Copyright Law

Miscellany

Posted on June 20, 2008
Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, George Bush's latest powers, courtesy of the Democratic Congress: "I've now just read a copy of the final 'compromise' bill. It's even worse than expected. When you read it, it's actually hard to believe that the Congress....

Challenges in Monitoring Infringement on P2P Networks

Posted on June 20, 2008
Michael Piatek, Tadayoshi Kohno, Arvind Krishnamurthy, Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File Sharing Networks or Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice: "The focus of this paper is to examine the tension between P2P users and enforcement agencies...

Joseph Abboud: person v. trademark

Posted on June 20, 2008
JA Apparel Corp. v. Abboud (SDNY, June 5, 2008) Ron Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion, Mad Abboud you: "It’s worth taking a look at because just reading the bare-bones fact pattern of it above, this doesn’t look like a hard case....

On the nature of the internet

Posted on June 19, 2008
Here are a couple of articles (and a response) about the history, impact and future of the internet and WWW. Vanity Fair, How the Web Was Won, "Vanity Fair set out to do something that has never been done: to...

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Cultivating Online Personas

Posted on June 19, 2008
In New York Magazine, Rex Sorgatz lays out a few simple steps for finding internet fame, The Microfame Game and The New Rules of Internet Celebrity -- New York Magazine: "It's easy to be cynical about this new class of...

Open Access to Statutes

Posted on June 18, 2008
James Grimmelmann wrote a nice primer on copyright, statutes and open access, and how publishing statutes openly online benefits democracy: Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law: "Recently, the state of Oregon has used copyright law to threaten people who...

Won't somebody please think of the children?

Posted on June 11, 2008
Yesterday, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced an agreement with 3 national ISPs-- Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint-- to block access to newsgroups and web sites distributing child pornography. Press Release: Attorney General Cuomo Announces Unprecedented Deal With...

Working on Orphan Works

Posted on May 22, 2008
Congress is once again considering legislation to deal with the problem of orphaned copyright works-- those works that are still under copyright but where the copyright owner may be impossible to identify and locate. Both the House and Senate have...

Trademark in 3D

Posted on May 12, 2008
The Wall Street Journal, Shape of Things to Come: "On Jan. 8, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple Inc. a trademark for the three-dimensional shape of its iPod media player. This was more than a recognition of an...

Blockbuster Sued over Facebook Beacon Program

Posted on April 23, 2008
Remember Facebook's Beacon program? That's the program that uses Facebook user's purchase information on partner websites to advertise those websites to the user's social network. Here are a couple of posts on the controversy from David at Inside the Marketer's...

The Boss and Vista

Posted on April 17, 2008
Would Bruce's right of publicity claim against Microsoft be affected if this video was intended for internal use only, but posted to the public internet by a third party?...

Muggles and Fair Use

Posted on April 15, 2008
J.K. Rowling testified this week in her lawsuit against the publisher of a book version of The Harry Potter Lexicon, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. v. RDR Books. Mark Hamblett, New York law Journal: Harry Potter Author Fights Creator of Lexicon,...

Deferring Indecency Rulings

Posted on April 15, 2008
The Los Angeles Times reports that the FCC is waiting to rule on its indecency complaints against broadcast licensees until after the Supreme Court rules on FCC v. Fox, Indecency cases stuck in legal limbo at FCC: "Thousands of viewer...

Valuing Music

Posted on March 25, 2008
In the NY Times, Billy Bragg suggests that the social networking sites that have developed their audiences by hosting music should have to consider paying royalties for that music: The Royalty Scam In our discussions, we largely ignored the elephant....

Valuing Music

Posted on March 25, 2008
In the NY Times, Billy Bragg suggests that the social networking sites that have developed their audiences by hosting music should have to consider paying royalties for that music: The Royalty Scam In our discussions, we largely ignored the elephant....

FCC Redefines Broadband

Posted on March 20, 2008
At News.com, Anne Broache reports that the FCC will be tracking broadband with more precision and re-defining the lower limits of 'broadband,' FCC approves new method for tracking broadband's reach: 200Kbps speeds are no longer considered 'broadband.' Broadband service speeds...

FCC Redefines Broadband

Posted on March 20, 2008
At News.com, Anne Broache reports that the FCC will be tracking broadband with more precision and re-defining the lower limits of 'broadband,' FCC approves new method for tracking broadband's reach: 200Kbps speeds are no longer considered 'broadband.' Broadband service speeds...

Court Grants Cert in FCC v. Fox

Posted on March 19, 2008
On Monday, the Supreme Court granted cert and agreed to review the Second Circuit's ruling in Fox v. FCC, 06-1760-ag, that the Commission's policy sanctioning "fleeting expletives" is arbitrary and capricious. FCC v. Fox Docket. The Government's Cert Petition asks...

Court Grants Cert in FCC v. Fox

Posted on March 19, 2008
On Monday, the Supreme Court granted cert and agreed to review the Second Circuit's ruling in Fox v. FCC, 06-1760-ag, that the Commission's policy sanctioning "fleeting expletives" is arbitrary and capricious. FCC v. Fox Docket. The Government's Cert Petition asks...

Motley Crew Testifies at House Net Neutrality Hearing

Posted on March 11, 2008
Today at 2:00 EDT, The Judiciary Committee Antitrust Task Force will hold a Hearing on Net Neutrality and Free Speech on the Internet. Damian Kulash Lead Vocalist and Guitarist OK Go Michele Combs Vice President of Communications Christian Coalition of...

Revisiting Indecency

Posted on February 26, 2008
After a quiet year on the indecency front, the FCC recently revisited two indecency complaints from programs that aired in 2003 and issued forfeiture orders. In re: Complaints Against Various Television Licensees Concerning Their February 25, 2003 Broadcast of the Program "NYPD Blue" (FCC 08-55, Feb...

The Mass and The Personal

Posted on February 25, 2008
While the pre-Oscar crowds at Union Square sold out early evening showings of Best Picture nominees No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, the crowd in the theater for U23D was fairly sparse. Perhaps because it was in a regular theater rather than on the big IMAX screen, but unlike Bob Lefsetz, I found the 3D-ness underwhelming except for a few moments...

Internet Freedom Preservation Act and Network Management Practices

Posted on February 14, 2008
Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Chip Pickering (R-MS) introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (H.R. 5353). This bill would "establish broadband policy and direct the Federal Communications Commission to conduct a proceeding and public broadband summits to assess competition, consumer protection, and consumer choice issues relating to broadband Internet access services...

OMG! Yoko Ono sues plucky young singer named Lennon to stop using her first name!

Posted on February 14, 2008
On her Myspace blog, singer Lennon Murphy writes, Getting Sued by Yoko, "Yesterday I received notice that Yoko Ono had filed a law suit against me, asking for a cancellation of the trademark that I own for the name "Lennon." This could very well mean the career that I have worked so hard at, the one you all have believed in, may come to an end...

Hot, Naked Court Data

Posted on February 13, 2008
Creative Commons and Public.Resource.Org have released 1.8 Million Pages of U.S. Case Law Available Now for Developers: "Today’s release covers all U.S. Supreme Court decisions and all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 on. The release is equivalent to 1,858 volumes of case law in book form, a stack of books 348 feet tall...

On Copies

Posted on February 08, 2008
Kevin Kelly ponders ways to think about moving to a new media world where the marginal cost of all copies drops to zero: Better Than Free: "When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable...

Verizon's not into policing copyright infringement

Posted on February 08, 2008
While AT&T is considering helping large copyright owners police infringements on its network, Verizon. The NYT Bits Blog reports, Verizon Rejects Hollywood’s Call to Aid Piracy Fight. Tom Tauke, Verizon’s executive vice president for public affairs offers three reasons why ISPs have no incentive to monitoring for copyright infringements: "1) The slippery slope...

Taking Down the Shred

Posted on February 08, 2008
Wired: Humorless Metalheads Shut Down Popular YouTuber: "The three unnamed artists filed copyright infringement claims against the parody videos of Finnish media artist Santeri Ojala, causing YouTube to shut down his account over the weekend.… Ojala's popular videos poked harmless fun at famous guitar soloists by dubbing his own abhorrently bad strummings over rock concert footage...

Super Bowl is a registered trademark of the NFL

Posted on January 18, 2008
It's the first annual Likelihood of Confusion SUPER BOWL® Trademark Watch and Contest: "Every year it’s the same thing: Several weeks before the Super Bowl®, people and businesses wishing to promote events related to the timing of the biggest sporting event of the season — the Super Bowl®, that is, the National Football League’s championship game — go through all sorts of contortions to avoid saying the trademark-protected words, Super Bowl...

Gawker, Scientology and Fair Use

Posted on January 18, 2008
The Church of Scientology requests that Gawker remove a clip of Tom Cruise talking about Scientology for copyright infringement, but Gawker is willing to step up and argue that its use is a fair use for the purposes of news reporting. Church of Scientology Claims Copyright Infringement The clip in question, Exclusive: The Cruise Indoctrination Video Scientology Tried To Suppress: "if Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch was an 8 on the scale of scary, this is a 10...

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