motion Picture Association of America, for the most part, has limited its lawsuits to BitTorrent sites themselves — like The Pirate Bay, TorrentSpy and Isohunt.
The allegedly offending IP address were sniffed out by Guardaley IT, a German peer-to-peer–surveillance firm."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/bittorrent-lawsuits/#ixzz0sNl95RKe:
"If you’ve used BitTorrent to snag unauthorized copies of independent films you should be interested in the arguments unfolding in Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C.
At issue is a mass-litigation campaign, in which the fledgling US Copyright Group is suing about 15,000 users whose IP addresses were detected harvesting films like Steam Experiment, Far Cry, Uncross the Stars, Gray Man and Call of the Wild 3D.
Several digital rights groups will argue Wednesday on behalf of the account holders behind the IP addresses that each defendant should be sued individually in courts near where the defendants reside. Currently, they’ve all been lumped together in handful of lawsuits filed in the nation’s capital in March.
If U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer agrees with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Citizen, the US Copyright Group could find its legal campaign almost impossible to continue on such a grand scale.
The issue is important if you live in California and have to answer to a lawsuit across the country. Copyright Act violations carry fines of up to $150,000.
A similar brouhaha came up during the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuit campaign against file sharers using Kazaa, Limewire and other networks. The association preferred suing hundreds of alleged downloaders at once, but in many instances were forced to drop the large-scale actions and sue each defendant separately.
In all, the RIAA sued thousands of individuals spread out over the past six years — and was backed by the deep pockets of the nation’s recording labels. If the US Copyright Group loses Wednesday’s courtroom showdown, it would be required to spend at least $350 per IP address to re-file an individual case against a sole defendant. Its lawyers likely would have to appear in courtrooms across the country, perhaps simultaneously.
The RIAA’s lawsuits against 20,000 alleged music pirates were focused on old-school file sharing systems like Kazaa and Limewire. BitTorrent file sharing is more complicated, with downloaders and uploaders collecting in transient swarms of so-called seeders and leechers. The US Copyright Group claims that, because of the swarming element of the BitTorrent protocol, the infringing activity of all the defendants likely had some nexus with the District of Columbia, even if a defendant’s computer was outside the district.
The indie filmmakers are taking a different tactic from their commercial counterparts. The Motion Picture Association of America, for the most part, has limited its lawsuits to BitTorrent sites themselves — like The Pirate Bay, TorrentSpy and Isohunt.
The allegedly offending IP address were sniffed out by Guardaley IT, a German peer-to-peer–surveillance firm."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/bittorrent-lawsuits/#ixzz0sNl95RKe:
If The Public Library Was Invented Today, Would The Gov't Call It Organized Crime And Shut It Down?; TechDirt.com, 6/30/10
Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; If The Public Library Was Invented Today, Would The Gov't Call It Organized Crime And Shut It Down?:
"We've seen authors in the past complaining that libraries are engaged in book theft, which is an argument that is pretty laughable -- though, has, at times been suggested by various publishing groups. But, in general, most people recognize the public service a library does by helping to educate people. So when some folks in Bulgaria decided to try to set up a user-generated online library of sorts, you wouldn't think that the site would get raided by the police, be declared "damaging to culture," and have its organizers described as an organized crime syndicate. But, that's what happened.
The site, Chitanka.info let anyone upload works for a Bulgarian audience -- so there definitely were some infringing works on the site. However, the site was quick to take down any material upon request. The effort was strictly non-commercial, with no ads appearing anywhere on the site. In fact, many authors uploaded their own works, as they realized what a great resource it was.
However, the Bulgarian Book Association flipped out, and once it flipped out, the Bulgarian government had its organized crime law enforcement group raid the site, and describe the organizers as a "gang." Users of the site also took issue with the claim that the site was in any way damaging. They said it was regularly used like a library, but since you could only read the books on a computer, it likely resulted in more sales (or visits to physical libraries)...
Either way, all of this makes you wonder: if traditional public libraries were just being founded today, how much effort do you think publishers would go through to shut them down by claiming they were illegal and violations of copyright law?"
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100630/12152310025.shtml
"We've seen authors in the past complaining that libraries are engaged in book theft, which is an argument that is pretty laughable -- though, has, at times been suggested by various publishing groups. But, in general, most people recognize the public service a library does by helping to educate people. So when some folks in Bulgaria decided to try to set up a user-generated online library of sorts, you wouldn't think that the site would get raided by the police, be declared "damaging to culture," and have its organizers described as an organized crime syndicate. But, that's what happened.
The site, Chitanka.info let anyone upload works for a Bulgarian audience -- so there definitely were some infringing works on the site. However, the site was quick to take down any material upon request. The effort was strictly non-commercial, with no ads appearing anywhere on the site. In fact, many authors uploaded their own works, as they realized what a great resource it was.
However, the Bulgarian Book Association flipped out, and once it flipped out, the Bulgarian government had its organized crime law enforcement group raid the site, and describe the organizers as a "gang." Users of the site also took issue with the claim that the site was in any way damaging. They said it was regularly used like a library, but since you could only read the books on a computer, it likely resulted in more sales (or visits to physical libraries)...
Either way, all of this makes you wonder: if traditional public libraries were just being founded today, how much effort do you think publishers would go through to shut them down by claiming they were illegal and violations of copyright law?"
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100630/12152310025.shtml
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