Copyright Law

"Who needs copyright, anyway?"

Posted on May 17, 2008
John Degen, a Canadian novelist, has a thoughtful post on how he has resolved to make his latest novel, The Uninvited Guest, freely available for download online. It his a short yet touching divulgation of a writer?s musing about copyright protection in the digital age, and about thinking out of the box...

Create a personal website in 2 minutes

Posted on April 28, 2008
Israel is a buzzing hive of small start-up technology companies that produce great ideas and original solutions. One of them is WIX, which offers a (free - as far as I could judge) web-based tool for creating personal and business websites within minutes...

Paper Abstract: Ontology of Information

Posted on April 11, 2008
I?ve just put the abstract of a new paper on my SSRN page. Temporary title is: Ontology of Information and its Lessons for Intellectual Property. The full abstract is available here (I am not yet able to make the full text available online). Here are a few lines from the abstract: read more

Old-Style Canadian Formalities and Copyright Reform

Posted on February 13, 2008
Next month Stanford CIS is hosting a conference about Legal Futures. Judging by the list of participants, the upcoming even should be nothing less than electrifying. This post is unrelated to the conference. In fact, it is not about legal ?futures? at all...

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Israel?s Fair Use

Posted on January 30, 2008
Some time ago I did a post on the new copyright legislation in Israel. There are many interesting things about this law, and now, at the curtsey of Prof. Niva Elkin-Koren from Haifa University, there is an unofficial English translation of the new statute available...

When Judges Violate Copyright Free License Terms

Posted on January 04, 2008
I came across this anecdote earlier this week, reading in the Israeli press about a judge who quoted in a court opinion an article from the Hebrew Wikipedia, but who failed to mentioned her source. The judge apparently copy-pasted whole sentences from a Hebrew Wikipedia article about umbilical cord blood...

Mulligan and Perzanowski on the Sony BMG Rootkit Fiasco

Posted on December 18, 2007
I have never seen an SSRN paper receiving 1700 recorded downloads in mere three days or so. This is exactly what happened to ?The Magnificence of the Disaster: Reconstructing the Sony BMG Rootkit Incident? by Deirdre Mulligan and Aaron Perzanowski, forthcoming in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal...

Fair Use Project to Represent RDR Books in Harry Potter Lexicon Dispute

Posted on December 07, 2007
Here's a link to the press release. It is not my jurisdiction to cover this development - I trust you?ll hear more details and updates from Anthony and his team soon. I'd only say it looks like one of the most exiting and challenging fair use cases I?ve seen recently and a must-follow one...

CC and GFDL interoperability

Posted on December 02, 2007
Something significant has happened in the world of free licensing, Lessig has the details and a video. Apparently, an important step has been made towards interoperability between the license controlling Wikipedia articles (the GFDL v.1.2), and the CC license by-share-alike...

Sarkozy?s digital agenda

Posted on November 24, 2007
Zdnet reports on a new initiative in France to tighten copyright protection over the Internet and prevent illegal downloading. The French president himself gave announcements that makes one think he?s on payroll of the music and film industry ("we run the risk of witnessing a genuine destruction of culture...

New Copyright Statute for Israel

Posted on November 21, 2007
Some time ago I posted an update about the planned copyright reform in Israel. The Israeli copyright law now passed legislation and the text of the new statute is available for download here. You don?t get the chance to write your copyright law from scratch very often, maybe once or twice in a century...

Electra Entertainment v. McDowell: Is a thirteen year old still innocent (infringer)?

Posted on November 14, 2007
A federal district court in Georgia ordered a jury trial last week on the question whether a thirteen year old defendant was an innocent infringer or not. In Electra Entertainment Group Inc. V. Sarah McDowell (2007 WL 3286622 (M.D.Ga.), a teenager defendant admitted to have used P2P networks for exchanging sound recordings, but objected the demand of plaintiffs (the record companies) to pay maximum statutory damages of $750 per infringement, in this case 48 times, which makes the fine figure of $36k...

German Copyright Law Amended

Posted on October 31, 2007
Today was the official publication of a new amendment to the German Copyright Act. The amendment will enter into force in January 1st, 2008. After four long years of discussions, debates and negotiations, the final text is now available. A few highlights: read more

Elkin-Koren on Anticircumvention Law and Consumers-as-Participants

Posted on October 26, 2007
Prof. Niva Elkin-Koren has uploaded a paper titled Making Room for Consumer Under the DMCA, to be published soon in the BTLJ. The paper provides a terrific analysis and introduces an original perspective, proposing to perceive users of copyrighted works as participating consumers in information markets...

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